The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (moboreader .TXT) 📕

Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.

Fal. No, I’ll be sworn. I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s-head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think upon hellfire and Dives that lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. if thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be ‘By this fire, that’s God’s angel.’ But thou art altogether given over, and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou ran’st up Gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern; but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years. God reward me for it!

Bard. ‘Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!

Fal. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-burn’d.

Enter Hostess.

How now, Dame Partlet the hen? Have you enquir’d yet who pick’d my pocket?

Host. Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John? Do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have search’d, I have enquired, so has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant. The tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.

Fal. Ye lie, hostess. Bardolph was shav’d and lost many a hair, and I’ll be sworn my pocket was pick’d. Go to, you are a woman, go!

Host. Who, I? No; I defy thee! God’s light, I was never call’d so in mine own house before!

Fal. Go to, I know you well enough.

Host. No, Sir John; you do not know me, Sir John. I know you, Sir John. You owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it. I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.

Fal. Dowlas, filthy dowlas! I have given them away to bakers’

wives; they have made bolters of them.

Host. Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell.

You owe money here besides, Sir John, for your diet and by-drinkings, and money lent you, four-and-twenty pound.

Fal. He had his part of it; let him pay.

Host. He? Alas, he is poor; he hath nothing.

Fal. How? Poor? Look upon his face. What call you rich? Let them coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks. I’ll not pay a denier.

What, will you make a younker of me? Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn but I shall have my pocket pick’d? I have lost a seal-ring of my grandfather’s worth forty mark.

Host. O Jesu, I have heard the Prince tell him, I know not how oft, that that ring was copper!

Fal. How? the Prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup. ‘Sblood, an he were here, I would cudgel him like a dog if he would say so.

Enter the Prince [and Poins], marching; and Falstaff meets them, playing upon his truncheon like a fife.

How now, lad? Is the wind in that door, i’ faith? Must we all march?

Bard. Yea, two and two, Newgate fashion.

Host. My lord, I pray you hear me.

Prince. What say’st thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband?

I love him well; he is an honest man.

Host. Good my lord, hear me.

Fal. Prithee let her alone and list to me.

Prince. What say’st thou, Jack?

Fal. The other night I fell asleep here behind the arras and had my pocket pick’d. This house is turn’d bawdy house; they pick pockets.

Prince. What didst thou lose, Jack?

Fal. Wilt thou believe me, Hal? Three or four bonds of forty pound apiece and a seal-ring of my grandfather’s.

Prince. A trifle, some eightpenny matter.

Host. So I told him, my lord, and I said I heard your Grace say so; and, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouth’d man as he is, and said he would cudgel you.

Prince. What! he did not?

Host. There’s neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.

Fal. There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune, nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and for womanhood, Maid Marian may be the deputy’s wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing, go!

Host. Say, what thing? what thing?

Fal. What thing? Why, a thing to thank God on.

Host. I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou shouldst know it!

I am an honest man’s wife, and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so.

Fal. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise.

Host. Say, what beast, thou knave, thou?

Fal. What beast? Why, an otter.

Prince. An otter, Sir John? Why an otter?

Fal. Why, she’s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her.

Host. Thou art an unjust man in saying so. Thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave, thou!

Prince. Thou say’st true, hostess, and he slanders thee most grossly.

Host. So he doth you, my lord, and said this other day you ought him a thousand pound.

Prince. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?

Fal. A thousand pound, Hal? A million! Thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love.

Host. Nay, my lord, he call’d you Jack and said he would cudgel you.

Fal. Did I, Bardolph?

Bard. Indeed, Sir John, you said so.

Fal. Yea. if he said my ring was copper.

Prince. I say, ‘tis copper. Darest thou be as good as thy word now?

Fal. Why, Hal, thou knowest, as thou art but man, I dare; but as thou art Prince, I fear thee as I fear the roaring of the lion’s whelp.

Prince. And why not as the lion?

Fal. The King himself is to be feared as the lion. Dost thou think I’ll fear thee as I fear thy father? Nay, an I do, I pray God my girdle break.

Prince. O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees!

But, sirrah, there’s no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in this bosom of thine. It is all fill’d up with guts and midriff.

Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket? Why, thou whoreson, impudent, emboss’d rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket but tavern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy houses, and one poor pennyworth of sugar candy to make thee long-winded-if thy pocket were enrich’d with any other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet you will stand to it; you will not pocket up wrong. Art thou not ashamed?

Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villany? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty. You confess then, you pick’d my pocket?

Prince. It appears so by the story.

Fal. Hostess, I forgive thee. Go make ready breakfast. Love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests. Thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason. Thou seest I am pacified.

-Still?- Nay, prithee be gone. [Exit Hostess.] Now, Hal, to the news at court. For the robbery, lad-how is that answered?

Prince. O my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee.

The money is paid back again.

Fal. O, I do not like that paying back! ‘Tis a double labour.

Prince. I am good friends with my father, and may do anything.

Fal. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it with unwash’d hands too.

Bard. Do, my lord.

Prince. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.

Fal. I would it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can steal well? O for a fine thief of the age of two-and-twenty or thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels. They offend none but the virtuous. I laud them, I praise them.

Prince. Bardolph!

Bard. My lord?

Prince. Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster, To my brother John; this to my Lord of Westmoreland.

[Exit Bardolph.]

Go, Poins, to horse, to horse; for thou and I Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner time.

[Exit Poins.]

Jack, meet me tomorrow in the Temple Hall At two o’clock in the afternoon.

There shalt thou know thy charge. and there receive Money and order for their furniture.

The land is burning; Percy stands on high; And either they or we must lower lie. [Exit.]

Fal. Rare words! brave world! Hostess, my breakfast, come.

O, I could wish this tavern were my drum!

Exit.

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ACT IV. Scene I.

The rebel camp near Shrewsbury.

Enter Harry Hotspur, Worcester, and Douglas.

Hot. Well said, my noble Scot. If speaking truth In this fine age were not thought flattery, Such attribution should the Douglas have As not a soldier of this season’s stamp Should go so general current through the world.

By God, I cannot flatter, I defy

The tongues of soothers! but a braver place In my heart’s love hath no man than yourself.

Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.

Doug. Thou art the king of honour.

No man so potent breathes upon the ground But I will beard him.

Enter one with letters.

Hot. Do so, and ‘tis well.-

What letters hast thou there?- I can but thank you.

Messenger. These letters come from your father.

Hot. Letters from him? Why comes he not himself?

Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he is grievous sick.

Hot. Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick In such a justling time? Who leads his power?

Under whose government come they along?

Mess. His letters bears his mind, not I, my lord.

Wor. I prithee tell me, doth he keep his bed?

Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth, And at the time of my departure thence He was much fear’d by his physicians.

Wor. I would the state of time had first been whole Ere he by sickness had been visited.

His health was never better worth than now.

Hot. Sick now? droop now? This sickness doth infect The very lifeblood of our enterprise.

‘Tis catching hither, even to our camp.

He writes me here that inward sicknessAnd that his friends by deputation could not So soon be drawn; no did he think it meet To lay so dangerous and dear a trust

On any soul remov’d but on his own.

Yet doth he give us bold advertisement, That with our small conjunction we should on, To see how fortune is