Outline
Characters
Dreamweaver
[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.]