University of Virginia Library

Act I

Enter
Falstaff,
habited as a motorist

Here's all at an end between us, or I'll never taste sack again. Prince or no Prince, I'll not ride with him to Coventry on the hinder parts of a carbonadoed stink, not though he call her all the car in Christendom. Sack! Sack! Sack!

Hostess.

I spied her out of the lattice. A' fizzled and a' groaned and a' shook from the bones out, Sir John, and a' ran on her own impulsidges back and forth o' Chepe, and I knew that there was but one way to it when I saw them fighting at the handles. She died of a taking of pure wind on the heart, and they be about her body now with tongs. A marvellous searching perfume, Sir John!

Falstaff.

He hath called me ribs; he hath called me tallow. There is no name in the extremer oiliness of comparisons which I have not borne meekly. But to go masked at midday; to wrap my belly in an horse-hide cloak of ten thousand buttons till I looked like a mushroomed dunghill; to be smoked over burnt oils; to be enseamed, moreover, with intolerable greases; and thus scented, thus habited, thus vizarded, to leap out—for I leaped, mark you . . . Another cup of sack! But there's vengeance for my case! These eyes have seen the Lord's Anointed on his knees in Chepe, foining with the key of Shrewsbury Castle, which Poins had bent to the very crook of Nym's theftuous elbow, to wake the dumb devil in the guts of her. “Sweet Hal,” said I, “are all horses sold out of England, that thou must kneel before the lieges to any petrol-piddling turnspit?” Then he, Poins, and Bardolph whose nose blanched with sheer envy of her bodywork, begged a shoulder of me to thrust her into some alley, the street being full of Ephesians of the old Church. Whereat I . . .

Enter Prince and Fluellen

Prince.

Whereat thou, hearing her once or twice tenderly backfire—

Falstaff.

Heaven forgive thee, Hal! She thundered and lightened a full half-hour, so that Jove Himself could not have bettered the instruction. There's a pit beneath her now, which she blew out of thy father's highway the while I watched, where Sackerson could stand to six dogs.

Prince.

Hearing, I say, her gentle outcry against Poins' mishandling, thou didst flee up Chepe, calling upon the Sheriff's Watch for a red flag.

Falstaff.

I? Call me Jack if I were not jack to each of her wheels in turn till I am stamped like a butter-pat with the imprint of her underpinnings. I seek a red flag?

Prince.

Ay, roaring like a bull.

Falstaff.

Groans, Hal, groans such as Atlas heaved. But she overbore me at the last. Why hast thou left her?—

Faugh, that a King's son should ever reek like a smutty-wicked lamp upon the wrong side of the morning!

Prince.

There was Bardolph in the buckbasket behind, nosing fearfully overside like a full-wattled turkey-poult from Norfolk. There was Poins upon his belly beneath her, thrice steeped in pure plumbago, most despairfully clanking of chains like the devil in Brug's Hall window; and there were some four thousand 'prentices at her tail, crying, “What ho!” and that she bumped. Methought 'twas no place for my father's son.

Falstaff.

Take any man's horses and hale her to bed! The laws of England are at thy commandment, that the Heir should not be made a common stink in the nostrils of the lieges.

Prince.

She'd not stir for all Apollo's team—not though Phæton himself, drunk with nectar, lashed 'em stark mad. Poor Phæton!

Hostess.

A' was a King's son, was a' not, and came to's end by keeping of bad company?

Falstaff.

No more than a little horseflesh. I tell thee, Hal, this England of ours has never looked up since the nobles fell to puking over oil-buckets by the side of leather-jerkined Walloons.

Prince.

He that drives me now is French as our princely cousin.

Falstaff.

Dumain? Hang him for a pestilent, poke-eyed, chicken-chopping, hump-backed, leather-hatted, muffle-gloved ape! He hath been fined as often as he hath broken down; and that is at every tavern 'twixt here and York. Dumain! He's the most notorious widow-maker on the Windsor road. His mother was a corn-cutter at Ypres, and his father a barber at Rouen, by which beastly conjunction he rightly draws every infirmity that damns him in his trade. Item: He cuts corners niggardly and upon the wrong side. Item: He'll look behind him after a likely wench in the hottest press of Holborn, though he skid into the kennel

for it. Item: He depends upon his brake to save him at need—a death-bed repentance, Hal, as hath been proved ere this, since grace is uncertain. Item: He is too proud to clean the body of her, but leaves the care of that which should be the very cote-armour of his mechanic knighthood to an unheedful ostler. Thus, at last, he comes to overlook even the oiling; and so it falls that she's where she must be, and not where thou wouldst have her. Ay, laugh if thou wilt, Hal, but a round worthy knight need not fire himself through three baronies in eight hours to know the very essence of the petrol that fumes him. Dumain will one day clutch thee into Hell upon the first speed.

Prince.

Strange that clear knowledge should so long outlive mere nerve! I'll dub Dumain knight when I come to the throne, if he be not hanged first for murder on the highway. 'Twill save the state a pension.

Falstaff.

So the lean vice goes ever before the solid virtue. (Confused noise without.)
What riot's afoot now?

Fluellen.

Riots, look you, by my vizaments, make one noise, but murders another. There's riots in Monmouth; but, by my vizaments, look you, there's murders in Chepe. Pabes and old 'oomen—they howl so tamnably.

Falstaff.

Rebellion rather! Half London's calling on thy name, Hal, and half on thy father's. Well, if it be successful, forget not who was promised the reversion of the Chief Justiceship. Ha! Unquestioned rebellion, if broken crowns signify aught.

Enter
Heralds
(wounded)

Prince.

This it is to be a King's son! That a pitiful twelve-horse touring-car cannot jar off her brakes but they

must rehearse it me in damnable heroics. Your pleasure, gentlemen?

Heralds.

Prince.

Anon! Seek each a physician according to his needs and revenues. I'll be with you anon.

(To Falstaff)

The third in three weeks! These whoreson German clock-cases no sooner dint honest English paving-stone than they incontinent lay their entrails on the street. Five hundred and seventy pounds! I'll out and pawn the Duchy!

Heralds.

Falstaff.

A Star Chamber matter, Hal—a Star Chamber matter! Glasses, Doll! We'll drink to his deliverance.

Heralds.
You, too, Sir John, as party to these broils
And breakings-forth, in like attainder stand
For judgment: wherein fail not at your peril!

Falstaff.

I do remember now to have had some dealings with this same Chief Justice. An old feeble man, drawn abroad in a cart by horses. We must enlighten— enlighten him, Hal.

(Exeunt.)