Servant
Sir, my lord would speak with you.
Lord Chief-Justice
Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.
Falstaff
My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad: I heard say your lordship was sick: I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I must humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverent care of your health.
Lord Chief-Justice
Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to
Shrewsbury.
Falstaff
An’t please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.
Lord Chief-Justice
I talk not of his majesty: you would not come when
I sent for you.
Falstaff
And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.
Lord Chief-Justice
Well, God mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.
Falstaff
This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an’t please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.
Lord Chief-Justice
What tell you me of it? be it as it is.
Falstaff
It hath its original from much grief, from study and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness.
Lord Chief-Justice
I think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.
Falstaff
Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.
Lord Chief-Justice
To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.
Falstaff
I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but how should I be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.
Lord Chief-Justice
I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.
Falstaff
As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.
Lord Chief-Justice
Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.
Falstaff
He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.
Lord Chief-Justice
Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
Falstaff
I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.
Lord Chief-Justice
You have misled the youthful prince.
Falstaff
The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.
Lord Chief-Justice
Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound: your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting that action.
Falstaff
My lord?
Lord Chief-Justice
But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.
Falstaff
To wake a wolf is as bad as to smell a fox.
Lord Chief-Justice
What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
Falstaff
A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.
Lord Chief-Justice
There is not a white hair on your face but should have his effect of gravity.
Falstaff
His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.
Lord Chief-Justice
You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.
Falstaff
Not so, my lord; your ill angel is light; but I hope he that looks upon me will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go: I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these costermonger times that true valour is turned bear-herd: pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.
Lord Chief-Justice
Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
Falstaff
My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him! For the box of the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have chequed him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.
Lord Chief-Justice
Well, God send the prince a better companion!
Falstaff
God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.
Lord Chief-Justice
Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry: I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.
Falstaff
Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady Peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, and I brandish any thing but a bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head but I am thrust upon it: well, I cannot last ever: but it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is: I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
Lord Chief-Justice
Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition!
Falstaff
Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?
Lord Chief-Justice
Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.
Exeunt Chief-Justice and Servant
Falstaff
If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no more separate age and covetousness than a’ can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!
Page
Sir?
Falstaff
What money is in my purse?
Page
Seven groats and two pence.
Falstaff
I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekl
y sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair on my chin. About it: you know where to find me.
Exit Page
A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. ’Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will make use of any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity.
Exit
SCENE III. YORK. THE ARCHBISHOP’S PALACE.
Enter the Archbishop Of York, the Lords Hastings, Mowbray, and Bardolph
Archbishop Of York
Thus have you heard our cause and known our means;
And, my most noble friends, I pray you all,
Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes:
And first, lord marshal, what say you to it?
Mowbray
I well allow the occasion of our arms;
But gladly would be better satisfied
How in our means we should advance ourselves
To look with forehead bold and big enough
Upon the power and puissance of the king.
Hastings
Our present musters grow upon the file
To five and twenty thousand men of choice;
And our supplies live largely in the hope
Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns
With an incensed fire of injuries.
Lord Bardolph
The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus;
Whether our present five and twenty thousand
May hold up head without Northumberland?
Hastings
With him, we may.
Lord Bardolph
Yea, marry, there’s the point:
But if without him we be thought too feeble,
My judgment is, we should not step too far
Till we had his assistance by the hand;
For in a theme so bloody-faced as this
Conjecture, expectation, and surmise
Of aids incertain should not be admitted.
Archbishop Of York
’Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed
It was young Hotspur’s case at Shrewsbury.
Lord Bardolph
It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope,
Eating the air on promise of supply,
Flattering himself in project of a power
Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts:
And so, with great imagination
Proper to madmen, led his powers to death
And winking leap’d into destruction.
Hastings
But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt
To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.
Lord Bardolph
Yes, if this present quality of war,
Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot
Lives so in hope as in an early spring
We see the appearing buds; which to prove fruit,
Hope gives not so much warrant as despair
That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection;
Which if we find outweighs ability,
What do we then but draw anew the model
In fewer offices, or at last desist
To build at all? Much more, in this great work,
Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down
And set another up, should we survey
The plot of situation and the model,
Consent upon a sure foundation,
Question surveyors, know our own estate,
How able such a work to undergo,
To weigh against his opposite; or else
We fortify in paper and in figures,
Using the names of men instead of men:
Like one that draws the model of a house
Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,
Gives o’er and leaves his part-created cost
A naked subject to the weeping clouds
And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.
Hastings
Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth,
Should be still-born, and that we now possess’d
The utmost man of expectation,
I think we are a body strong enough,
Even as we are, to equal with the king.
Lord Bardolph
What, is the king but five and twenty thousand?
Hastings
To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph.
For his divisions, as the times do brawl,
Are in three heads: one power against the French,
And one against Glendower; perforce a third
Must take up us: so is the unfirm king
In three divided; and his coffers sound
With hollow poverty and emptiness.
Archbishop Of York
That he should draw his several strengths together
And come against us in full puissance,
Need not be dreaded.
Hastings
If he should do so,
He leaves his back unarm’d, the French and Welsh
Baying him at the heels: never fear that.
Lord Bardolph
Who is it like should lead his forces hither?
Hastings
The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland;
Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth:
But who is substituted ’gainst the French,
I have no certain notice.
Archbishop Of York
Let us on,
And publish the occasion of our arms.
The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;
Their over-greedy love hath surfeited:
An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond many, with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!
And being now trimm’d in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
That thou provokest thyself to cast him up.
So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,
And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these times?
They that, when Richard lived, would have him die,
Are now become enamour’d on his grave:
Thou, that threw’st dust upon his goodly head
When through proud London he came sighing on
After the admired heels of Bolingbroke,
Criest now ‘O earth, yield us that king again,
And take thou this!’ O thoughts of men accursed!
Past and to come seems best; things present worst.
Mowbray
Shall we go draw our numbers and set on?
Hastings
We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.
Exeunt
ACT II
SCENE I. LONDON. A STREET.
Enter Mistress Quickly, Fang and his Boy with her, and Snare following.
Mistress Quickly
Master Fang, have you entered the action?
Fang
It is entered.
Mistress Quickly
Where’s your yeoman? Is’t a lusty yeoman? will a’ stand to ’t?
Fang
Sirrah, where’s Snare?
Mistress Quickly
O Lord, ay! good Master Snare.
Snare
Here, here.
Fang
Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.
Mistress Quickly
Yea, good Master Snare; I have entered him and all.
Snare
I
t may chance cost some of us our lives, for he will stab.
Mistress Quickly
Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly: in good faith, he cares not what mischief he does. If his weapon be out: he will foin like any devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child.
Fang
If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.
Mistress Quickly
No, nor I neither: I’ll be at your elbow.
Fang
An I but fist him once; an a’ come but within my vice,—
Mistress Quickly
I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he’s an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure: good Master Snare, let him not ’scape. A’ comes continuantly to Pie-corner — saving your manhoods — to buy a saddle; and he is indited to dinner to the Lubber’s-head in Lumbert street, to Master Smooth’s the silkman: I pray ye, since my exion is entered and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear: and I have borne, and borne, and borne, and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and a beast, to bear every knave’s wrong. Yonder he comes; and that errant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, do your offices: Master Fang and Master Snare, do me, do me, do me your offices.
Enter Falstaff, Page, and Bardolph
Falstaff
How now! whose mare’s dead? what’s the matter?
Fang
Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly.
Falstaff
Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph: cut me off the villain’s head: throw the quean in the channel.
Mistress Quickly
Throw me in the channel! I’ll throw thee in the channel. Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue! Murder, murder! Ah, thou honeysuckle villain! wilt thou kill God’s officers and the king’s? Ah, thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed, a man-queller, and a woman-queller.
Falstaff
Keep them off, Bardolph.
Fang
A rescue! a rescue!
Mistress Quickly
Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou wo’t, wo’t thou? Thou wo’t, wo’t ta? do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!
Falstaff
Away, you scullion! you rampallion! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.
Enter the Lord Chief-Justice, and his men
Complete Plays, The Page 177