A public place near
Westminster Abbey.
FALSTAFF Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow;
I will make the king do you grace: I will leer upon him as
a’ comes by; and do but mark the countenance that he
will give me.
PISTOL God bless thy lungs, good knight.
FALSTAFF Come here, Pistol; stand behind me.
O, if I had had time to have made new liveries,
I would have bestowed the thousand pound I
borrowed of you. But ’tis no matter; this poor show
doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.
SHALLOW It doth so.
FALSTAFF It shows my earnestness of affection,–
SHALLOW It doth so.
FALSTAFF My devotion,–
SHALLOW It doth, it doth, it doth.
FALSTAFF As it were, to ride day and night;
and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to
have patience to shift me,–
SHALLOW It is best, certain.
FALSTAFF But to stand stained with travel,
and sweating with desire to see him; thinking
of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion,
as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.
[Enter KING HENRY V and his train,
the Lord Chief-Justice among them]
FALSTAFF God save thy grace, King Hal! my royal Hal!
PISTOL The heavens thee guard and keep,
most royal imp of fame!
FALSTAFF God save thee, my sweet boy!
KING HENRY IV My lord chief-justice,
speak to that vain man.
Lord Chief-Justice Have you your wits?
know you what ’tis to speak?
FALSTAFF My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
KING HENRY IV
I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream’d of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform’d the tenor of our word. Set on.
[Exeunt KING HENRY V, &c]
Act 5.4 | Epilogue