FALSTAFF. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. [_Exeunt Justices_.] On, Bardolph, lead the men away. [_Exeunt Bardolph, recruits, &c._] As I return, I will fetch off these justices. I do see the bottom of Justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull Street, and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk’s tribute. I do remember him at Clement’s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring. When he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife. He was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible. He was the very genius of famine, yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him mandrake. He came ever in the rearward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the overscutched huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies or his good-nights. And now is this Vice’s dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly of John a Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him, and I’ll be sworn he ne’er saw him but once in the tilt-yard, and then he burst his head for crowding among the marshal’s men. I saw it and told John a Gaunt he beat his own name, for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court. And now has he land and beefs. Well, I’ll be acquainted with him if I return, and ’t shall go hard but I’ll make him a philosopher’s two stones to me. If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there an end. [_Exit._] ACT IV SCENE I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest. Enter the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, Hastings and others. ARCHBISHOP. What is this forest call’d? HASTINGS. ’Tis Gaultree Forest, an ’t shall please your Grace. ARCHBISHOP. Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth To know the numbers of our enemies. HASTINGS. We have sent forth already. ARCHBISHOP. ’Tis well done. My friends and brethren in these great affairs, I must acquaint you that I have received New-dated letters from Northumberland, Their cold intent, tenor, and substance, thus: Here doth he wish his person, with such powers As might hold sortance with his quality, The which he could not levy; whereupon He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes, To Scotland, and concludes in hearty prayers That your attempts may overlive the hazard And fearful meeting of their opposite. MOWBRAY. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground And dash themselves to pieces. Enter a Messenger. HASTINGS. Now, what news? MESSENGER. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, In goodly form comes on the enemy, And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.