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Come, we will all put forth, body and goods.
MORTON
’Tis more than time. And, my most noble lord,
I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth,
The gentle Archbishop of York is up
With well-appointed pow’rs. He is a man
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Who with a double surety binds his followers.
My lord your son had only but the corpse,
But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;
For that same word ‘rebellion’ did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls,
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And they did fight with queasiness, constrain’d,
As men drink potions, that their weapons only
Seem’d on our side; but, for their spirits and souls,
This word ‘rebellion’ – it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop
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Turns insurrection to religion;
Suppos’d sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He’s follow’d both with body and with mind,
And doth enlarge his rising with the blood
Of fair King Richard, scrap’d from Pomfret stones;
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Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;
Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,
Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;
And more and less do flock to follow him.
NORTHUMBERLAND
I knew of this before, but, to speak truth,
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This present grief had wip’d it from my mind.
Go in with me, and counsel every man
The aptest way for safety and revenge:
Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed:
Never so few, and never yet more need. Exeunt.
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1.2 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 have
moe diseases than he knew for.
5
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 not only
witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.
10
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. Thou whoreson
mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to
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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, – the juvenal the Prince your master,
whose chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a beard
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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
hair amiss yet. He may keep it still at a face-royal, for
a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it. And yet
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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. What 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 bond
and yours, he liked not the security.
FALSTAFF Let him be damned like the glutton! Pray
God his tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel!
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A rascally yea-forsooth knave, to bear a gentleman in
hand, and then stand upon security! The whoreson
smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes and
bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is
through with them in honest taking up, then they
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must stand upon security. I had as lief they would put
ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security.
I looked a should have sent me two and twenty yards
of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me
‘security’! Well, he may sleep in security, for he hath
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the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife
shines through it; and yet cannot he see, though he
have his own lanthorn to light him. Where’s
Bardolph?
PAGE He’s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.
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FALSTAFF I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a
horse in Smithfield. And I could get me but a wife in
the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.
Enter Lord Chief Justice and Servant.
PAGE Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the
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Prince for striking him about Bardolph.
FALSTAFF Wait close, I will not see him.
CHIEF JUSTICE What’s he that goes there?
SERVANT Falstaff, and’t please your lordship.
CHIEF JUSTICE He that was in question for the robbery?
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SERVANT He, my lord: but he hath since done good
service at Shrewsbury, and, as I hear, is now going
with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.
CHIEF JUSTICE What, to York? Call him back again.
SERVANT Sir John Falstaff!
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FALSTAFF Boy, tell him I am deaf.
PAGE You must speak louder, my master is deaf.
CHIEF JUSTICE I am sure he is, to the hearing of
anything good. Go pluck him by the elbow, I must
speak with him.
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SERVANT Sir John!
FALSTAFF What! A young knave, and begging! Is there
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
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worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were
it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to
make it.
SERVANT You mistake me, sir.
FALSTAFF Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man?
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Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had
lied in my throat if I had said so.
SERVANT I 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
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an honest man.
FALSTAFF I give thee leave to tell me so? I lay aside that
which grows to me? If thou get’st any leave of me,
hang me. If thou tak’st leave, thou wert better be
hanged. You hunt counter. Hence! Avaunt!
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SERVANT Sir, my lord would speak with you.
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
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goes abroad by advice; your lordship, though not clean
past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you,
some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly
beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your
health.
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CHIEF JUSTICE Sir John, I sent for you before your
expedition to Shrewsbury.
FALSTAFF And’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
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come when I sent for you.
FALSTAFF And 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.
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FALSTAFF This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of
lethargy, and’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
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study, and perturbation of the brain; I have read the
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, and’t
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please you, it is the disease of not listening, the 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.
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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 I
should be your patient to follow your prescriptions,
the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed
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a scruple itself.
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.
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CHIEF JUSTICE Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in
great infamy.
FALSTAFF He that buckles himself in my belt cannot
live in less.
CHIEF JUSTICE Your means are very slender, and your
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waste is great.
FALSTAFF I would it were otherwise, I would my means
were greater and my waist slenderer.
CHIEF JUSTICE You have misled the youthful Prince.
FALSTAFF The young Prince hath misled me. I am the
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fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.
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 th’unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting
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that action.
FALSTAFF My 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 smell a fox.
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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.
CHIEF JUSTICE There is not a white hair in your face but
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should have his effect of gravity.
FALSTAFF His 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
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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
costermongers’ times that true valour is turned
bearherd; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick
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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
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your galls; and we that are in the 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
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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 169
