The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth

1 Enter Falstaff, with his Page bearing his sword and buckler.
2 FALSTAFF.
3 Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?
4 PAGE.
5 He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but, for the
6 party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than he knew for.
7 FALSTAFF.
8 Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this
9 foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends
10 to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only
11 witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk
12 before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If
13 the Prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me
14 off, why then I have no judgement. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art
15 fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never
16 manned with an agate till now, but I will inset you neither in gold nor
17 silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master,
18 for a jewel,—the juvenal, the Prince your master, whose chin is not yet
19 fledge. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he
20 shall get one off his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say his face
21 is a face-royal. God may finish it when He will, ’tis not a hair amiss
22 yet. He may keep it still at a face-royal, for a barber shall never
23 earn sixpence out of it. And yet he’ll be crowing as if he had writ man
24 ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but
25 he’s almost out of mine, I can assure him. What said Master Dommelton
26 about the satin for my short cloak and my slops?
27 PAGE.
28 He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph. He
29 would not take his band and yours, he liked not the security.
30 FALSTAFF.
31 Let him be damned like the glutton! Pray God his tongue be hotter! A
32 whoreson Achitophel! A rascally yea-forsooth knave, to bear a gentleman
33 in hand, and then stand upon security! The whoreson smooth-pates do now
34 wear nothing but high shoes and bunches of keys at their girdles; and
35 if a man is through with them in honest taking up, then they must stand
36 upon security. I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as
37 offer to stop it with security. I looked he should have sent me two and
38 twenty yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me
39 “security”. Well, he may sleep in security, for he hath the horn of
40 abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it; and yet
41 cannot he see, though he have his own lanthorn to light him. Where’s
42 Bardolph?
43 PAGE.
44 He’s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.
45 FALSTAFF.
46 I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield. An I
47 could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.
48 Enter the Lord Chief Justice and Servant.
49 PAGE.
50 Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the Prince for striking him
51 about Bardolph.
52 FALSTAFF.
53 Wait close, I will not see him.
54 CHIEF JUSTICE.
55 What’s he that goes there?
56 SERVANT.
57 Falstaff, an ’t please your lordship.
58 CHIEF JUSTICE.
59 He that was in question for the robbery?
60 SERVANT.
61 He, my lord; but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury, and, as
62 I hear, is now going with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.
63 CHIEF JUSTICE.
64 What, to York? Call him back again.
65 SERVANT.
66 Sir John Falstaff!
67 FALSTAFF.
68 Boy, tell him I am deaf.
69 PAGE.
70 You must speak louder, my master is deaf.
71 CHIEF JUSTICE.
72 I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good.
73 Go pluck him by the elbow, I must speak with him.
74 SERVANT.
75 Sir John!
76 FALSTAFF.
77 What! A young knave, and begging! Is there not wars? Is there not
78 employment? Doth not the King lack subjects? Do not the rebels need
79 soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is worse
80 shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were it worse than the name
81 of rebellion can tell how to make it.
82 SERVANT.
83 You mistake me, sir.
84 FALSTAFF.
85 Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? Setting my knighthood and
86 my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so.
87 SERVANT.
88 I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your soldiership aside,
89 and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat, if you say I am
90 any other than an honest man.
91 FALSTAFF.
92 I give thee leave to tell me so? I lay aside that which grows to me? If
93 thou get’st any leave of me, hang me; if thou tak’st leave, thou wert
94 better be hanged. You hunt counter. Hence! Avaunt!
95 SERVANT.
96 Sir, my lord would speak with you.
97 CHIEF JUSTICE.
98 Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.
99 FALSTAFF.
100 My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see
101 your lordship abroad. I heard say your lordship was sick. I hope your
102 lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past
103 your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the
104 saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship to have a
105 reverend care of your health.
106 CHIEF JUSTICE.
107 Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.
108 FALSTAFF.
109 An ’t please your lordship, I hear his Majesty is returned with some
110 discomfort from Wales.
111 CHIEF JUSTICE.
112 I talk not of his Majesty. You would not come when I sent for you.
113 FALSTAFF.
114 And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fallen into this same whoreson
115 apoplexy.
116 CHIEF JUSTICE.
117 Well, God mend him! I pray you let me speak with you.
118 FALSTAFF.
119 This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, an ’t please your
120 lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.
121 CHIEF JUSTICE.
122 What tell you me of it? Be it as it is.
123 FALSTAFF.
124 It hath it original from much grief, from study and perturbation of the
125 brain. I have read the cause of his effects in Galen. It is a kind of
126 deafness.
127 CHIEF JUSTICE.
128 I think you are fallen into the disease, for you hear not what I say to
129 you.
130 FALSTAFF.
131 Very well, my lord, very well. Rather, an ’t please you, it is the
132 disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled
133 withal.
134 CHIEF JUSTICE.
135 To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears, and
136 I care not if I do become your physician.
137 FALSTAFF.
138 I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. Your lordship may
139 minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but
140 how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may
141 make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.
142 CHIEF JUSTICE.
143 I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to
144 come speak with me.
145 FALSTAFF.
146 As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this
147 land-service, I did not come.
148 CHIEF JUSTICE.
149 Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.
150 FALSTAFF.
151 He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less.
152 CHIEF JUSTICE.
153 Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
154 FALSTAFF.
155 I would it were otherwise, I would my means were greater and my waist
156 slenderer.
157 CHIEF JUSTICE.
158 You have misled the youthful prince.
159 FALSTAFF.
160 The young prince hath misled me. I am the fellow with the great belly,
161 and he my dog.
162 CHIEF JUSTICE.
163 Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound. Your day’s service at
164 Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s
165 Hill. You may thank th’ unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting that
166 action.
167 FALSTAFF.
168 My lord!
169 CHIEF JUSTICE.
170 But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.
171 FALSTAFF.
172 To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox.
173 CHIEF JUSTICE.
174 What! You are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
175 FALSTAFF.
176 A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow. If I did say of wax, my growth
177 would approve the truth.
178 CHIEF JUSTICE.
179 There is not a white hair in your face but should have his effect of
180 gravity.
181 FALSTAFF.
182 His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.
183 CHIEF JUSTICE.
184 You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.
185 FALSTAFF.
186 Not so, my lord, your ill angel is light, but I hope he that looks upon
187 me will take me without weighing. And yet in some respects, I grant, I
188 cannot go. I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these
189 costermongers’ times that true valour is turned bearherd; pregnancy is
190 made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings. All
191 the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes
192 them, are not worth a gooseberry. You that are old consider not the
193 capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers
194 with the bitterness of your galls, and we that are in the vaward of our
195 youth, I must confess, are wags too.
196 CHIEF JUSTICE.
197 Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down
198 old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye, a dry
199 hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing
200 belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double,
201 your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity? And
202 will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
203 FALSTAFF.
204 My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a
205 white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it
206 with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I
207 will not. The truth is, I am only old in judgement and understanding;
208 and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me
209 the money, and have at him! For the box of the ear that the Prince gave
210 you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible
211 lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents. Marry, not
212 in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.
213 CHIEF JUSTICE.
214 Well, God send the Prince a better companion!
215 FALSTAFF.
216 God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.
217 CHIEF JUSTICE.
218 Well, the King hath severed you and Prince Harry. I hear you are going
219 with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of
220 Northumberland.
221 FALSTAFF.
222 Yea, I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you
223 that kiss my lady Peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day;
224 for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to
225 sweat extraordinarily. If it be a hot day, and I brandish anything but
226 a bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a
227 dangerous action can peep out his head but I am thrust upon it. Well, I
228 cannot last ever. But it was alway yet the trick of our English nation,
229 if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say
230 I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name were
231 not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to
232 death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
233 CHIEF JUSTICE.
234 Well, be honest, be honest, and God bless your expedition!
235 FALSTAFF.
236 Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?
237 CHIEF JUSTICE.
238 Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare
239 you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.
240 [_Exeunt Chief Justice and Servant._]
241 FALSTAFF.
242 If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no more separate
243 age and covetousness than he can part young limbs and lechery: but the
244 gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the
245 degrees prevent my curses. Boy!
246 PAGE.
247 Sir?
248 FALSTAFF.
249 What money is in my purse?
250 PAGE.
251 Seven groats and two pence.
252 FALSTAFF.
253 I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse. Borrowing
254 only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go bear
255 this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the Prince; this to the
256 Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have
257 weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair of my
258 chin. About it. You know where to find me. [_Exit Page_.] A pox of this
259 gout! or a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue
260 with my great toe. ’Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my
261 colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will
262 make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity.
263 [_Exit._]