ACT I SCENE II

King Henry IV, Part II

ACT I SCENE II	London. A street.
[ Enter 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 more diseases than he knew for.
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 tends 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. 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 wait at my heels. I was never
	manned with an agate till now: but I will inset you	10
	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 fledged. I will sooner have a beard grow in
	the palm of my hand than he shall get one on 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 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 Dombledon about
	the satin for my short cloak and my slops?	23
Page	He said, sir, you should procure him better
	assurance than Bardolph: he would not take his
	band and yours; he liked not the security.
FALSTAFF	Let him be damned, like the glutton! pray God his
	tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel! 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
	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 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.
FALSTAFF	I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in
	Smithfield: an I could get me but a wife in the
	stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.	41
[Enter the Lord Chief-Justice and Servant]
Page	Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the
	Prince for striking him about Bardolph.
FALSTAFF	Wait, close; I will not see him.
Lord Chief-Justice	What’s he that goes there?
Servant	Falstaff, an’t please your lordship.
Lord Chief-Justice	He that was in question for the robbery?
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.	50
Lord Chief-Justice	What, to York? Call him back again.
Servant	Sir John Falstaff!
FALSTAFF	Boy, tell him I am deaf.
Page	You must speak louder; my master is deaf.
Lord Chief-Justice	I am sure he is, to the hearing of any thing good.
	Go, pluck him by the elbow; I must speak with him.
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 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.	63
Servant	You mistake me, sir.
FALSTAFF	Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? 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 our
	soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you,
	you lie in your throat, if you say I am any other
	than an honest man.
FALSTAFF	I give thee leave to tell me so! I lay aside that
	which grows to me! if thou gettest any leave of me,
	hang me; if thou takest leave, thou wert better be
	hanged. You hunt counter: hence! avaunt!	74
Servant	Sir, my lord would speak with you.
Lord 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
	goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not
	clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in
	you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I must
	humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverent care
	of your health.	83
Lord Chief-Justice	Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to
	Shrewsbury.
FALSTAFF	An’t please your lordship, I hear his majesty is
	returned with some discomfort from Wales.
Lord Chief-Justice	I talk not of his majesty: you would not come when
	I sent for you.
FALSTAFF	And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into
	this same whoreson apoplexy.	91
Lord Chief-Justice	Well, God mend him! I pray you, let me speak with
	you.
FALSTAFF	This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy,
	an’t please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the
	blood, a whoreson tingling.
Lord Chief-Justice	What tell you me of it? be it as it is.
FALSTAFF	It hath its original from much grief, from study and
	perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of
	his effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness.	100
Lord 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, an’t please
	you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady
	of not marking, that I am troubled withal.
Lord 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.
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
	should I be your patient to follow your
	prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a
	scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.
Lord Chief-Justice	I sent for you, when there were matters against you	114
	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.
Lord Chief-Justice	Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.
FALSTAFF	He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.
Lord Chief-Justice	Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
FALSTAFF	I would it were otherwise; I would my means were
	greater, and my waist slenderer.
Lord Chief-Justice	You have misled the youthful prince.
FALSTAFF	The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow
	with the great belly, and he my dog.
Lord 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 the unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting	131
	that action.
FALSTAFF	My lord?
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 to smell a fox.
Lord 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.
Lord Chief-Justice	There is not a white hair on your face but should
	have his effect of gravity.
FALSTAFF	His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.
Lord 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 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
	costermonger times that true valour is turned
	bear-herd: pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath
	his quick 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 your galls: and we
	that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess,
	are wags too.	156
Lord 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 hand? a
	yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an
	increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your
	wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and
	every part about you blasted with antiquity? and
	will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!	164
FALSTAFF	My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the
	afternoon, with a white head and something a round
	belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing
	and singing of anthems. To approve my youth
	further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in
	judgment and understanding; and he that will caper
	with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the
	money, and have at him! For the box of the ear that
	the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince,
	and you took it like a sensible lord. I have
	chequed him for it, and the young lion repents;
	marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk
	and old sack.
Lord Chief-Justice	Well, God send the prince a better companion!	176
FALSTAFF	God send the companion a better prince! I cannot
	rid my hands of him.
Lord Chief-Justice	Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry: I
	hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster
	against the Archbishop and the Earl of
	Northumberland.
FALSTAFF	Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look
	you pray, all you that kiss my lady Peace at home,
	that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the
	Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean
	not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day,
	and I brandish any thing but a bottle, I would I
	might never spit white again. There is not a
	dangerous action can peep out his head but I am
	thrust upon it: well, I cannot last ever: but it
	was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if
	they have a good thing, to make it too common. If
	ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give
	me rest. I would to God my name were not so
	terrible to the enemy as it is: I were better to be
	eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to
	nothing with perpetual motion.
Lord Chief-Justice	Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your
	expedition!
FALSTAFF	Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to
	furnish me forth?	200
Lord Chief-Justice	Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to
	bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my
	cousin Westmoreland.
[Exeunt Chief-Justice and Servant]
FALSTAFF	If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man
	can no more separate age and covetousness than a’
	can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout
	galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and
	so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!
Page	Sir?
FALSTAFF	What money is in my purse?
Page	Seven groats and two pence.	207
FALSTAFF	I can get no remedy against this consumption of the
	purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out,
	but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter
	to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the prince; this
	to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old
	Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry
	since I perceived the first white hair on my chin.
	About it: you know where to find me.
[Exit Page]
	A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for
	the one or the other plays the rogue with my great
	toe. ‘Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars
	for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more
	reasonable. A good wit will make use of any thing:
	I will turn diseases to commodity.
[Exit]

Continue to 2 Henry IV, Act 1, Scene 3