Act IV, Scene ii:
A public Road near Coventry.

[Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.]

FAL.:

Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of

sack: our soldiers shall march through; we'll to Sutton-Co'fil'

to-night.

BARD.:

Will you give me money, captain?

FAL.:

Lay out, lay out.

BARD.:

This bottle makes an angel.

FAL.:

An if it do, take it for thy labour; an if it make twenty,

take them all; I'll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant

Peto meet me at the town's end.

BARD.:

I will, captain: farewell.

[Exit.]

FAL.:

If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have

misused the King's press damnably. I have got, in exchange of

a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I

press'd me none but good householders, yeomen's sons; inquired

me out contracted bachelors, such as had been ask'd twice on the

banns; such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lief hear the

Devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than

a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck. I press'd me none but such

toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bodies no bigger than

pins'-heads, and they have bought out their services; and now

my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants,

gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the

painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores; and

such as, indeed, were never soldiers, but discarded unjust

serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters,

and ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long

peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced

ancient: and such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have

bought out their services, that you would think that I had a

hundred and fifty tattered Prodigals lately come from

swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on

the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets, and press'd

the dead bodies.

No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry

with them, that's flat: nay, and the villains march wide betwixt

the legs, as if they had gyves on; for, indeed, I had the most of

them out of prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my company;

and the half-shirt is two napkins tack'd together and thrown over the

shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say

the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's, or the red-nose

innkeeper of Daventry.

But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge.

[Enter Prince Henry and Westmoreland.]

PRINCE.:

How now, blown Jack! how now, quilt!

FAL.:

What, Hal! how now, mad wag! what a devil dost thou in

Warwickshire?—My good Lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy:

I thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.

WEST.:

Faith, Sir John, 'tis more than time that I were there, and you too;

but my powers are there already. The King, I can tell you, looks for

us all: we must away all, to-night.

FAL.:

Tut, never fear me: I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

PRINCE.:

I think, to steal cream, indeed; for thy theft hath already made thee

butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?

FAL.:

Mine, Hal, mine.

PRINCE.:

I did never see such pitiful rascals.

FAL.:

Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder;

they'll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men,

mortal men.

WEST.:

Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare,—too

beggarly.

FAL.:

Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they had that; and,

for their bareness, I am sure they never learn'd that of me.

PRINCE.:

No, I'll be sworn; unless you call three fingers on the ribs

bare. But, sirrah, make haste: Percy is already in the field.

[Exit.]

FAL.:

What, is the King encamp'd?

WEST.:

He is, Sir John: I fear we shall stay too long.

[Exit.]

FAL.:

Well,

To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast

Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

[Exit.]