King Henry IV, Part 2 | Page 7

by the heels would amend the attention?of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.
FALSTAFF.?I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?I sent for you, when there were matters against you?for your life, to come speak with me.
FALSTAFF.?As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws?of this land-service, I did not come.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.
FALSTAFF.?He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
FALSTAFF.?I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater,?and my waist slenderer.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?You have misled the youthful prince.
FALSTAFF.?The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the?great belly, and he my dog.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound: your day's service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on Gad's-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'er-posting that action.
FALSTAFF.?My lord?
CHIEF JUSTICE.?But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.
FALSTAFF.?To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
FALSTAFF.?A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?There is not a white hair in your face but should have his?effect of gravity.
FALSTAFF.?His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.
FALSTAFF.?Not so, my lord; your ill angel is light; but I hope he that looks upon me will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go: I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these costermonger times that true valour is turned bear-herd; pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
FALSTAFF.?My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgement and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him!?For the box of the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Well, God send the prince a better companion!
FALSTAFF.?God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry:?I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.
FALSTAFF.?Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady Peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, and I brandish any thing but a bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head but I am thrust upon it: well, I cannot last ever: but it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name