Complete Plays, The

by William Shakespeare

  Lord Chief-Justice

  What is the matter? keep the peace here, ho!

  Mistress Quickly

  Good my lord, be good to me. I beseech you, stand to me.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  How now, Sir John! what are you brawling here?

  Doth this become your place, your time and business?

  You should have been well on your way to York.

  Stand from him, fellow: wherefore hang’st upon him?

  Mistress Quickly

  O most worshipful lord, an’t please your grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  For what sum?

  Mistress Quickly

  It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all, all I have. He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his: but I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee o’ nights like the mare.

  Falstaff

  I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any vantage of ground to get up.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  How comes this, Sir John? Fie! what man of good temper would endure this tempest of exclamation? Are you not ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by her own?

  Falstaff

  What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

  Mistress Quickly

  Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher’s wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath: deny it, if thou canst.

  Falstaff

  My lord, this is a poor mad soul; and she says up and down the town that the eldest son is like you: she hath been in good case, and the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. But for these foolish officers, I beseech you I may have redress against them.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration: you have, as it appears to me, practised upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses both in purse and in person.

  Mistress Quickly

  Yea, in truth, my lord.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  Pray thee, peace. Pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villany you have done her: the one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.

  Falstaff

  My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You call honourable boldness impudent sauciness: if a man will make courtesy and say nothing, he is virtuous: no, my lord, my humble duty remembered, I will not be your suitor. I say to you, I do desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty employment in the king’s affairs.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  You speak as having power to do wrong: but answer in the effect of your reputation, and satisfy this poor woman.

  Falstaff

  Come hither, hostess.

  Enter Gower

  Lord Chief-Justice

  Now, Master Gower, what news?

  Gower

  The king, my lord, and Harry Prince of Wales

  Are near at hand: the rest the paper tells.

  Falstaff

  As I am a gentleman.

  Mistress Quickly

  Faith, you said so before.

  Falstaff

  As I am a gentleman. Come, no more words of it.

  Mistress Quickly

  By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers.

  Falstaff

  Glasses, glasses is the only drinking: and for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in water-work, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings and these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound, if thou canst. Come, an ’twere not for thy humours, there’s not a better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw the action. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me; dost not know me? come, come, I know thou wast set on to this.

  Mistress Quickly

  Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles: i’ faith, I am loath to pawn my plate, so God save me, la!

  Falstaff

  Let it alone; I’ll make other shift: you’ll be a fool still.

  Mistress Quickly

  Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown. I hope you’ll come to supper. You’ll pay me all together?

  Falstaff

  Will I live?

  To Bardolph

  Go, with her, with her; hook on, hook on.

  Mistress Quickly

  Will you have Doll Tearsheet meet you at supper?

  Falstaff

  No more words; let’s have her.

  Exeunt Mistress Quickly, Bardolph, Officers and Boy

  Lord Chief-Justice

  I have heard better news.

  Falstaff

  What’s the news, my lord?

  Lord Chief-Justice

  Where lay the king last night?

  Gower

  At Basingstoke, my lord.

  Falstaff

  I hope, my lord, all’s well: what is the news, my lord?

  Lord Chief-Justice

  Come all his forces back?

  Gower

  No; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse,

  Are marched up to my lord of Lancaster,

  Against Northumberland and the Archbishop.

  Falstaff

  Comes the king back from Wales, my noble lord?

  Lord Chief-Justice

  You shall have letters of me presently:

  Come, go along with me, good Master Gower.

  Falstaff

  My lord!

  Lord Chief-Justice

  What’s the matter?

  Falstaff

  Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner?

  Gower

  I must wait upon my good lord here; I thank you, good Sir John.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to take soldiers up in counties as you go.

  Falstaff

  Will you sup with me, Master Gower?

  Lord Chief-Justice

  What foolish master taught you these manners, Sir John?

  Falstaff

  Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that taught them me. This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair.

  Lord Chief-Justice

  Now the Lord lighten thee! thou art a great fool.

  Exeunt

  SCENE II. LONDON. ANOTHER STREET.

  Enter Prince Henry and Poins

  Prince Henry

  Before God, I am exceeding weary.

  Poins

  Is’t come to that? I had thought weariness durst not have attached one of so high blood.

  Prince Henry

  Faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?

  Poins

  Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to remember so weak a composition.

  Prince Henry

  Belike then my appetite wa
s not princely got; for, by my troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But, indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with my greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name! or to know thy face to-morrow! or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast, viz. these, and those that were thy peach-coloured ones! or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland: and God knows, whether those that bawl out the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened.

  Poins

  How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you should talk so idly! Tell me, how many good young princes would do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is?

  Prince Henry

  Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?

  Poins

  Yes, faith; and let it be an excellent good thing.

  Prince Henry

  It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine.

  Poins

  Go to; I stand the push of your one thing that you will tell.

  Prince Henry

  Marry, I tell thee, it is not meet that I should be sad, now my father is sick: albeit I could tell thee, as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend, I could be sad, and sad indeed too.

  Poins

  Very hardly upon such a subject.

  Prince Henry

  By this hand thou thinkest me as far in the devil’s book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man. But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick: and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.

  Poins

  The reason?

  Prince Henry

  What wouldst thou think of me, if I should weep?

  Poins

  I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

  Prince Henry

  It would be every man’s thought; and thou art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks: never a man’s thought in the world keeps the road-way better than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought to think so?

  Poins

  Why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed to Falstaff.

  Prince Henry

  And to thee.

  Poins

  By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it with my own ears: the worst that they can say of me is that I am a second brother and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph.

  Enter Bardolph and Page

  Prince Henry

  And the boy that I gave Falstaff: a’ had him from me Christian; and look, if the fat villain have not transformed him ape.

  Bardolph

  God save your grace!

  Prince Henry

  And yours, most noble Bardolph!

  Bardolph

  Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be blushing? wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man-at-arms are you become! Is’t such a matter to get a pottle-pot’s maidenhead?

  Page

  A’ calls me e’en now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window: at last I spied his eyes, and methought he had made two holes in the ale-wife’s new petticoat and so peeped through.

  Prince Henry

  Has not the boy profited?

  Bardolph

  Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!

  Page

  Away, you rascally Althaea’s dream, away!

  Prince Henry

  Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy?

  Page

  Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamed she was delivered of a fire-brand; and therefore I call him her dream.

  Prince Henry

  A crown’s worth of good interpretation: there ’tis, boy.

  Poins

  O, that this good blossom could be kept from cankers! Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.

  Bardolph

  An you do not make him hanged among you, the gallows shall have wrong.

  Prince Henry

  And how doth thy master, Bardolph?

  Bardolph

  Well, my lord. He heard of your grace’s coming to town: there’s a letter for you.

  Poins

  Delivered with good respect. And how doth the martlemas, your master?

  Bardolph

  In bodily health, sir.

  Poins

  Marry, the immortal part needs a physician; but that moves not him: though that be sick, it dies not.

  Prince Henry

  I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my dog; and he holds his place; for look you how be writes.

  Poins

  [Reads] ‘John Falstaff, knight,’— every man must know that, as oft as he has occasion to name himself: even like those that are kin to the king; for they never prick their finger but they say, ‘There’s some of the king’s blood spilt.’ ‘How comes that?’ says he, that takes upon him not to conceive. The answer is as ready as a borrower’s cap, ‘I am the king’s poor cousin, sir.’

  Prince Henry

  Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But to the letter.

  Poins

  [Reads] ‘sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the king, nearest his father, Harry Prince of Wales, greeting.’ Why, this is a certificate.

  Prince Henry

  Peace!

  Poins

  [Reads] ‘I will imitate the honourable Romans in brevity:’ he sure means brevity in breath, short-winded. ‘I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayest; and so, farewell. Thine, by yea and no, which is as much as to say, as thou usest him, Jack Falstaff with my familiars, John with my brothers and sisters, and Sir John with all Europe.’ My lord, I’ll steep this letter in sack and make him eat it.

  Prince Henry

  That’s to make him eat twenty of his words. But do you use me thus, Ned? must I marry your sister?

  Poins

  God send the wench no worse fortune! But I never said so.

  Prince Henry

  Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us. Is your master here in London?

  Bardolph

  Yea, my lord.

  Prince Henry

  Where sups he? doth the old boar feed in the old frank?

  Bardolph

  At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.

  Prince Henry

  What company?

  Page

  Ephesians, my lord, of the old church.

  Prince Henry

  Sup any women with him?

  Page

  None, my lord, but old Mistress Quickly and

  Mistress Doll Tearsheet.

  Prince Henry

  What pagan may that be?

  Page

  A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my master’s.

  Prince Henry

  Even such kin as the parish heifers are to the town bull. Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at supper?

  Poins

  I am your shadow, my lord; I’ll follow you.

  Prince Henry

  Sirrah, you boy, and Bardolph, no word to your master that I am yet come to town: there’s for your silence.

  Bardolph

  I have no tongue, sir.

  Page

  And for mine, sir, I will govern it.

  Prince Henry


  Fare you well; go.

  Exeunt Bardolph and Page

  This Doll Tearsheet should be some road.

  Poins

  I warrant you, as common as the way between Saint

  Alban’s and London.

  Prince Henry

  How might we see Falstaff bestow himself to-night in his true colours, and not ourselves be seen?

  Poins

  Put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and wait upon him at his table as drawers.

  Prince Henry

  From a God to a bull? a heavy decension! it was Jove’s case. From a prince to a prentice? a low transformation! that shall be mine; for in every thing the purpose must weigh with the folly. Follow me, Ned.

  Exeunt

  SCENE III. WARKWORTH. BEFORE THE CASTLE.

  Enter Northumberland, Lady Northumberland, and Lady Percy

  Northumberland

  I pray thee, loving wife, and gentle daughter,

  Give even way unto my rough affairs:

  Put not you on the visage of the times

  And be like them to Percy troublesome.

  Lady

  Northumberland

  I have given over, I will speak no more:

  Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide.

  Northumberland

  Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn;

  And, but my going, nothing can redeem it.

  Lady Percy

  O yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars!

  The time was, father, that you broke your word,

  When you were more endeared to it than now;

  When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry,

  Threw many a northward look to see his father

  Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.

  Who then persuaded you to stay at home?

  There were two honours lost, yours and your son’s.

  For yours, the God of heaven brighten it!

  For his, it stuck upon him as the sun

  In the grey vault of heaven, and by his light

  Did all the chivalry of England move

  To do brave acts: he was indeed the glass

  Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves:

  He had no legs that practised not his gait;

  And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,

  Became the accents of the valiant;

  For those that could speak low and tardily

  Would turn their own perfection to abuse,

  To seem like him: so that in speech, in gait,

  In diet, in affections of delight,

  In military rules, humours of blood,

  He was the mark and glass, copy and book,