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Fal.

Silence. Sil.

Health and long life to you, Master

Fill the cup, and let it come; [Singing. I'll pledge you a mile to the bottom. Shal. Honest Bardolph, welcome: if thou wantest any thing, and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart. Welcome, my little tiny thief [to the Page), and welcome indeed too. I'll drink to Master Bardolph, and to all the cavaleros about London.

Davy. I hope to see London once ere I die. Bard. An I might see you there, Davy,Shal. By the mass, you'll crack a quart together, ha! will you not, Master Bardolph? Bard. Yea, sir, in a pottle-pot.

Shal By God's liggens, I thank thee: the knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that. A' will not out; he is true bred.

Bard. And I'll stick by him, sir.

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And shall good news be baffled?
Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies' lap.
Sil. Honest gentleman, I know not your
breeding.

Pist. Why then, lament therefore.

Shal. Give me pardon, sir: if, sir, you come with news from the court, I take it there's but two ways, either to utter them, or to conceal them. I am, sir, under the king, in some authority.

Pist. Under which king, Besonian? speak, or die.

Shal Under King Harry.
Pist.

Harry the Fourth? or Fifth?
Shal. Harry the Fourth.
Pist.

A foutre for thine office! 120 Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king; Harry the Fifth's the man. I speak the truth: When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like The bragging Spaniard.

Fal. What, is the old king dead?

Pist. As nail in door: the things I speak are just.

Fal. Away, Bardolph! saddle my horse. Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine. Pistol, I will doublecharge thee with dignities. 130

Bard. O joyful day!

I would not take a knighthood for my fortune. Pist. What! I do bring good news.

Fal. Carry Master Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow,-be what thou wilt; I am fortune's steward-get on thy boots: we'll ride all night. O sweet Pistol! Away, Bardolph! [Exit Bard.] Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master Shallow: I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's

Dary. An't please your worship, there's one horses; the laws of England are at my commandPistol come from the court with news,

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ment. Blessed are they that have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief-justice!

Pist. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs

also!

'Where is the life that late I led?' say they: Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days! [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. London. A street.

Enter Beadles, dragging in HOSTESS QUICKLY and DOLL TEARSHEET.

Host. No, thou arrant knave; I would to God that I might die, that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint.

First Bead. The constables have delivered her over to me; and she shall have whippingcheer enough, I warrant her: there hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

Del. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on: I'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal, an the child I now go with do miscarry, thou wert better thou hadst struck thy mother,

I speak of Africa and golden joys.
Fal. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy thou paper-faced villain.

news?

Host. O the Lord, that Sir John were come!

he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

First Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you.

Dol. I'll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you as soundly swinged for this,--you blue-bottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not swinged, I'll forswear half-kirtles.

First Bead. Come, come, you she knight

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Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes. First Groom. More rushes, more rushes. Sec. 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.

Fal. 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.

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Pist. God bless thy lungs, good knight. Fal. 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.

Shal It doth so.

Fal. It shows my earnestness of affection,Shal. It doth so.

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prayers;

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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,

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To see perform'd the tenour of our word. Set on. [Exeunt King, &c. Fal. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.

Shal. Yea, marry, Sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

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Fal. 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.

Shal. 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.

Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a colour.

ΟΙ

Shal. A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.

Fal. Fear no colours: go with me to dinner: come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph: I shall be sent for soon at night.

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undo me: for what I have to say is of mine own pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some and I will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me: if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

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Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;

Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,

Chor. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. [Exit. The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and
fire

ΤΟ

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;

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And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our
kings,

Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years

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ACT I.

SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the KING'S palace.

Enter the ARChbishop of CanTERBURY, and the BISHOP OF ELY.

Cant. My lord, I'll tell you; that self bill is urged,

Which in the eleventh year of the last king's reign Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,

But that the scambling and unquiet time

Did push it out of farther question.

Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? Cant. It must be thought on.

against us,

If it pass

ΙΟ

We lose the better half of our possession:
For all the temporal lands which men devout
By testament have given to the church
Would they strip from us; being valued thus:
As much as would maintain, to the king's honour,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,
A hundred almshouses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside,

A thousand pounds by the year: thus runs the bill.
Ely. This would drink deep.
Cant.

"Twould drink the cup and all. 20

Ely. But what prevention?

Cant. The king is full of grace and fair regard.
Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.
Cant. The courses of his youth promised it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seen'd to die too; yea, at that very moment
Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelope and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady currance, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness

So soon did lose his seat and all at once
As in this king.

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Ely. We are blessed in the change.
Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity,
And all-admiring with an inward wish
You would desire the king were made a prelate: 40
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say it hath been all in all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences;

So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric:

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Cant. Then go we in, to know his embassy; Which I could with a ready guess declare, Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.

Ely. I'll wait upon you, and I long to hear it. [Exeunt.

SCENE II. The same. The Presence chamber.

Enter KING HENRY, GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and Attendants.

K. Hen. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?

Exe. Not here in presence.
K. Hen.

Send for him, good uncle. West. Shall we call in the ambassador, my

liege?

K. Hen. Not yet, my cousin: we would be resolved,

Before we hear him, of some things of weight That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.

Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it, Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, and

Since his addiction was to courses vain.

His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow,
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports,
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the

nettle

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

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the BISHOP OF ELY.

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Sure, we thank you. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed And justly and religiously unfold Why the law Salique that they have in France Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim: And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,

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Or nicely charge your understanding soul
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
Suits not in native colours with the truth;
For God doth know how many now in health
Shall drop their blood in approbation
Of what your reverence shall incite us to.
Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war:
We charge you, in the name of God, take heed;
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint

'Gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the swords

That make such waste in brief mortality.
Under this conjuration speak, my lord;
For we will hear, note and believe in heart
That what you speak is in your conscience wash'd
As pure as sin with baptisin.

༣༠

Cant. Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and

you peers,

That owe yourselves, your lives and services

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