Enter Sir John ⟨Falstaff,⟩ with his Page bearing his sword
and buckler.FALSTAFF Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?PAGE He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water, but, for the party that owed it, he might have5 more diseases than he knew for.FALSTAFF Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that intends to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not10 only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the Prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment.15 Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now, but I will inset you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master for a jewel. The20 juvenal, the Prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledge—I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one off his cheek, and yet he will not stick to say his face is a face royal. God may finish it when He will. ’Tis not a hair25 amiss yet. He may keep it still at a face royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it, and yet he’ll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he’s almost out of mine, I can assure him. What30 said Master Dommelton about the satin for my short cloak and my slops?
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PAGE He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph. He would not take his band and yours. He liked not the security.FALSTAFF 35Let him be damned like the glutton! Pray God his tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel, a ⟨rascally⟩ yea-forsooth knave, to bear a gentleman in hand and then stand upon security! The whoreson smoothy-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes40 and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is through with them in honest taking up, then they must stand upon security. I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with “security.” I looked he should have sent me two-and-twenty45 yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me “security.” Well, he may sleep in security, for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it, and yet cannot he see though he have his own lantern to50 light him. Where’s Bardolph?PAGE He’s gone in Smithfield to buy your Worship a horse.FALSTAFF I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield. An I could get me but a wife in55 the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.Enter Lord Chief Justice ⟨and Servant.⟩PAGE, ⌜to Falstaff⌝ Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the Prince for striking him about Bardolph.FALSTAFF Wait close. I will not see him.⌜They begin to exit.⌝CHIEF JUSTICE, ⌜to Servant⌝ 60What’s he that goes there?SERVANT Falstaff, an ’t please your Lordship.CHIEF JUSTICE He that was in question for the robbery?SERVANT He, my lord; but he hath since done good
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service at Shrewsbury, and, as I hear, is now going65 with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.CHIEF JUSTICE What, to York? Call him back again.SERVANT Sir John Falstaff!FALSTAFF Boy, tell him I am deaf.PAGE You must speak louder. My master is deaf.CHIEF JUSTICE 70I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good.—Go pluck him by the elbow. I must speak with him.SERVANT, ⌜plucking Falstaff’s sleeve⌝ Sir John!FALSTAFF What, a young knave and begging? Is there75 not wars? Is there not employment? Doth not the King lack subjects? Do not the rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell80 how to make it.SERVANT You mistake me, sir.FALSTAFF Why sir, did I say you were an honest man? Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so.SERVANT 85I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your soldiership aside, and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat if you say I am any other than an honest man.FALSTAFF I give thee leave to tell me so? I lay aside that90 which grows to me? If thou gett’st any leave of me, hang me; if thou tak’st leave, thou wert better be hanged. You hunt counter. Hence! Avaunt!SERVANT Sir, my lord would speak with you.CHIEF JUSTICE Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.FALSTAFF 95My good lord. God give your Lordship good time of ⟨the⟩ 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,
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though not clean past your youth, have yet100 some smack of an ague in you, some relish of the saltness of time in you, and I most humbly beseech your Lordship to have a reverend care of your health.CHIEF JUSTICE Sir John, I sent for you before your105 expedition to Shrewsbury.FALSTAFF An ’t please your Lordship, I hear his Majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.CHIEF JUSTICE I talk not of his Majesty. You would not come when I sent for you.FALSTAFF 110And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.CHIEF JUSTICE Well, God mend him. I pray you let me speak with you.FALSTAFF This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of115 lethargy, an ’t please your Lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.CHIEF JUSTICE What tell you me of it? Be it as it is.FALSTAFF It hath it original from much grief, from study, and perturbation of the brain. I have read the120 cause of his effects in Galen. It is a kind of deafness.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, the125 malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.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 so130 patient. Your Lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty, but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.
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CHIEF JUSTICE 135I 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.CHIEF JUSTICE Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in140 great infamy.FALSTAFF He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less.CHIEF JUSTICE Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.FALSTAFF 145I would it were otherwise. I would my means were greater and my waist slender.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.CHIEF JUSTICE 150Well, 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 th’ unquiet time for your quiet o’erposting that action.FALSTAFF 155My 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.CHIEF JUSTICE What, you are as a candle, the better160 part burnt out.FALSTAFF A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow. If I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.CHIEF JUSTICE There is not a white hair in your face but should have his effect of gravity.FALSTAFF 165His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.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 without170 weighing. And yet in some respects I grant I cannot
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go. I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these costermongers’ times that true valor is turned bearherd; pregnancy is made a tapster, and ⟨hath⟩ his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings. All the other175 gifts appurtenant 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 the180 vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.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 decreasing185 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 190My 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 old195 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 have200 checked him for it, and the young lion repents. ⌜Aside.⌝ Marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.CHIEF JUSTICE Well, God send the Prince a better companion.FALSTAFF 205God send the companion a better prince. I cannot rid my hands of him.
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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 of210 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 I215 mean not to sweat extraordinarily. If it be a hot day and I brandish anything 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 always220 yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you 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 death225 with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.]CHIEF JUSTICE Well, be honest, be honest, and God bless your expedition.FALSTAFF Will your Lordship lend me a thousand230 pound to furnish me forth?CHIEF JUSTICE Not a penny, not a penny. You are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well. Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.⌜Lord Chief Justice and his Servant exit.⌝FALSTAFF If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A235 man can no more separate age and covetousness than he 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 240What money is in my purse?PAGE Seven groats and two pence.
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FALSTAFF I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse. Borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. ⌜Giving
papers to the Page.⌝ 245Go 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 weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair of my chin. About it. You250 know where to find me. ⌜Page exits.⌝ 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 color, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit255 will make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity.⌜He exits.⌝
Henry IV, Part 2
