Complete Plays, The (225 page)

Doll Tearsheet

I’ faith, and thou followedst him like a church. Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave fighting o’ days and foining o’ nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven?

Enter, behind, Prince Henry and Poins, disguised

Falstaff

Peace, good Doll! do not speak like a death’s-head; do not bid me remember mine end.

Doll Tearsheet

Sirrah, what humour’s the prince of?

Falstaff

A good shallow young fellow: a’ would have made a good pantler, a’ would ha’ chipp’d bread well.

Doll Tearsheet

They say Poins has a good wit.

Falstaff

He a good wit? hang him, baboon! his wit’s as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there’s no more conceit in him than is in a mallet.

Doll Tearsheet

Why does the prince love him so, then?

Falstaff

Because their legs are both of a bigness, and a’ plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, and drinks off candles’ ends for flap-dragons, and rides the wild-mare with the boys, and jumps upon joined-stools, and swears with a good grace, and wears his boots very smooth, like unto the sign of the leg, and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories; and such other gambol faculties a’ has, that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the prince admits him: for the prince himself is such another; the weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois.

Prince Henry

Would not this nave of a wheel have his ears cut off?

Poins

Let’s beat him before his whore.

Prince Henry

Look, whether the withered elder hath not his poll clawed like a parrot.

Poins

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Falstaff

Kiss me, Doll.

Prince Henry

Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! what says the almanac to that?

Poins

And look, whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping to his master’s old tables, his note-book, his counsel-keeper.

Falstaff

Thou dost give me flattering busses.

Doll Tearsheet

By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart.

Falstaff

I am old, I am old.

Doll Tearsheet

I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young boy of them all.

Falstaff

What stuff wilt have a kirtle of? I shall receive money o’ Thursday: shalt have a cap to-morrow. A merry song, come: it grows late; we’ll to bed. Thou’lt forget me when I am gone.

Doll Tearsheet

By my troth, thou’lt set me a-weeping, an thou sayest so: prove that ever I dress myself handsome till thy return: well, harken at the end.

Falstaff

Some sack, Francis.

Prince Henry

Poins

Anon, anon, sir.

Coming forward

Falstaff

Ha! a bastard son of the king’s? And art not thou
Poins his brother?

Prince Henry

Why, thou globe of sinful continents! what a life dost thou lead!

Falstaff

A better than thou: I am a gentleman; thou art a drawer.

Prince Henry

Very true, sir; and I come to draw you out by the ears.

Mistress Quickly

O, the Lord preserve thy good grace! by my troth, welcome to London. Now, the Lord bless that sweet face of thine! O, Jesu, are you come from Wales?

Falstaff

Thou whoreson mad compound of majesty, by this light flesh and corrupt blood, thou art welcome.

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

A
CT
III

S
CENE
I. W
ESTMINSTER
. T
HE
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
And 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.