Scene
V
A public place near Westminster Abbey.
Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.
First Groom
More rushes, more rushes.
Second Groom
The trumpets have sounded twice.
First Groom
’Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the coronation: dispatch, dispatch. Exeunt.
Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph, and Page.
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.
Pistol
’Tis “semper idem,” for “obsque hoc nihil est:” ’tis all in every part.
Shallow
’Tis so, indeed.
Pistol
My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver,
And make thee rage.
Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,
Is in base durance and contagious prison;
Haled thither
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. Shouts within, and the trumpets sound.
Pistol
There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.
Enter the King 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
My lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man.
Chief-Justice
Have you your wits? know you what ’tis to speak?
Falstaff
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
King
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 tenour of our word. Set on. Exeunt King, etc.
Falstaff
Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.
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 well perceive how, unless you should 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.
Reenter Prince John, the Lord Chief-Justice; Officers with them.
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 fortune me tormenta, spero contenta. Exeunt all but Prince John and the Chief-Justice.
Lancaster
I like this fair proceeding of the king’s:
He hath 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 hath call’d his parliament, my lord.
Chief-Justice
He hath.
Lancaster
I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,
We bear our civil swords and native fire
As far as France: I beard a bird so sing,
Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.
Come, will you hence? Exeunt.