with an agate till now; but I will set you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send yo back again to your master, for a jewel; the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say his face is a face-royal: God may finish it when he will, 'tis not a hair amiss yet he may keep it still as a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it; and yet he'll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he's almost out of mine, I can assure him. What said Master Dombledon about the satin for my short cloak and my slops?

33

Page. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph; he would not take his bond and yours: he liked not the security.

Fal. Let him be damned like the glutton! pray God his tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel a rascally yea-forsooth knave! to bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security. The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is thorough with them in honest taking up, then they must stand upon security. I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security. I looked a' should have sent me twoand-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 into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.

Fal. 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. 60

Enter the Lord Chief Justice and Servant. Page. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for striking him about Bardolph.

Fal. Wait close; I will not see him. Ch. Just. What's he that goes there? Serv. Falstaff, an 't please your lordship. Ch. Just. He that was in question for the robbery?

Serv. 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.

72

Ch. Just. What! to York? Call him back again. Serv. Sir John Falstaff!

Serv. Sir, my lord would speak with you. Ch. Just. Sir John Fal-taff, a word with you. Fal. My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad; I heard say your lordship was sick: I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverent care of your health.

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Ch. Just. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

Fal. An't please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.

You

Ch. Just. I talk not of his majesty. would not come when I sent for you.

Fal. And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

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Ch. Just. Well, God mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.

Fal. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an 't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

Ch. Just. What tell you me of it? be it as it is. Fal. It hath its 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.

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Ch. Just. I think you are fallen into the disease, for you hear not what I say to you.

Fal. 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.

Ch. Just. To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.

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Fal. 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.

Ch. Just. I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

Fal. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.

151

Ch. Just. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

Fal. He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.

And our supplies live largely in the hope
Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns
With an incensed fire of injuries.

L. Bard. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus:

Whether our present five-and-twenty thousand
May hold up head without Northumberland.
Hast. With him, we may.
L. Bard.
Ay, marry, there's the point:
But if without him we be thought too feeble,
My judgment is, we should not step too far 20
Till we had his assistance by the hand;
For in a theme so bloody-fac'd as this,
Conjecture, expectation, and surmise
Of aids incertain should not be admitted.

Hast. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.

L. Bard. 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 the appearing buds; which to prove fruit, Hope gives not so much warrant as despair 40 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 last 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.

Hast. Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair

50

60

birth,

Should be still-born, and that we now possess'd
The utmost man of expectation,

I think we are a body strong enough,
Even as we are, to equal with the king.

L. Bard. What is the king but five-andtwenty thousand?

liast. If he should do so, He leaves his back unarm'd, the French and Wel-h Baying him at the heels: never fear that.

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L. Bard. Who is it like should lead his forces hither?

Hast. The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland;

Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth:
But who is substituted 'gainst the French
I have no certain notice.
Arch.

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 Polingbroke
Before he was what thou would'st 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 would'st eat thy dead vomit up.

And howl'st to find it. What trust is in these times?

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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 the admired heels of Bolingbroke,

Cry'st now, 'O earth! yield us that king again, And take thou this.' Othoughts of men accurst! Past and to come seems best; things present

worst.

90

Fung. It is entered.

Quick. Where's your yeoman? Is't a lusty yeoman? will a' stand to 't?

Fang. Sirrah, where 's Snare?

Fang. Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff. Quick. Yea, good Master Snare; I have entered

11

Suare. It may chance cost some of us our lives, for he will stab.

Quick. 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 doth 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.

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Quick. No, nor I neither: I'll be at your elbow. Fang. An I but fist him once; an a' come but within my vice,

Quick. I am undone with 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. A' comes continuantly to Pie-corner-saving your manhoods-to buy a saddle; and he's indited to dinner to the Lubber's head in Lumbert street, to Master Smooth's the silkman: I pray ye, 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, Page, and BARDOLPH.

Fal. How now! whose mare's dead? what's

the matter?

Fang. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly. 50

Fal. Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph: cut me off the villain's head; throw the quean in the channel.

is for all, all I have. He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his but I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee o' nights like the mare.

Fal. I think I am as like to ride the mare if I have any vantage of ground to get up.

Ch. Just. 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?

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Fal. What is the gross sum that I owe thee! Quick. 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 seacoal 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 down stairs, 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.

Fal. 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.

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Ch. Just. Sir John, Sir John, I am well ac quainted 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, practised upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses both in purse and person. Quick. Yea, in troth, my lord.

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Ch. Just. Prithee, peace. Pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villany you have done with her: the one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.

Fal. My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You call honourable boldness impudent sauciness: if a man will make court's 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 employ ment in the king's affairs.

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Ch. Just. You speak as having power to do wrong but answer in the effect of your reputa tion, and satisfy the poor woman. Fal. Come hither, hostess.

Enter GOWER.

Ch. Just. Now, Master Gower! what news!