Fal. An't please your lordship, I hear, his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales. Ch. Just. I talk not of his majesty.-You would not come when I sent for you. Fal. And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy. Ch. Just. Well, Heaven mend him! I pray, 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 its effects in Galen; it is a kind of deafness. 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. 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. Ch. Just. Well, the truth is, sir John, you live in great infamy. 1 In the quarto edition this speech stands thus: "Old. Very well, my lord, very well." This is a strong corroboration of the tradition that Falstaff was first called Oldcastle. Fal. He that buckles him in my belt, cannot live in less. Ch. Just. Your means are very slender, and your waste is great. Fal. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer. I am the Ch. Just. You have misled the youthful prince. Fal. The young prince hath misled me. fellow with the great belly, and he my dog. Ch. Just. 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 the unquiet time for your quiet o'erposting that action. Fal. My lord? Ch. Just. But since all is well, keep it so; wake not a sleeping wolf. Fal. To wake a wolf, is as bad as to smell a fox. Ch. Just. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out. Fal. A wassel candle,' my lord; all tallow; if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth. Ch. Just. There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity. Fal. His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy. Ch. Just. You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel. 2 Fal. 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.3 Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valor is turned bear-herd. Pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings; all the other gifts apper 1 A wassel candle is a large candle lighted up at a feast. 2 "As light as a clipped angel" is a comparison frequent in the old comedies. 3 I cannot tell, Johnson explains, "I cannot be taken in a reckoning, I cannot pass current." Mr. Gifford objects to this explanation, and says that it merely means "I cannot tell what to think of it." 4 Pregnancy is readiness. tinent 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 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. Ch. Just. 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?1 and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, sir John! Fal. 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 hollaing, 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 o' 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; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth; but in new silk and old sack. Ch. Just. Well, Heaven send the prince a better companion! Fal. Heaven send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him." Ch. Just. Well, the king hath severed you and prince Harry. I hear you are a going with lord John of Lancaster, against the archbishop, and the earl of Northumberland. Fal. 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 1 Single is simple, silly. the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily; if it be a hot day, an I brandish any thing but my 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 rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion. Ch. Just. Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition! Fal. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound, to furnish me forth? Ch. Just. 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 Attendant. Fal. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle.3—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? 4 Fal. What money is in my purse? Page. Seven groats and two-pence. Fal. I can get no remedy against this consumption 1 The rest of this speech, which is not in the folio, is restored from the quarto copy. 2 A quibble is here intended between crosses, contraryings, and the sort of money so called. 3 This alludes to a common but cruel diversion of boys, called fillipping the toad. They lay a board, two or three feet long, at right angles, over a transverse piece, two or three inches thick; then placing the toad at one end of the board, the other end is struck by a bat or large stick, which throws the poor toad forty or fifty feet perpendicular from the earth; and the fall generally kills it. A three-man beetle is a heavy beetle, with three handles, used in driving piles. 4 To prevent is to anticipate. 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 perceived the first white hair on 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. It is 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 any thing; I will turn diseases to commodity. [Exit. SCENE III. York. A Room in the Archbishop's Palace. Enter the Archbishop of York; the LORDS HASTINGS, MOWBRAY, and BARDOLPH. Arch. Thus have you heard our cause, and known our means; And, my most noble friends, I pray you all, Mowb. I well allow the occasion of our arms; How, in our means, we should advance ourselves Bard. The question then, lord Hastings, standeth thus: Whether our present five-and-twenty thousand May hold up head without Northumberland. |