Enter the Lord Bardolph at one door.

LORD BARDOLPH
Who keeps the gate here, ho?

Enter the Porter.

Where is the Earl?
PORTER
What shall I say you are?
LORD BARDOLPH Tell thou the Earl
That the Lord Bardolph doth attend him here.
PORTER
His Lordship is walked forth into the orchard.
Please it your Honor knock but at the gate
And he himself will answer.

Enter the Earl Northumberland, his head wrapped in a
kerchief and supporting himself with a crutch.

LORD BARDOLPH Here comes the Earl.
Porter exits.
NORTHUMBERLAND
What news, Lord Bardolph? Every minute now
Should be the father of some stratagem.
The times are wild. Contention, like a horse

---

Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose
And bears down all before him.
LORD BARDOLPH Noble earl,
I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Good, an God will!
LORD BARDOLPH As good as heart can wish.
The King is almost wounded to the death,
And, in the fortune of my lord your son,
Prince Harry slain outright; and both the Blunts
Killed by the hand of Douglas; young Prince John
And Westmoreland and Stafford fled the field;
And Harry Monmouth’s brawn, the hulk Sir John,
Is prisoner to your son. O, such a day,
So fought, so followed, and so fairly won,
Came not till now to dignify the times
Since Caesar’s fortunes.
NORTHUMBERLAND How is this derived?
Saw you the field? Came you from Shrewsbury?
LORD BARDOLPH
I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence,
A gentleman well bred and of good name,
That freely rendered me these news for true.

Enter Travers.

NORTHUMBERLAND
Here comes my servant Travers, who I sent
On Tuesday last to listen after news.
LORD BARDOLPH
My lord, I overrode him on the way,
And he is furnished with no certainties
More than he haply may retail from me.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Now, Travers, what good tidings comes with you?
TRAVERS
My lord, Sir John Umfrevile turned me back

---

With joyful tidings and, being better horsed,
Outrode me. After him came spurring hard
A gentleman, almost forspent with speed,
That stopped by me to breathe his bloodied horse.
He asked the way to Chester, and of him
I did demand what news from Shrewsbury.
He told me that rebellion had bad luck
And that young Harry Percy’s spur was cold.
With that he gave his able horse the head
And, bending forward, struck his armèd heels
Against the panting sides of his poor jade
Up to the rowel-head, and starting so
He seemed in running to devour the way,
Staying no longer question.
NORTHUMBERLAND Ha? Again:
Said he young Harry Percy’s spur was cold?
Of Hotspur, Coldspur? That rebellion
Had met ill luck?
LORD BARDOLPH My lord, I’ll tell you what:
If my young lord your son have not the day,
Upon mine honor, for a silken point
I’ll give my barony. Never talk of it.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Why should that gentleman that rode by Travers
Give then such instances of loss?
LORD BARDOLPH Who, he?
He was some hilding fellow that had stol’n
The horse he rode on and, upon my life,
Spoke at a venture.

Enter Morton.

Look, here comes more news.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Yea, this man’s brow, like to a title leaf,
Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.

---

So looks the strand whereon the imperious flood
Hath left a witnessed usurpation.—
Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?
MORTON
I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord,
Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask
To fright our party.
NORTHUMBERLAND How doth my son and brother?
Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone,
Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;
But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,
And I my Percy’s death ere thou report’st it.
This thou wouldst say: “Your son did thus and thus;
Your brother thus; so fought the noble Douglas”—
Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds.
But in the end, to stop my ear indeed,
Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,
Ending with “Brother, son, and all are dead.”
MORTON
Douglas is living, and your brother yet,
But for my lord your son—
NORTHUMBERLAND Why, he is dead.
See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!
He that but fears the thing he would not know
Hath, by instinct, knowledge from others’ eyes
That what he feared is chancèd. Yet speak,
Morton.
Tell thou an earl his divination lies,
And I will take it as a sweet disgrace
And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.
MORTON
You are too great to be by me gainsaid,
Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

---

NORTHUMBERLAND
Yet, for all this, say not that Percy’s dead.
I see a strange confession in thine eye.
Thou shak’st thy head and hold’st it fear or sin
To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so.
The tongue offends not that reports his death;
And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,
Not he which says the dead is not alive.
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office, and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell
Remembered tolling a departing friend.
LORD BARDOLPH
I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.
MORTON , to Northumberland
I am sorry I should force you to believe
That which I would to God I had not seen,
But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,
Rend’ring faint quittance, wearied and outbreathed,
To Harry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down
The never-daunted Percy to the earth,
From whence with life he never more sprung up.
In few, his death, whose spirit lent a fire
Even to the dullest peasant in his camp,
Being bruited once, took fire and heat away
From the best-tempered courage in his troops;
For from his mettle was his party steeled,
Which, once in him abated, all the rest
Turned on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.
And as the thing that’s heavy in itself
Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed,
So did our men, heavy in Hotspur’s loss,
Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear
That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim
Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,

---

Fly from the field. Then was that noble Worcester
So soon ta’en prisoner; and that furious Scot,
The bloody Douglas, whose well-laboring sword
Had three times slain th’ appearance of the King,
Gan vail his stomach and did grace the shame
Of those that turned their backs and in his flight,
Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all
Is that the King hath won and hath sent out
A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,
Under the conduct of young Lancaster
And Westmoreland. This is the news at full.
NORTHUMBERLAND
For this I shall have time enough to mourn.
In poison there is physic, and these news,
Having been well, that would have made me sick,
Being sick, have in some measure made me well.
And as the wretch whose fever-weakened joints,
Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,
Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire
Out of his keeper’s arms, even so my limbs,
Weakened with grief, being now enraged with
grief,
Are thrice themselves. Hence therefore, thou
nice crutch. He throws down his crutch.
A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel
Must glove this hand. And hence, thou sickly
coif. He removes his kerchief.
Thou art a guard too wanton for the head
Which princes, fleshed with conquest, aim to hit.
Now bind my brows with iron, and approach
The ragged’st hour that time and spite dare bring
To frown upon th’ enraged Northumberland.
Let heaven kiss Earth! Now let not Nature’s hand
Keep the wild flood confined. Let order die,
And let this world no longer be a stage

---

To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the firstborn Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead.
LORD BARDOLPH
This strainèd passion doth you wrong, my lord.
MORTON
Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honor.
The lives of all your loving complices
Lean on your health, the which, if you give o’er
To stormy passion, must perforce decay.
You cast th’ event of war, my noble lord,
And summed the accompt of chance before you
said
“Let us make head.” It was your presurmise
That in the dole of blows your son might drop.
You knew he walked o’er perils on an edge,
More likely to fall in than to get o’er.
You were advised his flesh was capable
Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit
Would lift him where most trade of danger
ranged.
Yet did you say “Go forth,” and none of this,
Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall’n,
Or what did this bold enterprise bring forth,
More than that being which was like to be?
LORD BARDOLPH
We all that are engagèd to this loss
Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas
That if we wrought out life, ’twas ten to one;
And yet we ventured, for the gain proposed
Choked the respect of likely peril feared;
And since we are o’erset, venture again.
Come, we will all put forth, body and goods.

---

MORTON
’Tis more than time.—And, my most noble lord,
I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth:
The gentle Archbishop of York is up
With well-appointed powers. He is a man
Who with a double surety binds his followers.
My lord your son had only but the corpse,
But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;
For that same word “rebellion” did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls,
And they did fight with queasiness, constrained,
As men drink potions, that their weapons only
Seemed on our side. But, for their spirits and
souls,
This word “rebellion,” it had froze them up
As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop
Turns insurrection to religion.
Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He’s followed both with body and with mind,
And doth enlarge his rising with the blood
Of fair King Richard, scraped from Pomfret
stones;
Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;
Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,
Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;
And more and less do flock to follow him.
NORTHUMBERLAND
I knew of this before, but, to speak truth,
This present grief had wiped it from my mind.
Go in with me and counsel every man
The aptest way for safety and revenge.
Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed.
Never so few, and never yet more need.
They exit.

Enter Sir John 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 intends 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
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 fledge—I will sooner have a beard grow in the
palm of my hand than he shall get one off 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 Dommelton 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
smoothy-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 he 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 lantern to
light him. Where’s Bardolph?
PAGE He’s gone in 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 Lord Chief Justice and Servant.

PAGE , to Falstaff Sir, here comes the nobleman that
committed the Prince for striking him about
Bardolph.
FALSTAFF Wait close. I will not see him.
They begin to exit.
CHIEF JUSTICE , to Servant 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 , plucking Falstaff’s sleeve 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 gett’st any leave of me,
hang me; if thou tak’st 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 the 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, have yet
some smack of an ague in you, some relish of the
saltness of time in you, 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 fallen
into this same whoreson apoplexy.
CHIEF JUSTICE Well, God mend him. I pray you let me
speak with you.
FALSTAFF This apoplexy, as I take it, is 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 slender.
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 th’ unquiet time for your quiet
o’erposting 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 to 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
costermongers’ times that true valor is turned bearherd;
pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his
quick wit wasted in giving reckonings. All the other
gifts appurtenant 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 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
checked him for it, and the young lion repents.
Aside . 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 anything 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 always
yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a
good thing, to make it too common. If you 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.
Lord Chief Justice and his Servant exit.
FALSTAFF If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A
man can no more separate age and covetousness
than he 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. Giving
papers to the Page. 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. Page exits. 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 color, and my
pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit
will make use of anything. I will turn diseases to
commodity.
He exits.

Enter th’ Archbishop of York, Thomas Mowbray (Earl
Marshal), the Lord Hastings, and Lord Bardolph.

ARCHBISHOP
Thus have you heard our cause and known our
means,
And, my most noble friends, I pray you all
Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes.
And first, Lord Marshal, what say you to it?
MOWBRAY
I well allow the occasion of our arms,
But gladly would be better satisfied
How in our means we should advance ourselves
To look with forehead bold and big enough
Upon the power and puissance of the King.
HASTINGS
Our present musters grow upon the file

---

To five-and-twenty thousand men of choice,
And our supplies live largely in the hope
Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns
With an incensèd fire of injuries.
LORD BARDOLPH
The question, then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus:
Whether our present five-and-twenty thousand
May hold up head without Northumberland.
HASTINGS
With him we may.
LORD BARDOLPH Yea, marry, there’s the point.
But if without him we be thought too feeble,
My judgment is we should not step too far
Till we had his assistance by the hand.
For in a theme so bloody-faced as this,
Conjecture, expectation, and surmise
Of aids incertain should not be admitted.
ARCHBISHOP
’Tis very true, Lord Bardolph, for indeed
It was young Hotspur’s cause at Shrewsbury.
LORD BARDOLPH
It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope,
Eating the air and promise of supply,
Flatt’ring himself in project of a power
Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts,
And so, with great imagination
Proper to madmen, led his powers to death
And, winking, leapt into destruction.
HASTINGS
But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt
To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.
LORD BARDOLPH
Yes , if this present quality of war —
Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot—
Lives so in hope, as in an early spring
We see th’ appearing buds, which to prove fruit

---

Hope gives not so much warrant as despair
That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model,
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection,
Which if we find outweighs ability,
What do we then but draw anew the model
In fewer offices, or at least desist
To build at all? Much more in this great work,
Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down
And set another up, should we survey
The plot of situation and the model,
Consent upon a sure foundation,
Question surveyors, know our own estate,
How able such a work to undergo,
To weigh against his opposite. Or else
We fortify in paper and in figures,
Using the names of men instead of men,
Like one that draws the model of an house
Beyond his power to build it, who, half through,
Gives o’er and leaves his part-created cost
A naked subject to the weeping clouds
And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.
HASTINGS
Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth,
Should be stillborn and that we now possessed
The utmost man of expectation,
I think we are a body strong enough,
Even as we are, to equal with the King.
LORD BARDOLPH
What, is the King but five-and-twenty thousand?
HASTINGS
To us no more, nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph,
For his divisions, as the times do brawl,
Are in three heads: one power against the French,
And one against Glendower; perforce a third

---

Must take up us. So is the unfirm king
In three divided, and his coffers sound
With hollow poverty and emptiness.
ARCHBISHOP
That he should draw his several strengths together
And come against us in full puissance
Need not to be dreaded.
HASTINGS If he should do so,
He leaves his back unarmed, the French and Welsh
Baying him at the heels. Never fear that.
LORD BARDOLPH
Who is it like should lead his forces hither?
HASTINGS
The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland;
Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth;
But who is substituted against the French
I have no certain notice.
ARCHBISHOP Let us on,
And publish the occasion of our arms.
The commonwealth is sick of their own choice.
Their over-greedy love hath surfeited.
An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond many, with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke
Before he was what thou wouldst have him be.
And being now trimmed in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him
That thou provok’st thyself to cast him up.
So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up
And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these
times?
They that, when Richard lived, would have him die
Are now become enamored on his grave.

---

Thou, that threw’st dust upon his goodly head
When through proud London he came sighing on
After th’ admirèd heels of Bolingbroke,
Criest now “O earth, yield us that king again,
And take thou this!” O thoughts of men accursed!
Past and to come seems best; things present,
worst.
MOWBRAY
Shall we go draw our numbers and set on?
HASTINGS
We are time’s subjects, and time bids begone.
They exit.

Enter Hostess Quickly of the tavern with two Officers,
Fang and Snare, who lags behind.

HOSTESS Master Fang, have you entered the action?
FANG It is entered.
HOSTESS Where’s your yeoman? Is ’t a lusty yeoman?
Will he stand to ’t?
FANG , calling Sirrah! Where’s Snare?
HOSTESS O Lord, ay, good Master Snare.
SNARE , catching up to them Here, here.
FANG Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.
HOSTESS Yea, good Master Snare, I have entered him
and all.
SNARE It may chance cost some of us our lives, for he
will stab.
HOSTESS Alas the day, take heed of him. He stabbed me
in mine own house, and that most beastly, in good
faith. He cares not what mischief he does. If his
weapon be out, he will foin like any devil. He will
spare neither man, woman, nor child.
FANG If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.
HOSTESS No, nor I neither. I’ll be at your elbow.
FANG An I but fist him once, an he come but within my
view—
HOSTESS I am undone by his going. I warrant you, he’s

---

an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master
Fang, hold him sure. Good Master Snare, let him
not ’scape. He comes continuantly to Pie Corner,
saving your manhoods, to buy a saddle, and he is
indited to dinner to the Lubber’s Head in Lumbert
Street, to Master Smooth’s the silkman. I pray you,
since my exion is entered, and my case so openly
known to the world, let him be brought in to his
answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor
lone woman to bear, and I have borne, and borne,
and borne, and have been fubbed off, and fubbed
off, and fubbed off from this day to that day, that it is
a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in
such dealing, unless a woman should be made an
ass and a beast to bear every knave’s wrong. Yonder
he comes, and that arrant malmsey-nose knave,
Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, do your offices,
Master Fang and Master Snare, do me, do me,
do me your offices.

Enter Sir John Falstaff and Bardolph, and the Page .

FALSTAFF How now, whose mare’s dead? What’s the
matter?
FANG Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress
Quickly.
FALSTAFF Away, varlets!—Draw, Bardolph. Cut me off
the villain’s head. Throw the quean in the
channel. They draw.
HOSTESS Throw me in the channel? I’ll throw thee in
the channel. Wilt thou, wilt thou, thou bastardly
rogue?—Murder, murder!—Ah, thou honeysuckle
villain, wilt thou kill God’s officers and the King’s?
Ah, thou honeyseed rogue, thou art a honeyseed, a
man-queller, and a woman-queller.
FALSTAFF Keep them off, Bardolph.

---

OFFICERS A rescue, a rescue!
HOSTESS Good people, bring a rescue or two.—Thou
wot, wot thou? Thou wot, wot ta? Do, do, thou
rogue. Do, thou hempseed.
PAGE Away, you scullion, you rampallian, you fustilarian!
I’ll tickle your catastrophe.

Enter Lord Chief Justice and his Men.

CHIEF JUSTICE
What is the matter? Keep the peace here, ho!
HOSTESS Good my lord, be good to me. I beseech you
stand to me.
CHIEF JUSTICE
How now, Sir John? What, are you brawling here?
Doth this become your place, your time, and
business?
You should have been well on your way to York.—
Stand from him, fellow. Wherefore hang’st thou
upon him?
HOSTESS O my most worshipful lord, an ’t please your
Grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is
arrested at my suit.
CHIEF JUSTICE For what sum?
HOSTESS It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all I
have. He hath eaten me out of house and home. He
hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his.
To Falstaff. But I will have some of it out again, or I
will ride thee o’ nights like the mare.
FALSTAFF I think I am as like to ride the mare if I have
any vantage of ground to get up.
CHIEF JUSTICE How comes this, Sir John? Fie , what
man of good temper would endure this tempest of
exclamation? Are you not ashamed to enforce a
poor widow to so rough a course to come by her
own?

---

FALSTAFF What is the gross sum that I owe thee?
HOSTESS Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself
and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a
parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber at
the round table by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday
in Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head
for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor,
thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy
wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife.
Canst thou deny it? Did not Goodwife Keech, the
butcher’s wife, come in then and call me Gossip
Quickly, coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar,
telling us she had a good dish of prawns, whereby
thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told thee
they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not,
when she was gone downstairs, desire me to be no
more so familiarity with such poor people, saying
that ere long they should call me madam? And didst
thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty
shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath. Deny it if
thou canst.
FALSTAFF My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says
up and down the town that her eldest son is like
you. She hath been in good case, and the truth is,
poverty hath distracted her. But, for these foolish
officers, I beseech you I may have redress against
them.
CHIEF JUSTICE Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted
with your manner of wrenching the true cause the
false way. It is not a confident brow, nor the throng
of words that come with such more than impudent
sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level
consideration. You have, as it appears to me, practiced
upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman,
and made her serve your uses both in purse and in
person.

---

HOSTESS Yea, in truth, my lord.
CHIEF JUSTICE Pray thee, peace.—Pay her the debt you
owe her, and unpay the villainy you have done with
her. The one you may do with sterling money, and
the other with current repentance.
FALSTAFF My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without
reply. You call honorable boldness “impudent
sauciness.” If a man will make curtsy and say
nothing, he is virtuous. No, my lord, my humble
duty remembered, I will not be your suitor. I say to
you, I do desire deliverance from these officers,
being upon hasty employment in the King’s affairs.
CHIEF JUSTICE You speak as having power to do wrong;
but answer in th’ effect of your reputation, and
satisfy the poor woman.
FALSTAFF Come hither, hostess.
He speaks aside to the Hostess.

Enter a Messenger, Master Gower.

CHIEF JUSTICE Now, Master Gower, what news?
GOWER
The King, my lord, and Harry Prince of Wales
Are near at hand. The rest the paper tells.
He gives the Chief Justice a paper to read.
FALSTAFF , to the Hostess As I am a gentleman!
HOSTESS Faith, you said so before.
FALSTAFF As I am a gentleman. Come. No more words
of it.
HOSTESS By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be
fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my
dining chambers.
FALSTAFF Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking. And for
thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the
Prodigal or the German hunting in waterwork is
worth a thousand of these bed-hangers and these

---

fly-bitten tapestries . Let it be ten pound, if thou
canst. Come, an ’twere not for thy humors, there’s
not a better wench in England. Go wash thy face,
and draw the action. Come, thou must not be in this
humor with me. Dost not know me? Come, come. I
know thou wast set on to this.
HOSTESS Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty
nobles. I’ faith, I am loath to pawn my plate, so God
save me, la.
FALSTAFF Let it alone. I’ll make other shift. You’ll be a
fool still.
HOSTESS Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my
gown. I hope you’ll come to supper. You’ll pay
me all together?
FALSTAFF Will I live? Aside to Bardolph. Go with her,
with her. Hook on, hook on.
HOSTESS Will you have Doll Tearsheet meet you at
supper?
FALSTAFF No more words. Let’s have her.
Hostess, Fang , Snare, Bardolph, Page,
and others exit.
CHIEF JUSTICE , to Gower I have heard better news.
FALSTAFF , to Chief Justice What’s the news, my good
lord?
CHIEF JUSTICE , to Gower Where lay the King
tonight?
GOWER At Basingstoke , my lord.
FALSTAFF , to Chief Justice I hope, my lord, all’s
well. What is the news, my lord?
CHIEF JUSTICE , to Gower Come all his forces back?
GOWER
No. Fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse
Are marched up to my Lord of Lancaster
Against Northumberland and the Archbishop.

---

FALSTAFF , to Chief Justice
Comes the King back from Wales, my noble lord?
CHIEF JUSTICE , to Gower
You shall have letters of me presently.
Come. Go along with me, good Master Gower.
FALSTAFF My lord!
CHIEF JUSTICE What’s the matter?
FALSTAFF Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to
dinner?
GOWER I must wait upon my good lord here. I thank
you, good Sir John.
CHIEF JUSTICE Sir John, you loiter here too long, being
you are to take soldiers up in counties as you go.
FALSTAFF Will you sup with me, Master Gower?
CHIEF JUSTICE What foolish master taught you these
manners, Sir John?
FALSTAFF Master Gower, if they become me not, he was
a fool that taught them me.—This is the right
fencing grace, my lord: tap for tap, and so part fair.
CHIEF JUSTICE Now the Lord lighten thee. Thou art a
great fool.
They separate and exit.

Enter the Prince and Poins.

PRINCE Before God, I am exceeding weary.
POINS Is ’t come to that? I had thought weariness durst
not have attached one of so high blood.
PRINCE Faith, it does me, though it discolors the complexion
of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it
not show vilely in me to desire small beer?
POINS Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied
as to remember so weak a composition.

---

PRINCE Belike then my appetite was not princely got,
for, by my troth, I do now remember the poor
creature small beer. But indeed these humble considerations
make me out of love with my greatness.
What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name,
or to know thy face tomorrow, or to take note how
many pair of silk stockings thou hast—with these,
and those that were thy peach-colored ones —or to
bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one for superfluity
and another for use. But that the tennis-court
keeper knows better than I, for it is a low ebb of
linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there,
as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest
of the low countries have made a shift to eat up thy
holland; and God knows whether those that bawl
out the ruins of thy linen shall inherit His kingdom;
but the midwives say the children are not in the
fault, whereupon the world increases and kindreds
are mightily strengthened.
POINS How ill it follows, after you have labored so
hard, you should talk so idly! Tell me, how many
good young princes would do so, their fathers being
so sick as yours at this time is?
PRINCE Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?
POINS Yes, faith, and let it be an excellent good thing.
PRINCE It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding
than thine.
POINS Go to. I stand the push of your one thing that
you will tell.
PRINCE Marry, I tell thee it is not meet that I should be
sad, now my father is sick—albeit I could tell to
thee, as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to
call my friend, I could be sad, and sad indeed too.
POINS Very hardly, upon such a subject.

---

PRINCE By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the
devil’s book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and
persistency. Let the end try the man. But I tell thee,
my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick;
and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in
reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.
POINS The reason?
PRINCE What wouldst thou think of me if I should
weep?
POINS I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.
PRINCE It would be every man’s thought, and thou art
a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks. Never
a man’s thought in the world keeps the roadway
better than thine. Every man would think me an
hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful
thought to think so?
POINS Why, because you have been so lewd and so
much engraffed to Falstaff.
PRINCE And to thee.
POINS By this light, I am well spoke on. I can hear it
with mine own ears. The worst that they can say of
me is that I am a second brother, and that I am a
proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I
confess, I cannot help. By the Mass, here comes
Bardolph.

Enter Bardolph and Page .

PRINCE And the boy that I gave Falstaff. He had him
from me Christian, and look if the fat villain have
not transformed him ape.
BARDOLPH God save your Grace.
PRINCE And yours, most noble Bardolph.
POINS , to Bardolph Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful
fool, must you be blushing? Wherefore blush
you now? What a maidenly man-at-arms are you

---

become! Is ’t such a matter to get a pottle-pot’s
maidenhead?
PAGE He calls me e’en now, my lord, through a red
lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from
the window. At last I spied his eyes, and methought
he had made two holes in the ale-wife’s new
petticoat and so peeped through.
PRINCE Has not the boy profited?
BARDOLPH , to Page Away, you whoreson upright rabbit ,
away!
PAGE Away, you rascally Althea’s dream, away!
PRINCE Instruct us, boy. What dream, boy?
PAGE Marry, my lord, Althea dreamt she was delivered
of a firebrand, and therefore I call him her dream.
PRINCE A crown’s worth of good interpretation. There
’tis, boy. He gives the Page money.
POINS O, that this good blossom could be kept from
cankers! Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.
He gives the Page money.
BARDOLPH An you do not make him be hanged among
you, the gallows shall have wrong.
PRINCE And how doth thy master, Bardolph?
BARDOLPH Well, my good lord. He heard of your
Grace’s coming to town. There’s a letter for you.
He gives the Prince a paper.
POINS Delivered with good respect. And how doth the
Martlemas your master?
BARDOLPH In bodily health, sir.
POINS Marry, the immortal part needs a physician, but
that moves not him. Though that be sick, it dies not.
PRINCE I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as
my dog, and he holds his place, for look you how he
writes. He shows the letter to Poins.
POINS reads the superscription John Falstaff, knight.
Every man must know that as oft as he has occasion

---

to name himself, even like those that are kin to the
King, for they never prick their finger but they say
“There’s some of the King’s blood spilt.” “How
comes that?” says he that takes upon him not to
conceive. The answer is as ready as a borrower’s
cap: “I am the King’s poor cousin, sir.”
PRINCE Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it
from Japheth. But to the letter: Reads . Sir John
Falstaff, knight, to the son of the King nearest his
father, Harry Prince of Wales, greeting.
POINS Why, this is a certificate.
PRINCE Peace!
Reads . I will imitate the honorable Romans in
brevity.
POINS He sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.
PRINCE reads I commend me to thee, I commend thee,
and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins, for he
misuses thy favors so much that he swears thou art to
marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou
mayst, and so farewell.
Thine by yea and no, which is as much as
to say, as thou usest him,
Jack Falstaff with my familiars ,
John with my brothers and sisters, and
Sir John with all Europe.
POINS My lord, I’ll steep this letter in sack and make
him eat it.
PRINCE That’s to make him eat twenty of his words.
But do you use me thus, Ned? Must I marry your
sister?
POINS God send the wench no worse fortune! But I
never said so.
PRINCE Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and
the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.
To Bardolph. Is your master here in London?
BARDOLPH Yea, my lord.

---

PRINCE Where sups he? Doth the old boar feed in the
old frank?
BARDOLPH At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.
PRINCE What company?
PAGE Ephesians, my lord, of the old church.
PRINCE Sup any women with him?
PAGE None, my lord, but old Mistress Quickly and
Mistress Doll Tearsheet.
PRINCE What pagan may that be?
PAGE A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of
my master’s.
PRINCE Even such kin as the parish heifers are to the
town bull.—Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at
supper?
POINS I am your shadow, my lord. I’ll follow you.
PRINCE Sirrah—you, boy—and Bardolph, no word to
your master that I am yet come to town. There’s for
your silence. He gives money.
BARDOLPH I have no tongue, sir.
PAGE And for mine, sir, I will govern it.
PRINCE Fare you well. Go. Bardolph and Page exit.
This Doll Tearsheet should be some road.
POINS I warrant you, as common as the way between
Saint Albans and London.
PRINCE How might we see Falstaff bestow himself
tonight in his true colors, and not ourselves be
seen?
POINS Put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and
wait upon him at his table as drawers.
PRINCE From a god to a bull: a heavy descension. It
was Jove’s case. From a prince to a ’prentice: a low
transformation that shall be mine, for in everything
the purpose must weigh with the folly. Follow me,
Ned.
They exit.

Enter Northumberland, his wife, and the wife to
Harry Percy.

NORTHUMBERLAND
I pray thee, loving wife and gentle daughter,
Give even way unto my rough affairs.
Put not you on the visage of the times
And be, like them, to Percy troublesome.
LADY NORTHUMBERLAND
I have given over. I will speak no more.
Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Alas, sweet wife, my honor is at pawn,
And, but my going, nothing can redeem it.
LADY PERCY
O yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars.
The time was, father, that you broke your word
When you were more endeared to it than now,
When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry,
Threw many a northward look to see his father
Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.
Who then persuaded you to stay at home?
There were two honors lost, yours and your son’s.
For yours, the God of heaven brighten it.
For his, it stuck upon him as the sun
In the gray vault of heaven, and by his light
Did all the chivalry of England move
To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs that practiced not his gait;
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;
For those that could speak low and tardily
Would turn their own perfection to abuse

---

To seem like him. So that in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,
In military rules, humors of blood,
He was the mark and glass, copy and book,
That fashioned others. And him—O wondrous him!
O miracle of men!—him did you leave,
Second to none, unseconded by you,
To look upon the hideous god of war
In disadvantage, to abide a field
Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur’s name
Did seem defensible. So you left him.
Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong
To hold your honor more precise and nice
With others than with him. Let them alone.
The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong.
Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,
Today might I, hanging on Hotspur’s neck,
Have talked of Monmouth’s grave.
NORTHUMBERLAND Beshrew your
heart,
Fair daughter, you do draw my spirits from me
With new lamenting ancient oversights.
But I must go and meet with danger there,
Or it will seek me in another place
And find me worse provided.
LADY NORTHUMBERLAND O, fly to Scotland
Till that the nobles and the armèd commons
Have of their puissance made a little taste.
LADY PERCY
If they get ground and vantage of the King,
Then join you with them like a rib of steel
To make strength stronger; but, for all our loves,
First let them try themselves. So did your son;
He was so suffered. So came I a widow,
And never shall have length of life enough

---

To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes
That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven
For recordation to my noble husband.
NORTHUMBERLAND
Come, come, go in with me. ’Tis with my mind
As with the tide swelled up unto his height,
That makes a still-stand, running neither way.
Fain would I go to meet the Archbishop,
But many thousand reasons hold me back.
I will resolve for Scotland. There am I
Till time and vantage crave my company.
They exit.

Enter Francis and another Drawer.

FRANCIS What the devil hast thou brought there—
applejohns? Thou knowest Sir John cannot endure
an applejohn.
SECOND DRAWER Mass, thou sayst true. The Prince
once set a dish of applejohns before him and told
him there were five more Sir Johns and, putting off
his hat, said “I will now take my leave of these six
dry, round, old, withered knights.” It angered him
to the heart. But he hath forgot that.
FRANCIS Why then, cover and set them down, and see if
thou canst find out Sneak’s noise. Mistress Tearsheet
would fain hear some music. Dispatch . The
room where they supped is too hot. They’ll come in
straight.

Enter Will.

WILL Sirrah, here will be the Prince and Master
Poins anon, and they will put on two of our jerkins

---

and aprons, and Sir John must not know of it.
Bardolph hath brought word.
SECOND DRAWER By the Mass, here will be old utis. It
will be an excellent stratagem.
FRANCIS I’ll see if I can find out Sneak.
He exits with the Second Drawer.

Enter Hostess and Doll Tearsheet.

HOSTESS I’ faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in
an excellent good temperality. Your pulsidge beats
as extraordinarily as heart would desire, and your
color, I warrant you, is as red as any rose, in good
truth, la. But, i’ faith, you have drunk too much
canaries, and that’s a marvellous searching wine,
and it perfumes the blood ere one can say “What’s
this?” How do you now?
DOLL Better than I was. Hem.
HOSTESS Why, that’s well said. A good heart’s worth
gold. Lo, here comes Sir John.

Enter Sir John Falstaff .

FALSTAFF , singing
When Arthur first in court—
To Will. Empty the jordan. Will exits.
And was a worthy king—
How now, Mistress Doll?
HOSTESS Sick of a calm, yea, good faith.
FALSTAFF So is all her sect. An they be once in a calm,
they are sick.
DOLL A pox damn you, you muddy rascal. Is that all the
comfort you give me?
FALSTAFF You make fat rascals, Mistress Doll.
DOLL I make them? Gluttony and diseases make them ;
I make them not.

---

FALSTAFF If the cook help to make the gluttony, you
help to make the diseases, Doll. We catch of you,
Doll, we catch of you. Grant that, my poor virtue,
grant that.
DOLL Yea, joy, our chains and our jewels.
FALSTAFF Your brooches, pearls, and ouches—for to
serve bravely is to come halting off, you know; to
come off the breach with his pike bent bravely, and
to surgery bravely, to venture upon the charged
chambers bravely—
DOLL Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!
HOSTESS By my troth, this is the old fashion. You two
never meet but you fall to some discord. You are
both, i’ good truth, as rheumatic as two dry toasts.
You cannot one bear with another’s confirmities.
What the good-year! One must bear, and to Doll
that must be you. You are the weaker vessel, as they
say, the emptier vessel.
DOLL Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full
hogshead? There’s a whole merchant’s venture of
Bordeaux stuff in him. You have not seen a hulk
better stuffed in the hold.—Come, I’ll be friends
with thee, Jack. Thou art going to the wars, and
whether I shall ever see thee again or no, there is
nobody cares.

Enter Drawer.

DRAWER Sir, Ancient Pistol’s below and would speak
with you.
DOLL Hang him, swaggering rascal! Let him not come
hither. It is the foul-mouthed’st rogue in England.
HOSTESS If he swagger, let him not come here. No, by
my faith, I must live among my neighbors. I’ll no
swaggerers. I am in good name and fame with the

---

very best. Shut the door. There comes no swaggerers
here. I have not lived all this while to have
swaggering now. Shut the door, I pray you.
FALSTAFF Dost thou hear, hostess?
HOSTESS Pray you pacify yourself, Sir John. There
comes no swaggerers here.
FALSTAFF Dost thou hear? It is mine ancient.
HOSTESS Tilly-vally, Sir John, ne’er tell me. And your
ancient swaggerer comes not in my doors. I was
before Master Tisick the debuty t’ other day, and, as
he said to me—’twas no longer ago than Wednesday
last, i’ good faith—“Neighbor Quickly,” says
he—Master Dumb, our minister, was by then—
“Neighbor Quickly,” says he, “receive those that
are civil, for,” said he, “you are in an ill name.”
Now he said so, I can tell whereupon. “For,” says
he, “you are an honest woman, and well thought
on. Therefore take heed what guests you receive.
Receive,” says he, “no swaggering companions.”
There comes none here. You would bless you to
hear what he said. No, I’ll no swaggerers.
FALSTAFF He’s no swaggerer, hostess, a tame cheater, i’
faith. You may stroke him as gently as a puppy
greyhound. He’ll not swagger with a Barbary hen if
her feathers turn back in any show of resistance.—
Call him up, drawer. Drawer exits.
HOSTESS “Cheater” call you him? I will bar no honest
man my house, nor no cheater, but I do not love
swaggering. By my troth, I am the worse when one
says “swagger.” Feel, masters, how I shake; look
you, I warrant you.
DOLL So you do, hostess.
HOSTESS Do I? Yea, in very truth, do I, an ’twere an
aspen leaf. I cannot abide swaggerers.

---

Enter Ancient Pistol, Bardolph , and Page .

PISTOL God save you, Sir John.
FALSTAFF Welcome, Ancient Pistol. Here, Pistol, I
charge you with a cup of sack. Do you discharge
upon mine hostess.
PISTOL I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two
bullets.
FALSTAFF She is pistol-proof. Sir, you shall not hardly
offend her.
HOSTESS Come, I’ll drink no proofs nor no bullets. I’ll
drink no more than will do me good, for no man’s
pleasure, I.
PISTOL Then, to you, Mistress Dorothy! I will charge
you.
DOLL Charge me? I scorn you, scurvy companion.
What, you poor, base, rascally, cheating lack-linen
mate! Away, you mouldy rogue, away! I am meat for
your master.
PISTOL I know you, Mistress Dorothy.
DOLL Away, you cutpurse rascal, you filthy bung, away!
By this wine, I’ll thrust my knife in your mouldy
chaps an you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away,
you bottle-ale rascal, you basket-hilt stale juggler,
you. Since when, I pray you, sir? God’s light, with
two points on your shoulder? Much!
PISTOL God let me not live but I will murder your ruff
for this.
FALSTAFF No more, Pistol. I would not have you go off
here. Discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.
HOSTESS No, good Captain Pistol, not here, sweet
captain!
DOLL Captain? Thou abominable damned cheater, art
thou not ashamed to be called captain? An captains

---

were of my mind, they would truncheon you out for
taking their names upon you before you have
earned them. You a captain? You slave, for what?
For tearing a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy house?
He a captain! Hang him, rogue. He lives upon
mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes. A captain?
God’s light, these villains will make the word as
odious as the word “occupy,” which was an excellent
good word before it was ill sorted. Therefore
captains had need look to ’t.
BARDOLPH , to Pistol Pray thee go down, good ancient.
FALSTAFF Hark thee hither, Mistress Doll.
PISTOL , to Bardolph Not I. I tell thee what, Corporal
Bardolph, I could tear her. I’ll be revenged of her.
PAGE Pray thee go down.
PISTOL I’ll see her damned first to Pluto’s damnèd
lake, by this hand, to th’ infernal deep with Erebus
and tortures vile also. Hold hook and line, say I.
Down, down, dogs! Down, Fates ! Have we not
Hiren here? He draws his sword.
HOSTESS Good Captain Peesell, be quiet. ’Tis very late,
i’ faith. I beseek you now, aggravate your choler.
PISTOL These be good humors indeed. Shall pack-horses
and hollow pampered jades of Asia, which
cannot go but thirty mile a day, compare with
Caesars and with cannibals and Troyant Greeks?
Nay, rather damn them with King Cerberus, and let
the welkin roar. Shall we fall foul for toys?
HOSTESS By my troth, captain, these are very bitter
words.
BARDOLPH Begone, good ancient. This will grow to a
brawl anon.
PISTOL Die men like dogs! Give crowns like pins! Have
we not Hiren here?

---

HOSTESS O’ my word, captain, there’s none such here.
What the good-year, do you think I would deny her?
For God’s sake, be quiet.
PISTOL Then feed and be fat, my fair Calipolis. Come,
give ’s some sack. Si fortune me tormente, sperato
me contento. Fear we broadsides? No, let the fiend
give fire. Give me some sack, and, sweetheart, lie
thou there. Laying down his sword. Come we to
full points here? And are etceteras nothings?
FALSTAFF Pistol, I would be quiet.
PISTOL Sweet knight, I kiss thy neaf. What, we have
seen the seven stars.
DOLL For God’s sake, thrust him downstairs. I cannot
endure such a fustian rascal.
PISTOL “Thrust him downstairs”? Know we not Galloway
nags?
FALSTAFF Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat
shilling. Nay, an he do nothing but speak
nothing, he shall be nothing here.
BARDOLPH Come, get you downstairs.
PISTOL , taking up his sword What, shall we have
incision? Shall we imbrue? Then death rock me
asleep, abridge my doleful days. Why then, let
grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds untwind the Sisters
Three. Come, Atropos, I say.
HOSTESS Here’s goodly stuff toward!
FALSTAFF Give me my rapier, boy.
DOLL I pray thee, Jack, I pray thee do not draw.
FALSTAFF , to Pistol Get you downstairs. They fight.
HOSTESS Here’s a goodly tumult. I’ll forswear keeping
house afore I’ll be in these tirrits and frights. So,
murder, I warrant now. Alas, alas, put up your
naked weapons, put up your naked weapons.
Bardolph and Pistol exit.
DOLL I pray thee, Jack, be quiet. The rascal’s gone. Ah,
you whoreson little valiant villain, you.

---

HOSTESS , to Falstaff Are you not hurt i’ th’ groin?
Methought he made a shrewd thrust at your belly.

Enter Bardolph.

FALSTAFF Have you turned him out o’ doors?
BARDOLPH Yea, sir. The rascal’s drunk. You have hurt
him, sir, i’ th’ shoulder.
FALSTAFF A rascal to brave me!
DOLL Ah, you sweet little rogue, you. Alas, poor ape,
how thou sweat’st! Come, let me wipe thy face.
Come on, you whoreson chops. Ah, rogue, i’ faith, I
love thee. Thou art as valorous as Hector of Troy,
worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better
than the Nine Worthies. Ah, villain!
FALSTAFF Ah, rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a
blanket.
DOLL Do, an thou darest for thy heart. An thou dost, I’ll
canvass thee between a pair of sheets.

Enter Musicians and Francis.

PAGE The music is come, sir.
FALSTAFF Let them play.—Play, sirs.—Sit on my knee,
Doll. A rascal bragging slave! The rogue fled from
me like quicksilver.
DOLL I’ faith, and thou followed’st him like a church.
Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig,
when wilt thou leave fighting a-days and foining a-nights
and begin to patch up thine old body for
heaven?

Enter behind them Prince and Poins disguised .

FALSTAFF Peace, good Doll. Do not speak like a death’s-head;
do not bid me remember mine end.
DOLL Sirrah, what humor’s the Prince of?
FALSTAFF A good shallow young fellow, he would have

---

made a good pantler; he would ’a chipped bread
well.
DOLL They say Poins has a good wit.
FALSTAFF He a good wit? Hang him, baboon. His wit’s
as thick as Tewkesbury mustard. There’s no more
conceit in him than is in a mallet.
DOLL Why does the Prince love him so then?
FALSTAFF Because their legs are both of a bigness, and
he 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
joint 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 he 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 , aside to Poins Would not this nave of a wheel
have his ears cut off?
POINS Let’s beat him before his whore.
PRINCE Look whe’er 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 , aside to Poins Saturn and Venus this year in
conjunction! What says th’ almanac to that?
POINS And look whether the fiery trigon, his man, be
not lisping to his master’s old tables, his notebook,
his counsel keeper.
FALSTAFF , to Doll Thou dost give me flattering busses.
DOLL By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant
heart.
FALSTAFF I am old, I am old.

---

DOLL I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young
boy of them all.
FALSTAFF What stuff wilt thou have a kirtle of? I shall
receive money o’ Thursday; thou shalt have a cap
tomorrow. A merry song! Come, it grows late. We’ll
to bed. Thou ’lt forget me when I am gone.
DOLL By my troth, thou ’lt set me a-weeping an thou
sayst so. Prove that ever I dress myself handsome till
thy return. Well, harken a’ th’ end.
FALSTAFF Some sack, Francis.
PRINCE, POINS , coming forward Anon, anon, sir.
FALSTAFF Ha? A bastard son of the King’s?—And art
not thou Poins his brother?
PRINCE 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 Very true, sir, and I come to draw you out by
the ears.
HOSTESS 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 , to Prince Thou whoreson mad compound
of majesty, by this light flesh and corrupt blood,
thou art welcome.
DOLL 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 , to Falstaff You whoreson candle-mine, you,
how vilely did you speak of me even now before
this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman!
HOSTESS God’s blessing of your good heart, and so she
is, by my troth.
FALSTAFF , to Prince Didst thou hear me?

---

PRINCE 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 I shall drive you, then, to confess the wilfull
abuse, and then I know how to handle you.
FALSTAFF No abuse, Hal, o’ mine honor, no abuse.
PRINCE Not to dispraise me and call me pantler and
bread-chipper and I know not what?
FALSTAFF No abuse, Hal.
POINS No abuse?
FALSTAFF No abuse, Ned, i’ th’ world, honest Ned,
none. I dispraised him before the wicked, ( to
Prince ) that the wicked might not fall in love with
thee; 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 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 blinds him too.
PRINCE For the women?
FALSTAFF For one of them, she’s in hell already and
burns poor souls. For th’ other, I owe her money,
and whether she be damned for that I know not.

---

HOSTESS 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.
HOSTESS All vitlars do so. What’s a joint of mutton or
two in a whole Lent?
PRINCE , to Doll You, gentlewoman.
DOLL What says your Grace?
FALSTAFF His grace says that which his flesh rebels
against.
Peto knocks at door.
HOSTESS Who knocks so loud at door? Look to th’ door
there, Francis. Francis exits.

Enter Peto.

PRINCE 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,
Bareheaded, sweating, knocking at the taverns
And asking everyone for Sir John Falstaff.
PRINCE
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 vapor, doth begin to melt
And drop upon our bare unarmèd heads.—
Give me my sword and cloak.—Falstaff, good
night. Prince, Peto , and Poins exit.
FALSTAFF Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the
night, and we must hence and leave it unpicked.

---

( Knocking . Bardolph exits. ) More knocking at the
door? ( Bardolph returns. ) How now, what’s the
matter?
BARDOLPH
You must away to court, sir, presently.
A dozen captains stay at door for you.
FALSTAFF , to 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 I cannot speak. If my heart be not ready to
burst—well, sweet Jack, have a care of thyself.
FALSTAFF Farewell, farewell.
He exits with Bardolph, Page, and Musicians.
HOSTESS Well, fare thee well. I have known thee these
twenty-nine years, come peasecod time, but an
honester and truer-hearted man—well, fare thee
well.
BARDOLPH , within Mistress Tearsheet!
HOSTESS What’s the matter?
BARDOLPH , within Bid Mistress Tearsheet come to my
master.
HOSTESS O, run, Doll, run, run, good Doll. Come .—
She comes blubbered.—Yea! Will you come, Doll?
They exit.

Enter the King in his nightgown with a Page.

KING
Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick;
But, ere they come, bid them o’erread these letters
And well consider of them. Make good speed.
Page exits .
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 hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled 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 shipboy’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 deafing clamor 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, Surrey and Sir John Blunt.

WARWICK
Many good morrows to your Majesty.
KING Is it good morrow, lords?
WARWICK ’Tis one o’clock, and past.
KING
Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords.
Have you read o’er the letter that I sent you?
WARWICK We have, my liege.
KING
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 distempered,
Which to his former strength may be restored
With good advice and little medicine.
My Lord Northumberland will soon be cooled.
KING
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 chance’s mocks
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 toiled 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—
To Warwick. You, cousin Nevil, as I may
remember—
When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears,
Then checked 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 bowed the state
That I and greatness were compelled 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 natures 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, who in their seeds
And weak beginning lie intreasurèd.
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 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.
WARWICK It cannot be, my lord.
Rumor doth double, like the voice and echo,
The numbers of the feared. Please it your Grace
To go to bed. Upon my soul, my lord,
The powers that you already have sent forth
Shall bring this prize in very easily.
To comfort you the more, I have received
A certain instance that Glendower is dead.
Your Majesty hath been this fortnight ill,
And these unseasoned hours perforce must add
Unto your sickness.
KING I will take your counsel.
And were these inward wars once out of hand,
We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land.
They exit.

Enter Justice Shallow and Justice Silence.

SHALLOW Come on, come on, come on. Give me your
hand, sir, give me your hand, sir. An early stirrer, by
the rood. And how doth my good cousin Silence?
SILENCE Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.
SHALLOW And how doth my cousin your bedfellow?
And your fairest daughter and mine, my goddaughter
Ellen?
SILENCE Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow.
SHALLOW By yea and no, sir. I dare say my cousin
William is become a good scholar. He is at Oxford
still, is he not?
SILENCE Indeed, sir, to my cost.
SHALLOW He must then to the Inns o’ Court shortly. I
was once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will
talk of mad Shallow yet.
SILENCE You were called “Lusty Shallow” then,
cousin.
SHALLOW By the Mass, I was called anything, and I
would have done anything indeed too, and roundly
too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire,
and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone,
and Will Squele, a Cotswold man. You had
not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns o’
Court again. And I may say to you, we knew where
the bona robas were and had the best of them all at
commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir
John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of
Norfolk.
SILENCE This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon
about soldiers?
SHALLOW The same Sir John, the very same. I see him
break Scoggin’s head at the court gate, when he
was a crack not thus high; and the very same day did

---

I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer,
behind Grey’s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I
have spent! And to see how many of my old acquaintance
are dead.
SILENCE We shall all follow, cousin.
SHALLOW Certain, ’tis certain, very sure, very sure.
Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all. All
shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford
Fair?
SILENCE By my troth, cousin , I was not there.
SHALLOW Death is certain. Is old Dooble of your town
living yet?
SILENCE Dead, sir.
SHALLOW Jesu, Jesu, dead! He drew a good bow, and
dead? He shot a fine shoot. John o’ Gaunt loved him
well, and betted much money on his head. Dead! He
would have clapped i’ th’ clout at twelve score, and
carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen
and a half, that it would have done a man’s
heart good to see. How a score of ewes now?
SILENCE Thereafter as they be, a score of good ewes
may be worth ten pounds.
SHALLOW And is old Dooble dead?
SILENCE Here come two of Sir John Falstaff’s men, as I
think.

Enter Bardolph and one with him.

SHALLOW Good morrow, honest gentlemen.
BARDOLPH I beseech you, which is Justice Shallow?
SHALLOW I am Robert Shallow, sir, a poor esquire of
this county and one of the King’s justices of the
peace. What is your good pleasure with me?
BARDOLPH My captain, sir, commends him to you, my
captain, Sir John Falstaff, a tall gentleman, by
heaven, and a most gallant leader.

---

SHALLOW He greets me well, sir. I knew him a good
backsword man. How doth the good knight? May I
ask how my lady his wife doth?
BARDOLPH Sir, pardon. A soldier is better accommodated
than with a wife.
SHALLOW It is well said, in faith, sir, and it is well said
indeed too. “Better accommodated.” It is good,
yea, indeed is it. Good phrases are surely, and ever
were, very commendable. “Accommodated.” It
comes of accommodo . Very good, a good phrase.
BARDOLPH Pardon, sir, I have heard the word—
“phrase” call you it? By this day, I know not the
phrase, but I will maintain the word with my sword
to be a soldierlike word, and a word of exceeding
good command, by heaven. “Accommodated,” that
is when a man is, as they say, accommodated, or
when a man is being whereby he may be thought to
be accommodated, which is an excellent thing.

Enter Falstaff.

SHALLOW It is very just. Look, here comes good Sir
John.—Give me your good hand, give me your
Worship’s good hand. By my troth, you like well and
bear your years very well. Welcome, good Sir John.
FALSTAFF I am glad to see you well, good Master
Robert Shallow.—Master Sure-card , as I think?
SHALLOW No, Sir John. It is my cousin Silence, in
commission with me.
FALSTAFF Good Master Silence, it well befits you
should be of the peace.
SILENCE Your good Worship is welcome.
FALSTAFF Fie, this is hot weather, gentlemen. Have you
provided me here half a dozen sufficient men?
SHALLOW Marry, have we, sir. Will you sit?
They sit at a table.

---

FALSTAFF Let me see them, I beseech you.
SHALLOW Where’s the roll? Where’s the roll? Where’s
the roll? Let me see, let me see, let me see. So, so,
so, so, so. So, so. Yea, marry, sir.—Rafe Mouldy!—
Let them appear as I call, let them do so, let them
do so.

Enter Mouldy, followed by Shadow, Wart, Feeble,
and Bullcalf.

Let me see, where is Mouldy?
MOULDY , coming forward Here, an it please you.
SHALLOW What think you, Sir John? A good-limbed
fellow, young, strong, and of good friends.
FALSTAFF Is thy name Mouldy?
MOULDY Yea, an ’t please you.
FALSTAFF ’Tis the more time thou wert used.
SHALLOW Ha, ha, ha, most excellent, i’ faith! Things
that are mouldy lack use. Very singular good, in
faith. Well said, Sir John, very well said.
FALSTAFF Prick him.
Shallow marks the scroll.
MOULDY I was pricked well enough before, an you
could have let me alone. My old dame will be
undone now for one to do her husbandry and her
drudgery. You need not to have pricked me. There
are other men fitter to go out than I.
FALSTAFF Go to. Peace, Mouldy. You shall go. Mouldy,
it is time you were spent.
MOULDY Spent?
SHALLOW Peace, fellow, peace. Stand aside. Know you
where you are?—For th’ other, Sir John. Let me
see.—Simon Shadow!
FALSTAFF Yea, marry, let me have him to sit under.
He’s like to be a cold soldier.
SHALLOW Where’s Shadow?

---

SHADOW , coming forward Here, sir.
FALSTAFF Shadow, whose son art thou?
SHADOW My mother’s son, sir.
FALSTAFF Thy mother’s son! Like enough, and thy
father’s shadow. So the son of the female is the
shadow of the male. It is often so, indeed, but much
of the father’s substance.
SHALLOW Do you like him, Sir John?
FALSTAFF Shadow will serve for summer. Prick him,
for we have a number of shadows to fill up the
muster book.
SHALLOW Thomas Wart!
FALSTAFF Where’s he?
WART , coming forward Here, sir.
FALSTAFF Is thy name Wart?
WART Yea, sir.
FALSTAFF Thou art a very ragged wart.
SHALLOW Shall I prick him down , Sir John?
FALSTAFF It were superfluous, for his apparel is built
upon his back, and the whole frame stands upon
pins. Prick him no more.
SHALLOW Ha, ha, ha. You can do it, sir, you can do it. I
commend you well.—Francis Feeble!
FEEBLE , coming forward Here, sir.
SHALLOW What trade art thou, Feeble?
FEEBLE A woman’s tailor, sir.
SHALLOW Shall I prick him, sir?
FALSTAFF You may, but if he had been a man’s tailor,
he’d ha’ pricked you.—Wilt thou make as many
holes in an enemy’s battle as thou hast done in a
woman’s petticoat?
FEEBLE I will do my good will, sir. You can have no
more.
FALSTAFF Well said, good woman’s tailor, well said,
courageous Feeble. Thou wilt be as valiant as the

---

wrathful dove or most magnanimous mouse.—
Prick the woman’s tailor well, Master Shallow,
deep, Master Shallow.
FEEBLE I would Wart might have gone, sir.
FALSTAFF I would thou wert a man’s tailor, that thou
mightst mend him and make him fit to go. I cannot
put him to a private soldier that is the leader of so
many thousands. Let that suffice, most forcible
Feeble.
FEEBLE It shall suffice, sir.
FALSTAFF I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble.—Who
is the next?
SHALLOW Peter Bullcalf o’ th’ green.
FALSTAFF Yea, marry, let’s see Bullcalf.
BULLCALF , coming forward Here, sir.
FALSTAFF Fore God, a likely fellow. Come, prick me
Bullcalf till he roar again.
BULLCALF O Lord, good my lord captain—
FALSTAFF What, dost thou roar before thou art
pricked?
BULLCALF O Lord, sir, I am a diseased man.
FALSTAFF What disease hast thou?
BULLCALF A whoreson cold, sir, a cough, sir, which I
caught with ringing in the King’s affairs upon his
coronation day, sir.
FALSTAFF Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown.
We will have away thy cold, and I will take such
order that thy friends shall ring for thee.—Is here
all?
SHALLOW Here is two more called than your number.
You must have but four here, sir, and so I pray you
go in with me to dinner.
FALSTAFF Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot
tarry dinner. I am glad to see you, by my troth,
Master Shallow.

---

SHALLOW O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay
all night in the windmill in Saint George’s Field?
FALSTAFF No more of that, good Master Shallow, no
more of that.
SHALLOW Ha, ’twas a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork
alive?
FALSTAFF She lives, Master Shallow.
SHALLOW She never could away with me.
FALSTAFF Never, never. She would always say she could
not abide Master Shallow.
SHALLOW By the Mass, I could anger her to th’ heart.
She was then a bona roba. Doth she hold her own
well?
FALSTAFF Old, old, Master Shallow.
SHALLOW Nay, she must be old. She cannot choose but
be old. Certain, she’s old, and had Robin Nightwork
by old Nightwork before I came to Clement’s Inn.
SILENCE That’s fifty-five year ago.
SHALLOW Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that
that this knight and I have seen!—Ha, Sir John, said
I well?
FALSTAFF We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master
Shallow.
SHALLOW That we have, that we have, that we have. In
faith, Sir John, we have. Our watchword was “Hem,
boys.” Come, let’s to dinner, come, let’s to dinner.
Jesus, the days that we have seen! Come, come.
Shallow , Silence, and Falstaff rise and exit.
BULLCALF Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my
friend, and here’s four Harry ten-shillings in
French crowns for you. He gives Bardolph money.
In very truth, sir, I had as lief be hanged, sir, as go.
And yet, for mine own part, sir, I do not care, but
rather because I am unwilling, and, for mine own
part, have a desire to stay with my friends. Else, sir,
I did not care, for mine own part, so much.

---

BARDOLPH Go to. Stand aside.
MOULDY And, good Master Corporal Captain, for my
old dame’s sake, stand my friend. She has nobody to
do anything about her when I am gone, and she is
old and cannot help herself. You shall have forty,
sir. He gives money.
BARDOLPH Go to. Stand aside.
FEEBLE By my troth, I care not. A man can die but
once. We owe God a death. I’ll ne’er bear a base
mind. An ’t be my destiny, so; an ’t be not, so. No
man’s too good to serve ’s prince, and let it go
which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for
the next.
BARDOLPH Well said. Th’ art a good fellow.
FEEBLE Faith, I’ll bear no base mind.

Enter Falstaff and the Justices.

FALSTAFF Come, sir, which men shall I have?
SHALLOW Four of which you please.
BARDOLPH , aside to Falstaff Sir, a word with you. I
have three pound to free Mouldy and Bullcalf.
FALSTAFF Go to, well.
SHALLOW Come, Sir John, which four will you have?
FALSTAFF Do you choose for me.
SHALLOW Marry, then, Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble, and
Shadow.
FALSTAFF Mouldy and Bullcalf! For you, Mouldy, stay
at home till you are past service.—And for your
part, Bullcalf, grow till you come unto it. I will
none of you. Mouldy and Bullcalf exit.
SHALLOW Sir John, Sir John, do not yourself wrong.
They are your likeliest men, and I would have you
served with the best.
FALSTAFF Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to
choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thews, the

---

stature, bulk and big assemblance of a man? Give
me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here’s Wart. You see
what a ragged appearance it is. He shall charge you
and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer’s
hammer, come off and on swifter than he that
gibbets on the brewer’s bucket. And this same half-faced
fellow, Shadow, give me this man. He presents
no mark to the enemy. The foeman may with
as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. And for
a retreat, how swiftly will this Feeble, the woman’s
tailor, run off! O, give me the spare men, and spare
me the great ones.—Put me a caliver into Wart’s
hand, Bardolph.
BARDOLPH , giving Wart a musket Hold, Wart. Traverse.
Thas, thas, thas.
FALSTAFF , to Wart Come, manage me your caliver: so,
very well, go to, very good, exceeding good. O, give
me always a little, lean, old, chopped, bald shot.
Well said, i’ faith, Wart. Th’ art a good scab. Hold,
there’s a tester for thee. He gives Wart money.
SHALLOW He is not his craft’s master. He doth not do it
right. I remember at Mile End Green, when I lay at
Clement’s Inn—I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur’s
show—there was a little quiver fellow, and he
would manage you his piece thus. Shallow performs
with the musket. And he would about and
about, and come you in, and come you in. “Rah,
tah, tah,” would he say. “Bounce,” would he say,
and away again would he go, and again would he
come. I shall ne’er see such a fellow.
FALSTAFF These fellows will do well, Master Shallow.
—God keep you, Master Silence. I will not use
many words with you. Fare you well, gentlemen
both. I thank you. I must a dozen mile tonight.—
Bardolph, give the soldiers coats.

---

SHALLOW Sir John, the Lord bless you. God prosper
your affairs. God send us peace. At your return, visit
our house. Let our old acquaintance be renewed.
Peradventure I will with you to the court.
FALSTAFF Fore God, would you would, Master
Shallow.
SHALLOW Go to. I have spoke at a word. God keep you.
FALSTAFF Fare you well, gentle gentlemen.
Shallow and Silence exit.
On, Bardolph. Lead the men away.
All but Falstaff exit.
As I return, I will fetch off these justices. I do see
the bottom of Justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how
subject we old men are to this vice of lying. This
same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to
me of the wildness of his youth and the feats he hath
done about Turnbull Street, and every third word a
lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk’s tribute. I
do remember him at Clement’s Inn, like a man
made after supper of a cheese paring. When he was
naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish
with a head fantastically carved upon it with a
knife. He was so forlorn that his dimensions to
any thick sight were invincible. He was the very
genius of famine, yet lecherous as a monkey,
and the whores called him “mandrake.” He came
ever in the rearward of the fashion, and sung
those tunes to the overscutched huswives that he
heard the carmen whistle, and swore they were his
fancies or his good-nights. And now is this Vice’s
dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly
of John o’ Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother
to him, and I’ll be sworn he ne’er saw him but
once in the tilt-yard, and then he burst his head
for crowding among the Marshal’s men. I saw it
and told John o’ Gaunt he beat his own name, for

---

you might have thrust him and all his apparel into
an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a
mansion for him, a court. And now has he land and
beefs. Well, I’ll be acquainted with him if I return,
and ’t shall go hard but I’ll make him a philosopher’s
two stones to me. If the young dace be a
bait for the old pike, I see no reason in the law of
nature but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and
there an end.
He exits.