C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Scenes from the Comedies and Histories: Falstaff’s Army
By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
F
Bardolph—Will you give me money, captain?
Falstaff—Lay out, lay out.
Bardolph—This bottle makes an angel.
Falstaff—An if it do, take it for thy labor; and if it make twenty, take them all,—I’ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at the town’s end.
Bardolph—I will, captain: farewell.[Exit.]
Falstaff—If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the King’s press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I pressed me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons; inquired me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the bans: such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as lief hear the Devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck. I pressed me none but such toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’-heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten times more dishonorable ragged than an old pieced ancient: and such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat;—nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There’s but a shirt and a half in all my company: and the half shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at St. Albans, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daventry. But that’s all one: they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.
Falstaff—What, Hal! how now, mad wag! what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire?—My good lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy: I thought your Honor had already been at Shrewsbury.
Westmoreland—Faith, Sir John, ’tis more than time that I were there, and you too; but my powers are there already. The King, I can tell you, looks for us all: we must away all night.
Falstaff—Tut, never fear me: I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.
Prince Henry—I think, to steal cream indeed; for thy theft hath already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack: whose fellows are these that come after?
Falstaff—Mine, Hal, mine.
Prince Henry—I did never see such pitiful rascals.
Falstaff—Tut, tut! good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.
Westmoreland—Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare; too beggarly.
Falstaff—Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they had that; and for their bareness, I am sure they never learned that of me.
Prince Henry—No, I’ll be sworn; unless you call three fingers on the ribs, bare. But, sirrah, make haste: Percy is already in the field.
Falstaff—What, is the King encamped?
Westmoreland—He is, Sir John: I fear we shall stay too long.
Falstaff—Well—
Fits a dull fighter, and a keen guest.