Prince. I do. Bard. What think you they portend? 25 Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken. Re-enter FALSTAFF. Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet creature of bombast! 27 How long is't ago, Jack, since thou saw'st thine own knee? Fal. My own knee? when I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the waist; I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring: A plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder. There's villainous news abroad: here was Sir John Bracy from your father: you must to the court in the morning. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welch hook, 29 what, a plague, call you him? Poins. O! Glendower. Fal. Owen, Owen; the same; 28 and his son-in law, Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and that 25 That is, drunkenness and poverty. 26 Of course there is a quibble implied here between choler and collar. It is observable that the prince deals very much in this kind of implied puns, as if the Poet sought thereby to reconcile the native dignity of this most princely gentleman with his occasional levity and playfulness. Explicit puns were too small a species of wit for such a heroic spirit even to play with. H. 27 Bombast is cotton. Gerard calls the cotton plant the bombast tree. It is here used for the stuffing of clothes. See Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. sc. 2, note 46. 28 A demon, who is described as one of the four kings who rule over all the demons in the world. 29 The Welch hook was a kind of hedging-bill made with a hook at the end, and a long handle like the partisan or halbert. sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs o'horseback up a hill perpendicular. Prince. He that rides at high speed, and with his pistol kills a sparrow flying.30 Fal. You have hit it. Prince. So did he never the sparrow. Fal. Well, that rascal hath good mettle in him; he will not run. Prince. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for running! Fal. O'horseback, ye cuckoo! but, afoot, he will not budge a foot. Prince. Yes, Jack, upon instinct. 31 Fal. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too, and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps more. Worcester is stolen away to-night; thy father's beard is turn'd white with the news: you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel.32 Prince. Why, then, it is like, if there come a hot June, and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds. Fal. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like, we shall have good trading that way. - But tell me, Hal, art thou not horribly afeard? thou being heirapparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again, as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? doth not thy blood thrill at it? 30 Pistols were not in use in the age of Henry IV. They are said to have been much used by the Scotch in Shakespeare's time. 31 Blue caps being of old the national head-dress of Scottish soldiers, the Scotsmen themselves are here appropriately called blue-caps. H. 32 This might be aptly quoted as showing that civil disorders had much the same effect on property in Shakespeare's time as in ours. H. Prince. Not a whit, i'faith: I lack some of thy instinct. Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow, when thou comest to thy father: if thou love me, practise an answer. Prince. Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life. Fal. Shall I content. This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown. Prince. Thy state is taken for a joint-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown, for a pitiful bald crown! Fal. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be moved. - Give me a cup of sack, to make mine eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses' vein.33 Prince. Well, here is my leg.34 Fal. And here is my speech. bility. Stand aside, no Host. O Jesu! this is excellent sport, i'faith. Fal. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears · are vain. Host. O, the father! how he holds his countenance ! Fal. For God's sake, lords, convey my tristful queen, For tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes. Host. O Jesu! he doth it as like one of these harlotry players as I ever see. 33 The banter is here upon the play called " A Lamentable Tragedie mixed full of pleasant Mirthe, containing the Life of Cambises, King of Persia," by Thomas Preston, 1570. 34 That is, my obeisance to my father. Fal. Peace, good pint-pot! peace, good ticklebrain! 35—Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If, then, thou be son to me, here lies the point: - Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries? a question not to be ask'd. Shall the son of England prove a thief, and take purses? a question to be ask'd. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile: so doth the company thou keepest; for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also. And yet there is a virtuous man, whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name. 36 Prince. What manner of man, an it like your majesty ? Fal. A goodly portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, 35 Tickle-brain appears to have been a slang term for some potent kind of liquor. H. 36 A micher here means a truant. So in Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594: "How like a micher he stands, as if he had truanted from honesty." And in Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases: "Moocher. A truant; a 'blackberry moucher,' a boy who plays truant to pick blackberries." H. or, by'r lady, inclining to threescore; and now I remember me, his name is Falstaff: if that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If, then, the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that Falstaff: him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now, thou naughty varlet, tell me, where hast thou been this month? Prince. Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me, and I'll play my father. Fal. Depose me? if thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker,37 or a poulter's hare. Prince. Well, here I am set. Fal. And here I stand. — Judge, my masters. ous. Prince. The complaints I hear of thee are griev Fal. 'Sblood, my lord, they are false ! tickle ye for a young prince, i'faith. Prince. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? henceforth ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace: there is a devil haunts thee, in the likeness of a fat old man: a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch 38 of beastliness, that swoln parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard 39 of sack, that stuff'd cloak-bag of guts, that 37 That is, a sucking rabbit. 38 The receptacle into which meal is bolted. 39 Bombard was generally used in the Poet's time for a large barrel; sometimes, however, for a huge leathern vessel for hold |