Host. Nay, my lord, he called you Jack, and said, he would cudgel you.

Fal. Did I, Bardolph?

Bard. Indeed, Sir John, you said so,

Fal. Yea; if he said, my ring was copper.

P. Hen. I say, 'tis copper: Darest thou be as good as thy word now?

Fal. Why, Hal, thou knowest, as thou art but man, I dare: but, as thou art prince, I fear thee, as I fear the roaring of the lion's whelp.

P. Hen. And why not, as the lion?

Fal. The king himself is to be feared as the lion: Dost thou think, I'll fear thee as I fear thy father? nay, and I do, I pray God, my girdle break 11?

P. Hen. O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! But, sirrah, there's no room for faith, truth, nor honesty, in this bosom of thine; it is filled up with guts, and midriff. Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket! Why, thou whoreson, impudent, embossed 12 rascal, if there were any thing in thy pocket but tavern-reckonings, memorandums of bawdy-houses, and one poor penny-worth of sugar-candy to make thee long-winded; if thy pocket were enriched with any other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet you will stand to it; you will not pocket up wrong; Art thou not ashamed?

Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the

11 This imprecation is supposed to have reference to the old adage, Ungirt, unblest.' It appears to have been also proverbial. In a humorous poem, apparently from the pen of Sam. Rowlands, 'Tis Merry when Gossips meet, 1609,' we also find it :How say'st thou, Besse? shall it be so, girle? speake: If I make one, pray God my girdle break!”

Malone observes, that as the purse was worn hanging at the girdle, its breaking, unobserved by the wearer, was a serious matter.'

12 Swoln, puffy, blown up.

state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do, in the days of villany? Thou seest, I have more flesh than another man; and therefore more frailty.

picked my pocket?

You confess then, you

P. Hen. It appears so by the story.

Fal. Hostess, I forgive thee: Go, make ready breakfast; love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests: thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason: thou seest, I am pacified.Still?-Nay, pr'ythee, be gone. [Exit Hostess.] Now, Hal, to the news at court: for the robbery, lad, How is that answered?

P. Hen. O, my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee :-The money is paid back again. Fal. O, I do not like that paying back, 'tis a double labour.

P. Hen. I am good friends with my father, and may do any thing.

Fal. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it with unwashed hands too.

Bard. Do, my lord.

P. Hen. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of .foot.

Fal. I would, it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can steal well? O for a fine thief, of the age of two and twenty, or thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous; I laud them, I praise them.

P. Hen. Bardolph

Bard. My lord.

P. Hen. Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster, my brother John;-this to my lord of Westmoreland.--Go, Poins, to horse, to horse; for thou, and I, have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner

time.

Jack, meet me to-morrow i'the Templehall at two o'clock i'the afternoon: there shalt thou know thy charge; and there receive money, and order for their furniture 13.

The land is burning; Percy stands on high;

And either they, or we, must lower lie.

[Exeunt Prince, POINS, and BARDOLPH. -Hostess, my

Fal. Rare words! brave world!

breakfast; come :

O, I could wish, this tavern were my drum. [Exit.

ACT IV.

SCENE I. The rebel Camp near Shrewsbury.
Enter HOTSPUr, Worcester, and DOUGLAS.
Hot. Well said, my noble Scot: If speaking truth,
In this fine age, were not thought flattery,
Such attribution should the Douglas 1 have,
As not a soldier of this season's stamp
Should go so general current through the world.
By heaven, I cannot flatter; I defy 2

The tongues of soothers; but a braver place
In my heart's love, hath no man than yourself:
Nay, task me to the word; approve me, lord.
Doug. Thou art the king of honour:

No man so potent breathes upon the ground,
But I will beard3 him.

13 I have followed Mr. Douce's suggestion in printing thus much of this speech in prose. No correct ear will ever receive it as blank verse, notwithstanding the efforts by omission, &c. to convert it into metre.

1 This expression is frequent in Holinshed, and is applied by way of preeminence to the head of the Douglas family.

2 Disdain.

3 To beard is to oppose face to face, in a daring and hostile man

Hot.

Do so, and 'tis well :—

Enter a Messenger, with Letters.

you.

What letters hast thou there?-I can but thank
Mess. These letters come from your father,-
Hot. Letters from him! why comes he not himself?
Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he's grievous sick?
Hot. 'Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick,
In such a justling time? Who leads his power?
Under whose government come they along?
Mess. His letters bear his mind, not I, my
lord 5.
Wor. I pr'ythee, tell me, doth he keep his bed?
Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth?
And at the time of my departure thence,
He was much fear'd by his physicians.

Wor. I would, the state of time had first been whole, Ere he by sickness had been visited;

His health was never better worth than now. Hot. Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect

The very life-blood of our enterprise;

'Tis catching hither, even to our camp.-
He writes me here,-that inward sickness-
And that his friends by deputation could not
So soon be drawn; nor did he think it meet,
To lay so dangerous and dear a trust

ner, to threaten even to his beard. Thus in Marlowe's King Edward II :

suffer uncontrol'd

These barons thus to beard me in my land.' Again, in Macbeth :-

met them dareful beard to beard.'

4 Epaminondas being told, on the evening before the battle of Leuctra, that an officer of distinction had died in his tent, exclaimed," Good gods! how could any body find time to die in such a conjuncture.'-Xenophon Hellenic, 1. vi.

5 The folio reads not I his mind.' The quarto, 1598, 'not I my mind. The emendation is Capell's.

On any soul remov'd, but on his own.
Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,-
That with our small conjunction, we should on,
To see how fortune is dispos'd to us:

For, as he writes, there is no quailing7 now;
Because the king is certainly possess'd
Of all our purposes. What say you to it?

Wor. Your father's sickness is a maim to us. Hot. A perilous gash, a very limb lopp'd off:And yet, in faith, 'tis not; his present want Seems more than we shall find it:-Were it good, To set the exact wealth of all our states All at one cast? to set so rich a main On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour? It were not good; for therein should we read The very bottom and the soul of hope: The very list, the very utmost bound

Of all our fortunes.

Doug.

'Faith, and so we should;

Where now remains a sweet reversion;
We may boldly spend upon the hope of what
Is to come in :

A comfort of retirement 10 lives in this.

Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, If that the devil and mischance look big Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

6 That is, on any less near to himself, or whose interest is reThus in Hamlet::

mote.

'It wafts you to a more removed ground.' And in As You Like It: in so removed a dwelling.'

7 Quailing is fainting, slackening, flagging; or failing in vigour or resolution; going back. Cotgrave renders it by alachissement. So in the Third Part of King Henry VI. Act ii. Sc. 3 :'This may plant courage in their quailing breasts.'

8 Informed.

9 Where, for whereas. As in Pericles, Act i, Sc. 1:'Where now you are both a father and a son.*

10 i. e. a support to which we may have recourse.'