King Henry IV, the First Part

SCENE II. A public Road near Coventry.

Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.

FALSTAFF.
Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack. Our soldiers shall march through; we’ll to Sutton Co’fil’ tonight.

BARDOLPH.
Will you give me money, captain?

FALSTAFF.
Lay out, lay out.

BARDOLPH.
This bottle makes an angel.

FALSTAFF.
An if it do, take it for thy labour. An if it make twenty, take them all, I’ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at town’s end.

BARDOLPH.
I will, captain: farewell.

[Exit.]

FALSTAFF.
If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the King’s press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons, inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns, such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lief hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies—slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace, ten times more dishonourable-ragged than an old fazed ancient; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs as if they had gyves on, for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There’s not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Albans, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that’s all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.

Enter Prince Henry and the Lord of Westmoreland.

PRINCE.
How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?

FALSTAFF.
What, Hal! How now, mad wag? What a devil dost thou in Warwickshire? My good Lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy. I thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.

WESTMORELAND.
Faith, Sir John, ’tis more than time that I were there, and you too, but my powers are there already. The King, I can tell you, looks for us all. We must away all night.

FALSTAFF.
Tut, never fear me. I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

PRINCE.
I think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?

FALSTAFF.
Mine, Hal, mine.

PRINCE.
I did never see such pitiful rascals.

FALSTAFF.
Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder, they’ll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

WESTMORELAND.
Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare, too beggarly.

FALSTAFF.
Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they had that; and for their bareness, I am sure they never learned that of me.

PRINCE.
No, I’ll be sworn, unless you call three fingers on the ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste. Percy is already in the field.

[Exit.]

FALSTAFF.
What, is the King encamped?

WESTMORELAND.
He is, Sir John. I fear we shall stay too long.

[Exit.]

FALSTAFF.
Well,
To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast
Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

[Exit.]