The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Part 145

CHIEF JUSTICE. What's he that goes there?

SERVANT. Falstaff, an't please your lordship.

CHIEF JUSTICE. He that was in question for the robb'ry?

SERVANT. He, my lord; but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury, and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What, to York? Call him back again.

SERVANT. Sir John Falstaff!

FALSTAFF. Boy, tell him I am deaf.

PAGE. You must speak louder; my master is deaf.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good.

Go, pluck him by the elbow; I must speak with him.

SERVANT. Sir John!

FALSTAFF. What! a young knave, and begging! Is there not wars? Is there not employment? Doth not the King lack subjects? Do not the rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it.

SERVANT. You mistake me, sir.

FALSTAFF. Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so.

SERVANT. I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you you 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 get'st any leave of me, hang me; if thou tak'st leave, thou wert better be hang'd. 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! G.o.d give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad. I heard say your lordship was sick; I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your health.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

FALSTAFF. An't please your lordship, I hear his Majesty is return'd with some discomfort from Wales.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I talk not of his Majesty. You would not come when I sent for you.

FALSTAFF. And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fall'n into this same wh.o.r.eson apoplexy.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well G.o.d 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 wh.o.r.eson 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 fall'n 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 advis'd by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

FALSTAFF. He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.

FALSTAFF. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater and my waist slenderer.

CHIEF JUSTICE. You have misled the youthful Prince.

FALSTAFF. The young Prince hath misled me. I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, I am loath to gall a new-heal'd wound. Your day's service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on Gadshill. 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 smell a fox.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

FALSTAFF. A wa.s.sail 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, 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 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 valour is turn'd berod; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings; all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls; and we that are in the vaward of our youth, 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 hallooing 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 check'd him for it; and the young lion repents- marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, G.o.d send the Prince a better companion!

FALSTAFF. G.o.d send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the King hath sever'd you. 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 alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to G.o.d 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 G.o.d bless your expedition!

FALSTAFF. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?

CHIEF JUSTICE. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well. Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

Exeunt CHIEF JUSTICE and SERVANT FALSTAFF. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no more separate age and covetousness than 'a can part young limbs and lechery; but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!

PAGE. Sir?

FALSTAFF. What money is in my purse?

PAGE. Seven groats and two pence.

FALSTAFF. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the Prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceiv'd the first white hair of my chin. About it; you know where to find me. [Exit PAGE] A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. 'Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity.

Exit

SCENE III.

York. The ARCHBISHOP'S palace

Enter the ARCHBISHOP, THOMAS MOWBRAY the EARL MARSHAL, LORD HASTINGS, and LORD BARDOLPH

ARCHBISHOP. Thus have you heard our cause and known our means; And, my most n.o.ble 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 amis; 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 incensed 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 a.s.sistance by the hand; For, in a theme so b.l.o.o.d.y-fac'd 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 case at Shrewsbury.

LORD BARDOLPH. It was, my lord; who lin'd 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 we must 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 a 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 still-born, and that we now possess'd The utmost man of expectation, I think we are so 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 be dreaded.

HASTINGS. If he should do so, He leaves his back unarm'd, the French and Welsh Baying at his heels. Never fear that.

LORD BARDOLPH. Who is it like should lead his forces. .h.i.ther?

HASTINGS. The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland; Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth; But who is subst.i.tuted 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 trimm'd 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 liv'd, would have him die Are now become enamour'd on his grave.

Thou that threw'st dust upon his goodly head, When through proud London he came sighing on After th' admired heels of Bolingbroke, Criest now 'O earth, yield us that king again, And take thou this!' O thoughts of men accurs'd!

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 be gone.