READ STUDY GUIDE: Act I, scenes ii-iii |
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Act I, Scene ii
| [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 moe 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 any thing |
| 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 judgement. 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 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? |
| 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. |
| [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. |
| CHIEF JUSTICE.: |
| What's he that goes there? |
| SERVANT.: |
| Falstaff, an 't please your lordship. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| CHIEF JUSTICE.: |
| I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything 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. |
| 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 your 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! |
| SERVANT.: |
| Sir, my lord would speak with you. |
| 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 most humbly beseech your lordship |
| to have a reverend care of your health. |
| 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. |
| 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 fall'n into this same |
| whoreson apoplexy. |
| 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. |
| CHIEF JUSTICE.: |
| What tell you me of it? be it as it is. |
| FALSTAFF.: |
| It hath it 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, |
| the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself. |
| CHIEF JUSTICE.: |
| I sent for you, when there were matters against you |
| 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. |
| CHIEF JUSTICE.: |
| Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy. |
| FALSTAFF.: |
| He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 that action. |
| FALSTAFF.: |
| My 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 smell a fox. |
| 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. |
| CHIEF JUSTICE.: |
| There is not a white hair in your face but should have his |
| effect of gravity. |
| FALSTAFF.: |
| His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy. |
| 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. |
| 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! |
| 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 judgement |
| 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 checked |
| him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and |
| sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack. |
| CHIEF JUSTICE.: |
| Well, God send the prince a better companion! |
| FALSTAFF.: |
| God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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 of 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.] |
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