Doll Tearsheet
How, you fat fool! I scorn you.
Poins
My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge and turn all to a merriment, if you take not the heat.
Prince Henry
You whoreson candle-mine, you, how vilely did you speak of me even now before this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman!
Mistress Quickly
God’s blessing of your good heart! and so she is, by my troth.
Falstaff
Didst thou hear me?
Prince Henry
Yea, and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by Gad’s-hill: you knew I was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to try my patience.
Falstaff
No, no, no; not so; I did not think thou wast within hearing.
Prince Henry
I shall drive you then to confess the wilful abuse; and then I know how to handle you.
Falstaff
No abuse, Hal, o’ mine honour, no abuse.
Prince Henry
Not to dispraise me, and call me pantier and bread-chipper and I know not what?
Falstaff
No abuse, Hal.
Poins
No abuse?
Falstaff
No abuse, Ned, i’ the world; honest Ned, none. I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him; in which doing, I have done the part of a careful friend and a true subject, and thy father is to give me thanks for it. No abuse, Hal: none, Ned, none: no, faith, boys, none.
Prince Henry
See now, whether pure fear and entire cowardice doth not make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us? is she of the wicked? is thine hostess here of the wicked? or is thy boy of the wicked? or honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the wicked?
Poins
Answer, thou dead elm, answer.
Falstaff
The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph irrecoverable; and his face is Lucifer’s privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. For the boy, there is a good angel about him; but the devil outbids him too.
Prince Henry
For the women?
Falstaff
For one of them, she is in hell already, and burns poor souls. For the other, I owe her money, and whether she be damned for that, I know not.
Mistress Quickly
No, I warrant you.
Falstaff
No, I think thou art not; I think thou art quit for that. Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which I think thou wilt howl.
Mistress Quickly
All victuallers do so; what’s a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?
Prince Henry
You, gentlewoman,-
Doll Tearsheet
What says your grace?
Falstaff
His grace says that which his flesh rebels against.
Knocking within
Mistress Quickly
Who knocks so loud at door? Look to the door there, Francis.
Enter Peto
Prince Henry
Peto, how now! what news?
Peto
The king your father is at Westminster:
And there are twenty weak and wearied posts
Come from the north: and, as I came along,
I met and overtook a dozen captains,
Bare-headed, sweating, knocking at the taverns,
And asking every one for Sir John Falstaff.
Prince Henry
By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame,
So idly to profane the precious time,
When tempest of commotion, like the south
Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt
And drop upon our bare unarmed heads.
Give me my sword and cloak. Falstaff, good night.
Exeunt Prince Henry, Poins, Peto and Bardolph
Falstaff
Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night, and we must hence and leave it unpicked.
Knocking within
More knocking at the door!
Re-enter Bardolph
How now! what’s the matter?
Bardolph
You must away to court, sir, presently;
A dozen captains stay at door for you.
Falstaff
[To the Page] Pay the musicians, sirrah. Farewell, hostess; farewell, Doll. You see, my good wenches, how men of merit are sought after: the undeserver may sleep, when the man of action is called on. Farewell good wenches: if I be not sent away post, I will see you again ere I go.
Doll Tearsheet
I cannot speak; if my heart be not read to burst,— well, sweet Jack, have a care of thyself.
Falstaff
Farewell, farewell.
Exeunt Falstaff and Bardolph
Mistress Quickly
Well, fare thee well: I have known thee these twenty-nine years, come peascod-time; but an honester and truer-hearted man,— well, fare thee well.
Bardolph
[Within] Mistress Tearsheet!
Mistress Quickly
What’s the matter?
Bardolph
[Within] Good Mistress Tearsheet, come to my master.
Mistress Quickly
O, run, Doll, run; run, good Doll: come.
She comes blubbered
Yea, will you come, Doll?
Exeunt
ACT III
SCENE I. WESTMINSTER. THE PALACE.
Enter King Henry IV in his nightgown, with a Page
King Henry IV
Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick;
But, ere they come, bid them o’er-read these letters,
And well consider of them; make good speed.
Exit Page
How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee
And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common ‘larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
Enter Warwick and Surrey
Warwick
Many good morrows to your majesty!
King Henry IV
Is it good morrow, lords?
Warwick
’Tis one o’clock, and past.
King Henry IV
Why, then, good morrow to you all, my lords.
Have you read o’er the letters that I sent you?
Warwick
We have, my liege.
King Henry IV
Then you perceive the body of our kingdom
How foul it is; what rank diseases grow
A
nd with what danger, near the heart of it.
Warwick
It is but as a body yet distemper’d;
Which to his former strength may be restored
With good advice and little medicine:
My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool’d.
King Henry IV
O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
’Tis not ‘ten years gone
Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,
Did feast together, and in two years after
Were they at wars: it is but eight years since
This Percy was the man nearest my soul,
Who like a brother toil’d in my affairs
And laid his love and life under my foot,
Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard
Gave him defiance. But which of you was by —
You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember —
To Warwick
When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears,
Then cheque’d and rated by Northumberland,
Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy?
‘Northumberland, thou ladder by the which
My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;’
Though then, God knows, I had no such intent,
But that necessity so bow’d the state
That I and greatness were compell’d to kiss:
‘The time shall come,’ thus did he follow it,
‘The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption:’ so went on,
Foretelling this same time’s condition
And the division of our amity.
Warwick
There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time;
And by the necessary form of this
King Richard might create a perfect guess
That great Northumberland, then false to him,
Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness;
Which should not find a ground to root upon,
Unless on you.
King Henry IV
Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them like necessities:
And that same word even now cries out on us:
They say the bishop and Northumberland
Are fifty thousand strong.
Warwick
It cannot be, my lord;
Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,
The numbers of the fear’d. Please it your grace
To go to bed. Upon my soul, my lord,
The powers that you already have sent forth
Shall bring this prize in very easily.
To comfort you the more, I have received
A certain instance that Glendower is dead.
Your majesty hath been this fortnight ill,
And these unseason’d hours perforce must add
Unto your sickness.
King Henry IV
I will take your counsel:
And were these inward wars once out of hand,
We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land.
Exeunt
SCENE II. GLOUCESTERSHIRE. BEFORE SHALLOW’S HOUSE.
Enter Shallow and Silence, meeting; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, Bullcalf, a Servant or two with them
Shallow
Come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by the rood! And how doth my good cousin Silence?
Silence
Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.
Shallow
And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?
Silence
Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow!
Shallow
By yea and nay, sir, I dare say my cousin William is become a good scholar: he is at Oxford still, is he not?
Silence
Indeed, sir, to my cost.
Shallow
A’ must, then, to the inns o’ court shortly. I was once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet.
Silence
You were called ‘lusty Shallow’ then, cousin.
Shallow
By the mass, I was called any thing; and I would have done any thing indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns o’ court again: and I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.
Silence
This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?
Shallow
The same Sir John, the very same. I see him break Skogan’s head at the court-gate, when a’ was a crack not thus high: and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray’s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!
Silence
We shall all follow, cousin.
Shadow
Certain, ’tis certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?
Silence
By my troth, I was not there.
Shallow
Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living yet?
Silence
Dead, sir.
Shallow
Jesu, Jesu, dead! a’ drew a good bow; and dead! a’ shot a fine shoot: John a Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. Dead! a’ would have clapped i’ the clout at twelve score; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man’s heart good to see. How a score of ewes now?
Silence
Thereafter as they be: a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds.
Shallow
And is old Double dead?
Silence
Here come two of Sir John Falstaff’s men, as I think.
Enter Bardolph and one with him
Bardolph
Good morrow, honest gentlemen: I beseech you, which is Justice Shallow?
Shallow
I am Robert Shallow, sir; a poor esquire of this county, and one of the king’s justices of th e peace: What is your good pleasure with me?
Bardolph
My captain, sir, commends him to you; my captain, Sir John Falstaff, a tall gentleman, by heaven, and a most gallant leader.
Shallow
He greets me well, sir. I knew him a good backsword man. How doth the good knight? may I ask how my lady his wife doth?
Bardolph
Sir, pardon; a soldier is better accommodated than with a wife.
Shallow
It is well said, in faith, sir; and it is well said indeed too. Better accommodated! it is good; yea, indeed, is it: good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. Accommodated! it co
mes of ‘accommodo’ very good; a good phrase.
Bardolph
Pardon me, sir; I have heard the word. Phrase call you it? by this good day, I know not the phrase; but I will maintain the word with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good command, by heaven. Accommodated; that is, when a man is, as they say, accommodated; or when a man is, being, whereby a’ may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing.
Shallow
It is very just.
Enter Falstaff
Look, here comes good Sir John. Give me your good hand, give me your worship’s good hand: by my troth, you like well and bear your years very well: welcome, good Sir John.
Falstaff
I am glad to see you well, good Master Robert
Shallow: Master Surecard, as I think?
Shallow
No, Sir John; it is my cousin Silence, in commission with me.
Falstaff
Good Master Silence, it well befits you should be of the peace.
Silence
Your good-worship is welcome.
Falstaff
Fie! this is hot weather, gentlemen. Have you provided me here half a dozen sufficient men?
Shallow
Marry, have we, sir. Will you sit?
Falstaff
Let me see them, I beseech you.
Shallow
Where’s the roll? where’s the roll? where’s the roll? Let me see, let me see, let me see. So, so: yea, marry, sir: Ralph Mouldy! Let them appear as I call; let them do so, let them do so. Let me see; where is Mouldy?
Mouldy
Here, an’t please you.
Shallow
What think you, Sir John? a good-limbed fellow; young, strong, and of good friends.
Falstaff
Is thy name Mouldy?
Mouldy
Yea, an’t please you.
Falstaff
’Tis the more time thou wert used.
Shallow
Ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i’ faith! Things that are mouldy lack use: very singular good! in faith, well said, Sir John, very well said.
Falstaff
Prick him.
Mouldy
I was pricked well enough before, an you could have let me alone: my old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery: you need not to have pricked me; there are other men fitter to go out than I.
Falstaff
Go to: peace, Mouldy; you shall go. Mouldy, it is time you were spent.
Mouldy
Spent!
Shallow
Peace, fellow, peace; stand aside: know you where you are? For the other, Sir John: let me see: Simon Shadow!
Falstaff
Yea, marry, let me have him to sit under: he’s like to be a cold soldier.
Complete Plays, The Page 180
