LSCENE I.-"Now the Lord lighten thee! thou art a great fool."]

ACT II.

Enter Hostess; FANG, and his Boy, with her; and SNARE following.

HOST. Master Fang, have you entered the action?

FANG. It is entered.

HOST. Where's your yeoman? Is 't a lusty yeoman? will he stand to 't?

FANG. Sirrah, where 's Snare?

HOST. Ay, ay; good! Master Snareb!

• Yeoman. The bailiff's follower was called a sergeant's yeoman.

Master Snare. The passage ordinarily reads good master Snare. We have altered the punctuation, according to a suggestion of Capell.

SNARE. Here, here.

FANG. Snare, we must arrest sir John Falstaff.

HOST. Ay, good master Snare; I have entered him and all.

SNARE. It may chance cost some of us our lives; he will stab.

HOST. Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly: in good faith, he cares not what mischief he doth, if his weapon be out: he will foin like any devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child.

FANG. If I can close with him I care not for his thrust.

HOST. No, nor I neither: I'll be at your elbow.

FANG. If I but fist him once; if he come but within my vice ;

HOST. I am undone with his going; I warrant he is an infinitive thing upon my score:-Good master Fang, hold him sure;-good master Snare, let him not 'scape. He comes continuantly to Piecorner, (saving your manhoods,) to buy a saddle; and he is indited to dinner to the lubbar's head in Lumbert-street, to master Smooth's the silkman: I pray ye, since my exion is entered, and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long onea for a poor lone woman to bear and I have borne, and borne, and borne; and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought There is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass, and a beast, to bear every knave's wrong.

on.

Enter Sir JOHN FALSTAFF, Page, and BARDOLPH.

Yonder he comes; and that arrant malmsey-nose Bardolph with him. Do your offices, do your offices, master Fang, and master Snare; do me, do me, do me your offices.

FAL. How now? whose mare 's dead? what's the matter?

FANG. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of mistress Quickly.

FAL. Away, varlets!-Draw, Bardolph; cut me off the villain's head; throw the quean in the channel.

HOST. Throw me in the channel? I'll throw thee there. Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue !-Murther, murther! O thou honeysuckle villain! wilt thou kill God's officers, and the king's? O thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed; a man queller, and a woman queller.

FAL. Keep them off, Bardolph.

FANG. A rescue! a rescue!

HOST. Good people, bring a rescue. Thou wilt not? thou wilt not? do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!

Long one. So the old copies. The general reading is long loan. But the debt was hardly a loan; it was a score. Sir John had eaten the widow out of house and home; she therefore says that a hundred mark was a long one-a long mark-a long reckoning or score.

b Malmsey nose. So the folio; in the quarto, malmsey-nose knave.

Honeysuckle. Supposed to be Mistress Quickly's corruption of homicidal. In the same way honey-seed for homicide.

FAL. Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I'll tickle your catastrophe.

Enter the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, attended.

CH. JUST. What's the matter? keep the peace here, ho!

HOST. Good my lord, be good to me! I beseech you, stand to me!

CH. JUST. How now, sir John? what, are you brawling here?

Doth this become your place, your time, and business?

You should have been well on your way to York.

Stand from him, fellow. Wherefore hang'st upon him?

HOST. O, my most worshipful lord, an 't please your grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.

CH. JUST. For what sum?

HOST. It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all, all I have; he hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his :-but I will have some of it out again, or I'll ride thee o' nights, like the mare.

FAL. I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any vantage of ground to get up.

CH. JUST. How comes this, sir John? Fie! what man of good temper would endure this tempest of exclamation? Are you not ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by her own?

FAL. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

8

HOST. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor; thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst not thou, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying, that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath; deny it, if thou

canst.

FAL. My lord, this is a poor mad soul: and she says, up and down the town, that her eldest son is like you: she hath been in good case, and, the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. But for these foolish officers, I beseech you, I may have redress against them.

CH. JUST. Sir John, sir John, I am well acquainted with your manner of

Tickle in the quarto; in the folio, tuck.

b

Parcel-gilt-partially gilt, or what is now technically called party-gilt.

wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration. I know you have practised upon the easy yielding spirit of this woman.

HOST. Yes, in troth, my lord.

CH. JUST. Prithee, peace:-Pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villainy you have done her; the one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.

FAL. My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You call honourable boldness, impudent sauciness: if a man will court'sy and say nothing, he is virtuous: No, my lord, my humble duty remembered, I will not be your suitor. I say to you, I do desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty employment in the king's affairs".

CH. JUST. You speak as having power to do wrong: but answer in the effect of your reputation, and satisfy the poor woman.

FAL. Come hither, hostess.

[Taking her aside.

Enter GOWER.

CH. JUST. Now, master Gower: What news?

Gow. The king, my lord, and Henry Prince of Wales

Are near at hand: the rest the paper tells.

FAL. As I am a gentleman;

HOST. Nay, you said so before.

-Come, no more words of it.

FAL. As I am a gentleman ;HOST. By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers. FAL. Glasses, glasses 10, is the only drinking; and for thy walls,-a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the prodigal, or the German hunting in water-work", is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings, and these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound if thou canst. Come, if it were not for thy humours, there is not a better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw thy action: Come, thou must not be in this humour with me. Come, I know thou wast set on to this.

HOST. Prithee, sir John, let it be but twenty nobles. I loath to pawn my plate, in good earnest, la.

FAL. Let it alone; I'll make other shift: you'll be a fool still.

HOST. Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown. I hope you 'll come to supper: You'll pay me all together?

FAL. Will I live?-Go, with her, with her; [to BARDOLPH] hook on, hook on. HOST. Will you have Doll Tear-sheet meet you at supper?

FAL. No more words, let's have her.

[Exeunt Hostess, BARDOLPH, Officers, and Page.

CH. JUST. I have heard better news.

FAL. What's the news, my good lord?
CH. JUST. Where lay the king last night?

Gow. At Basingstoke, my lord.

FAL. I hope, my lord, all 's well: What is the news, my lord?
CH. JUST. Come all his forces back?

Gow. No; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse,

Are march'd up to my lord of Lancaster,
Against Northumberland and the archbishop.

FAL. Comes the king back from Wales, my noble lord?

CH JUST. You shall have letters of me presently:

Come, go along with me, good master Gower.

FAL. My lord!

CH. JUST. What's the matter?

FAI.. Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner?

Gow. I must wait upon my good lord here; I thank you, good sir John.

CH. JUST. Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to take soldiers up

in counties as you go.

FAL. Will you sup with me, master Gower?

CH. JUST. What foolish master taught you these manners, sir John?

FAL. Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that taught them me. This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair. CH. JUST. Now the lord lighten thee! thou art a great fool.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.-The same. Another Street.

Enter PRINCE HENRY and POINS.

P. HEN. Trust me, I am exceeding weary.

POINS. Is it come to that? I had thought weariness durst not have attached one of so high blood.

P. HEN. 'Faith it doth me; though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer? POINS. Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to remember so weak a composition.

P. HEN. Belike then my appetite was not princely got; for, in troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But, indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with my greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name? or to know thy face to-morrow? or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast; viz. these, and those that were thy peach-coloured ones? or to bear the inventory of thy shirts; as, one for superfluity, and one for other use ?-but that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee, when thou keep'st not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low-countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland.

POINS. How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard you should talk so