Henry IV, Part II

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 our 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 gettest any leave of me, hang me; if thou takest 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, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I must humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverent care of your health. Chief-Justice Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury. Falstaff An’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 is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an’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 its 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, an’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 should I 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 him 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 the unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting 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 to smell a fox. Chief-Justice What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt 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 on 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 costermonger times that true valour is turned bear-herd: pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: 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 halloing 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