(_a_) The "apple-John," called in France _deux-annees_ or _deux-ans_,
because it will keep two years, and considered to be in perfection when
shrivelled and withered,[458] is evidently spoken of in "1 Henry IV."
(iii. 3), where Falstaff says: "My skin hangs about me like an old
lady's loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-John." In "2 Henry
IV." (ii. 4) there is a further allusion:

"_1st Drawer._ What the devil hast thou brought there?
apple-Johns? thou know'st Sir John cannot endure an
apple-John.

_2d Drawer._ Mass, thou sayest true. The prince once set a
dish of apple-Johns before him, and told him there were five
more Sir Johns, and, putting off his hat, said, 'I will now
take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered
knights.'"

[458] Dyce's "Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 15.

This apple, too, is well described by Phillips ("Cider," bk. i.):

"Nor John Apple, whose wither'd rind, entrench'd
By many a furrow, aptly represents
Decrepit age."

In Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair" (i. 1), where Littlewit encourages
Quarlus to kiss his wife, he says: "she may call you an apple-John if
you use this." Here apple-John[459] evidently means a procuring John,
besides the allusion to the fruit so called.[460]

[459] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 29; probably
synonymous with the term "apple-Squire," which formerly
signified a pimp.

[460] Forby, in his "Vocabulary of East Anglia," says of this
apple, "we retain the name, but whether we mean the same
variety of fruit which was so called in Shakespeare's time, it
is not possible to ascertain."

(_b_) The "bitter-sweet, or sweeting," to which Mercutio alludes in
"Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4): "Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a
most sharp sauce;" was apparently a favorite apple, which furnished many
allusions to poets. Gower, in his "Confessio Amantis" (1554, fol. 174),
speaks of it:

"For all such time of love is lore
And like unto the _bitter swete_,
For though it thinke a man first sweete,
He shall well felen atte laste
That it is sower, and maie not laste."

The name is "now given to an apple of no great value as a table fruit,
but good as a cider apple, and for use in silk dyeing."[461]

[461] Ellacombe's "Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 16; Dyce's
"Glossary," p. 430; Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 81; Coles's
"Latin and Englis