FIRST GROOM
More rushes, more rushes.
SECOND GROOM
The trumpets have sounded twice.
FIRST GROOM
’Twill be two o’clock they come from the coronation. Dispatch, dispatch.
FALSTAFF
Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow. I will make the King do you grace. I will leer upon him as he comes by, and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.
PISTOL
God bless 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 no matter, this poor show better. This infer the zeal I had to see him.
SHALLOW
It so.
FALSTAFF
It shows my earnestness of affection—
SHALLOW
It so.
FALSTAFF
My devotion—
SHALLOW
It , it , it .
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.
PISTOL
semper idem, for obsque hoc nihil est; all in every part.
SHALLOW
so, indeed.
PISTOL
My knight, I will inflame noble liver,
And make rage.
Doll, and Helen of noble thoughts,
Is in base durance and contagious prison,
Haled
By most mechanical and dirty hand.
Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake,
For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.
FALSTAFF
I will deliver her.
PISTOL
There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.
FALSTAFF
God save Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal!
PISTOL
The heavens guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!
FALSTAFF
God save , my sweet boy!
KING
My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.
CHIEF JUSTICE
Have you your wits? Know you what you speak?
FALSTAFF
My King! My Jove! I speak to , my heart!
KING
I know not, old man. Fall to prayers.
How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester!
I have long dreamt 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 body , and more grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave gape
For 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 know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and be as wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots.
Till then I banish , 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 evils.
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.
FALSTAFF
Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.
SHALLOW
Yea, marry, Sir John, which I beseech you to let me have home with me.
FALSTAFF
That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.
SHALLOW
I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.
FALSTAFF
Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that you heard was but a colour.
SHALLOW
A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.
FALSTAFF
Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be sent for soon at night.
CHIEF JUSTICE
Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet.
Take all his company along with him.
FALSTAFF
My lord, my lord,—
CHIEF JUSTICE
I cannot now speak. I will hear you soon.
Take them away.
PISTOL
Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.
LANCASTER
I like this fair proceeding of the King’s.
He intent his wonted followers
Shall all be very well provided for,
But all are banish’d till their conversations
Appear more wise and modest to the world.
CHIEF JUSTICE
And so they are.
LANCASTER
The King call’d his parliament, my lord.
CHIEF JUSTICE
He .
LANCASTER
I will lay odds that, this year expire,
We bear our civil swords and native fire
As far as France. I heard a bird so sing,
Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the King.
Come, will you ?