Fal. A rascal! to brave me!

Dol. Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat'st! Come, let me wipe thy face; come on, you whoreson chops:-Ah, rogue! i'faith, I love thee. Thou art as valourous as Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the nine worthies. Ah, villain!

Fal. A rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a blanket.

Dol. Do, if thou darest for thy heart: if thou dost, I'll canvas thee between a pair of sheets.

Enter Musick.

Page. The musick is come, sir.

Fal. Let them play;-Play, sirs. Sit on my knee, Doll. A rascal bragging slave! the rogue fled from me like quicksilver.

Dol. I'faith, and thou followedst him like a church. Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave fighting o'days, and foining o'nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven?

Enter behind, prince HENRY and POINs, disguised like Drawers.

Fal. Peace, good Doll! do not speak like a death's head: do not bid me remember mine end.

Dol. Sirrah, what humour is the prince of?

Fal. A good shallow young fellow: he would have made a good pantler, he would have chipped bread well.

Dol. They say, Poins has a good wit.

Fal. He a good wit? hang him, baboon! his wit

is as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there is no more conceit in him, than is in a mallet.

Dol. Why does the prince love him so then? Fal. Because their legs are both of a bigness: and he plays at quoits well; and eats conger and fennel; and drinks off candles' ends for flap-dragons; and rides the wild mare with the boys; and jumps upon joint-stools; and swears with a good grace; and wears his boot very smooth, like unto the sign of the leg; and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories, and such other gambol faculties he hath, that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the prince admits him: for the prince himself is such another; the weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois.

P. Hen. Would not this nave of a wheel' have his ears cut off?

Poins. Let's beat him before his whore.

P. Hen. Look, if the withered elder hath not his poll clawed like a parrot.

Poins. Is it not strange, that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Fal. Kiss me, Doll.

P. Hen. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! what says the almanack to that?

Poins. And, look, whether the fiery Trigon,' his man, be not lisping to his master's old tables; his note-book, his counsel-keeper.

Fal. Thou dost give me flattering busses.

Dol. Nay, truly; I kiss thee with a most constant heart.

1

Fal. I am old, I am old.

nave of a wheel-] Nave and knave are easily reconciled, but why nave of a wheel? I suppose from his roundness. He was called round man, in contempt, before. JOHNSON. the fiery Trigon, &c.] Trigonum igneum is the astronomical term when the upper planets meet in a fiery sign.

2

Dol. I love thee better than I love e'er a scurvy young boy of them all.

Fal. What stuff wilt have a kirtle of ?3 I shall receive money on Thursday: thou shalt have a cap to-morrow. A merry song, come: it grows late, we'll to bed. Thou'lt forget me, when I am gone.

Dol. By my troth thou'lt set me a weeping, an thou sayest so: prove that ever I dress myself handsome till thy return.-Well, hearken the end. Fal. Some sack, Francis.

P. Hen. Poins. Anon, anon, sir.

[Advancing. Fal. Ha! a bastard son of the king's?—And art not thou Poins his brother?

P. Hen. Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life dost thou lead?

Fal. A better than thou; I am a gentleman, thou art a drawer.

P. Hen. Very true, sir; and I come to draw you out by the ears.

Host. O, the lord preserve thy good grace! by my troth, welcome to London.-Now the Lord bless that sweet face of thine! O Jesu, are you come from Wales?

Fal. Thou whoreson mad compound of majesty, -by this light flesh and corrupt blood, thou art welcome.

3

[Leaning his hand upon DOLL.

Doll. How! you fat fool, I scorn you.
Poins. My lord, he will drive you out of your re-

a kirtle of?] A woman's kirtle, or rather upper-kirtle, (as distinguished from a petticoat, which was sometimes called a kirtle,) was a long mantle which reached to the ground, with a head to it that entirely covered the face; and it was, perhaps, usually red. A half-kirtle was a similar garment, reaching only somewhat lower than the waist.

Ha! a bastard, &c.] The improbability of this scene is scarcely balanced by the humour. JOHNSON.

venge, and turn all to a merriment, if you take not the heat.5

P. Hen. You whoreson candle-mine, you, how vilely did you speak of me even now, before this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman?

Host. 'Blessing o' your good heart! and so she is, by my troth.

Fal. Didst thou hear me?

P. Hen. Yes; and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by Gads-hill: you knew, I was at your back; and spoke it on purpose, to try my patience.

Fal. No, no, no; not so; I did not think, thou wast within hearing.

P. Hen. I shall drive you then to confess the wilful abuse; and then I know how to handle you.

Fal. No abuse, Hal, on mine honour; no abuse. P. Hen. Not! to dispraise me; and call mepantler, and bread-chipper, and I know not what? Fal. No abuse, Hal.

Poins. No abuse !

none.

Fal. No abuse, Ned, in the world; honest Ned, I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him :-in which doing, I have done the part of a careful friend, and a true subject, and thy father is to give me thanks for it. No abuse, Hal;-none, Ned, none;—no, boys, none.

P. Hen. See now, whether pure fear, and entire cowardice, doth not make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us? Is she of the wicked? Is thine hostess here of the wicked? or is the boy of the wicked? Or honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the wicked?

5

verb,

if you take not the heat.] Alluding, perhaps, to the pro"Strike while the iron is hot."

Poins. Answer, thou dead elm, answer.

Fal. The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph, irrecoverable; and his face is Lucifer's privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. For the boy, there is a good angel about him; but the devil outbids him too.

P. Hen. For the women,

Fal. For one of them, she is in hell already, and burns, poor soul! For the other, I owe her money; and whether she be damned for that, I

know not.

Host. No, I warrant you.

Fal. No, I think thou art not; I think, thou art quit for that: Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which, I think, thou wilt howl.

Host. All victuallers do so: What's a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?

P. Hen. You, gentlewoman,

Dol. What says your grace?

Fal. His grace says that which his flesh rebels against.

Host. Who knocks so loud at door? look to the door there, Francis.

Enter PETO.

P. Hen. Peto, how now? what news?
Peto. The king your father is at Westminster;
And there are twenty weak and wearied posts,
Come from the north: and, as I came along,
I met, and overtook, a dozen captains,

6 - for suffering flesh to be eaten, &c.] By several statutes made in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. for the regulation and observance of fish-days, victuallers, were expressly forbidden to utter flesh in Lent, and to these Falstaff alludes.