Enter Falstaff ⌜and⌝ Bardolph.FALSTAFF Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry. Fill me a bottle of sack. Our soldiers shall march through. We’ll to Sutton ⌜Coldfield⌝ tonight.BARDOLPH Will you give me money, captain?FALSTAFF 5Lay out, lay out.BARDOLPH This bottle makes an angel.FALSTAFF An if it do, take it for thy labor. An if it make twenty, take them all. I’ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at town’s end.BARDOLPH 10I will, captain. Farewell. He exits.FALSTAFF If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the King’s press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I15 press me none but good householders, ⌜yeomen’s⌝ sons, inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns—such a commodity of warm slaves as had as ⌜lief⌝ hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a caliver worse
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20 than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, and they have bought out their services, and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants,25 gentlemen of companies—slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded, unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and30 ostlers tradefallen, the cankers of a calm world and a long peace, ten times more dishonorable-ragged than an old feazed ancient; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them as have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty35 tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through Coventry40 with them, that’s flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs as if they had gyves on, for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There’s not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together45 and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Albans or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that’s all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge. Enter the Prince ⌜and the⌝ Lord of Westmoreland.PRINCE 50How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?FALSTAFF What, Hal, how now, mad wag? What a devil dost thou in Warwickshire?—My good Lord of
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Westmoreland, I cry you mercy. I thought your Honor had already been at Shrewsbury.WESTMORELAND 55Faith, Sir John, ’tis more than time that I were there and you too, but my powers are there already. The King, I can tell you, looks for us all. We must away all night.FALSTAFF Tut, never fear me. I am as vigilant as a cat to60 steal cream.PRINCE I think to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?FALSTAFF Mine, Hal, mine.PRINCE 65I did never see such pitiful rascals.FALSTAFF Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.WESTMORELAND Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are70 exceeding poor and bare, too beggarly.FALSTAFF Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they had that, and for their bareness, I am sure they never learned that of me.PRINCE No, I’ll be sworn, unless you call three fingers75 in the ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste. Percy is already in the field. He exits.FALSTAFF What, is the King encamped?WESTMORELAND He is, Sir John. I fear we shall stay too long. ⌜He exits.⌝FALSTAFF 80Well, To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest. ⌜He⌝ exits.