The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/09/01_02

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 13KB | 304 lines

London. A Street.
 Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF alone, followed by his PAGE
 bearing his sword and buckler.

Falstaff    Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?

Page    He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water;
    but, for the party that owed it, he might have more
    diseases than he knew for.

Falstaff    Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of
    this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent
    anything that tends to laughter more than I invent, or is
    invented on me. I am not only witty in myself, but the
    cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee
    like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one.
    If the prince put thee into my service for any other
    reason than to set me off, why, then I have no judgment.
    Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my
    cap than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an
    agate till now; but I will inset you neither in gold nor
    silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to
    your master for a jewel - the juvenal the prince your
    master, whose chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a
    beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one
    off 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 at 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
    Dommelton about the satin for my short cloak and my slops?

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.

Falstaff    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 smoothy-pates do now wear nothing
    but high shoes and bunches of keys at their girdles; and
    if a man is through 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 two-and-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
    lanthorn to light him. Where's Bardolph?

Page    He's gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.

Falstaff    I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in
    Smithfield. And I could get me but a wife in the stews, I
    were manned, horsed, and wived.

                     Enter CHIEF JUSTICE and SERVANT.

Page    Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for
    striking him about Bardolph.

Falstaff    Wait close; I will not see him.

Chief Justice    What's he that goes there?

Servant    Falstaff, and't please your lordship.

Chief Justice    He that was in question for the robbery?

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 lie
    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 gett'st any leave of me, hang me; if
    thou tak'st leave, thou wert better be hanged. 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! 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,
    have 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    And't please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned
    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 fallen into this
    same whoreson apoplexy.

Chief Justice    Well, God mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.

Falstaff    This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, and't
    please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a
    whoreson 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 fallen into the disease, for you hear not
    what I say to you.

Falstaff    Very well, my lord, very well. Rather, and'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 advised 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-healed wound. Your day's
    service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your
    night's exploit on Gad's Hill. 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 burned out.

Falstaff    A wassail 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, 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 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:
    virtue is of so little regard in these costermongers'
    times that true valour is turned bearward; pregnancy is
    made a tapster, and his quick wit wasted in giving
    reck'nings: 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, I 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 checked him
    for it, and the young lion repents - [Aside.] marry, not
    in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.

Chief Justice    Well, God send the prince a better companion!

Falstaff    God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my
    hands of him.

Chief Justice    Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry. 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 God 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 God 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 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. '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.