Henry IV, Part II

note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast, viz. these, and those that were thy peach-coloured ones! or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland: and God knows, whether those that bawl out the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened. Poins How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you should talk so idly! Tell me, how many good young princes would do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is? Prince Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins Poins Yes, faith; and let it be an excellent good thing. Prince It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine. Poins Go to; I stand the push of your one thing that you will tell. Prince Marry, I tell thee, it is not meet that I should be sad, now my father is sick: albeit I could tell thee, as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend, I could be sad, and sad indeed too. Poins Very hardly upon such a subject. Prince By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil’s book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man. But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick: and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow. Poins The reason? Prince What wouldst thou think of me, if I should weep? Poins I would think thee a most princely hypocrite. Prince It would be every man’s thought; and thou art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks: never a man’s thought in the world keeps the road-way better than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought to think so? Poins Why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed to Falstaff. Prince And to thee. Poins By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it with my own ears: the worst that they can say of me is that I am a second brother and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph. Enter Bardolph and Page. Prince And the boy that I gave Falstaff: a’ had him from me Christian; and look, if the fat villain have not transformed him ape. Bardolph God save your grace! Prince And yours, most noble Bardolph! Bardolph Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be blushing? wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man-at-arms are you become! Is’t such a matter to get a pottle-pot’s maidenhead? Page A’ calls me e’en now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window: at last I spied his eyes, and methought he had made two holes in the ale-wife’s new petticoat and so peeped through. Prince Has not the boy profited? Bardolph Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away! Page Away, you rascally Althaea’s dream, away! Prince Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy? Page Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamed she was delivered of a fire-brand; and therefore I call him her dream. Prince A crown’s worth of good interpretation: there ’tis, boy. Poins O, that this good blossom could be kept from cankers! Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee. Bardolph An you do not make him hanged among you, the gallows shall have wrong. Prince And how doth thy master, Bardolph? Bardolph Well, my lord. He heard of your grace’s coming to town: there’s a letter for you. Poins Delivered with good respect. And how doth the martlemas, your master? Bardolph In bodily health, sir. Poins Marry, the immortal part needs a physician; but that moves not him: though that be sick, it dies not. Prince I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my dog; and he holds his place; for look you how be writes. Poins Reads. “John Falstaff, knight,”⁠—every man must know that, as oft as he has occasion to name himself: even like those that are kin to the king; for they never prick their finger but they say, “There’s some of the king’s blood spilt.” “How comes that?” says he, that takes upon him not to conceive. The answer is as ready as a borrower’s cap, “I am the king’s poor cousin, sir.” Prince Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But to the letter. Poins

Reads.

“Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the king, nearest his father, Harry Prince of Wales, greeting.”

Why, this is a certificate.

Prince Peace! Poins

Reads. “I will imitate the honourable Romans in brevity:” he sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.

“I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayest; and so, farewell.

“Thine, by yea and no, which is as much as to say, as thou usest him,

“Jack Falstaff with my familiars,
John with my brothers and sisters,
and
Sir John with all Europe.”

My lord, I’ll steep this letter in sack and make him eat it.

Prince That’s to make him eat twenty of his words. But do you use me thus, Ned? must I marry your sister? Poins God send the wench no worse fortune! But I never said so. Prince Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and