Great Britain -- History -- Henry IV, 1399-1413 -- Drama; Henry IV, King of England, 1367-1413 -- Drama; Historical drama
in Galen; it is a kind of deafness.
CHIEF JUSTICE. I think you are fall'n into the disease, for you
hear not what I say to you.
FALSTAFF. Very well, my lord, very well. Rather an't please
you, it
is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking,
that
I am troubled withal.
CHIEF JUSTICE. To punish you by the heels would amend the
attention
of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.
FALSTAFF. I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient.
Your
lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in
respect
of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your
prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or
indeed a scruple itself.
CHIEF JUSTICE. I sent for you, when there were matters against
you
for your life, to come speak with me.
FALSTAFF. As I was then advis'd by my learned counsel in the
laws
of this land-service, I did not come.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great
infamy.
FALSTAFF. He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in
less.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Your means are very slender, and your waste is
great.
FALSTAFF. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were
greater
and my waist slenderer.
CHIEF JUSTICE. You have misled the youthful Prince.
FALSTAFF. The young Prince hath misled me. I am the fellow with
the
great belly, and he my dog.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, I am loath to gall a new-heal'd wound.
Your
day's service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your
night's exploit on Gadshill. You may thank th' unquiet time
for
your quiet o'erposting that action.
FALSTAFF. My lord--
CHIEF JUSTICE. But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a
sleeping wolf.
FALSTAFF. To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox.
CHIEF JUSTICE. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt
out.
FALSTAFF. A wassail candle, my lord--all tallow; if I did say
of
wax, my growth would approve the truth.
CHIEF JUSTICE. There is not a white hair in your face but
should
have his effect of gravity.
FALSTAFF. His effect of gravy, gravy,
CHIEF JUSTICE. You follow the young Prince up and down, like
his
ill angel.
FALSTAFF. Not so, my lord. Your ill angel is light; but hope
he
that looks upon me will take me without weighing. And yet in
some
respects, I grant, I cannot go--I cannot tell. Virtue is of
so
little regard in these costermongers' times that true valour
is
turn'd berod; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick wit
wasted in giving reckonings; all the other gifts appertinent
to
man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a
gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of
us
that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with
the
bitterness of your galls; and we that are in the vaward of
our
youth, must confess, are wags too.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Do you set down your name in the scroll of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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