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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; and 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
house-holders, yeoman’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 lieve 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 serving-men, 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 faced 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 but a shirt and a half in all my
company; and the half shirt is two napkins tacked
together and thrown over the shoulders like an
herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say
the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban’s, or
the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that’s all
one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.
[Enter the PRINCE and WESTMORELAND]
PRINCE HENRY 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 HENRY 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 HENRY 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 HENRY No I’ll be sworn; unless you call three
fingers on the ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste:
Percy is already in the field.
FALSTAFF What, is the king encamped?
WESTMORELAND He is, Sir John:
I fear we shall stay too long.
FALSTAFF Well,
To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast
Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.
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