The First Part of Henry IV:
Act 4, Scene 2
FALSTAFF
1 Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a
2 bottle of sack: our soldiers shall march through;
3 we'll to Sutton Co'fil' tonight.
BARDOLPH
4 Will you give me money, captain?
BARDOLPH
6 This bottle makes an angel.
FALSTAFF
7 An if it do, take it for thy labour; and if it make
8 twenty, take them all; I'll answer the coinage. Bid
9 my lieutenant Peto meet me at town's end.
BARDOLPH
10 I will, captain: farewell.
FALSTAFF
11 If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a sous'd
12 gurnet. I have misused the King's press damnably.
13 I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty
14 soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press
15 me none but good house-holders, yeoman's sons;
16 inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had
17 been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity
18 of warm slaves, as had as lieve hear the devil as a
19 drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than
20 a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck. I pressed me none
21 but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies
22 no bigger than pins' heads, and they have bought out
23 their services; and now my whole charge consists of
24 ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies,
25 slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where
26 the glutton's dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed
27 were never soldiers, but discarded unjust serving-men,
28 younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters and
29 ostlers trade-fall'n, the cankers of a calm world and
30 a long peace, ten times more dishonourable ragged
31 than an old feaz'd ancient: and such have I, to fill
32 up the rooms of them that have bought out their
33 services, that you would think that I had a hundred
34 and fifty totter'd prodigals lately come from
35 swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad
36 fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded
37 all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye
38 hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through
39 Coventry with them, that's flat: nay, and the villains
40 march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on;
41 for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There's
42 but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half
43 shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over
44 the shoulders like an herald's coat without sleeves;
45 and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host
46 at Saint Albons, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry.
47 But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every
48 hedge.
Enter the PRINCE, LORD OF WESTMORELAND.
PRINCE HENRY
49 How now, blown Jack! how now, quilt!
FALSTAFF
50 What, Hal! how now, mad wag! what a devil dost thou
51 in Warwickshire? My good Lord of Westmoreland, I
52 cry you mercy: I thought your honour had already been
53 at Shrewsbury.
WESTMORELAND
54 Faith, Sir John,'tis more than time that I were there,
55 and you too; but my powers are there already. The
56 King, I can tell you, looks for us all: we must away
57 all night.
FALSTAFF
58 Tut, never fear me: I am as vigilant as a cat to
59 steal cream.
PRINCE HENRY
60 I think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath
61 already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose
62 fellows are these that come after?
PRINCE HENRY
64 I did never see such pitiful rascals.
FALSTAFF
65 Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food
66 for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better: tush,
67 man, mortal men, mortal men.
WESTMORELAND
68 Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding
69 poor and bare, too beggarly.
FALSTAFF
70 'Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they
71 had that; and for their bareness, I am sure they
72 never learned that of me.
PRINCE HENRY
73 No I'll be sworn; unless you call three fingers on
74 the ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste: Percy is
75 already in the field.
FALSTAFF
76 What, is the king encamped?
WESTMORELAND
77 He is, Sir John: I fear we shall stay too long.
FALSTAFF
78 Well,
79 To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast
80 Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.