But let one spirit of the first-born Cain

Reign in all bosoms, that each heart being set

On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,

And darkness be the burier of the dead!

LORD BARDOLPH

Sweet Earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.

MORTON

The lives of all your loving complices

Lean on your health, the which, if you give o‘er

To stormy passion, must perforce decay.

You cast th’event of war, my noble lord,

And summed the account of chance, before you said

‘Let us make head’. It was your presurmise

That in the dole of blows your son might drop.

You knew he walked o‘er perils on an edge,

More likely to fall in than to get o’er.

You were advised his flesh was capable

Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit

Would lift him where most trade of danger ranged.

Yet did you say, ‘Go forth’; and none of this,

Though strongly apprehended, could restrain

The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall’n?

Or what doth this bold enterprise bring forth,

More than that being which was like to be?

LORD BARDOLPH

We all that are engaged to this loss

Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas

That if we wrought out life was ten to one;

And yet we ventured for the gain proposed,

Choked the respect of likely peril feared;

And since we are o’erset, venture again.

Come, we will all put forth body and goods.

MORTON

‘Tis more than time; and, my most noble lord,

I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth,

The gentle Archbishop of York is up

With well-appointed powers. He is a man

Who with a double surety binds his followers.

My lord, your son had only but the corpse,

But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;

For that same word ‘rebellion’ did divide

The action of their bodies from their souls,

And they did fight with queasiness, constrained,

As men drink potions, that their weapons only

Seemed on our side; but, for their spirits and souls,

This word ‘rebellion’, it had froze them up,

As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop

Turns insurrection to religion.

Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts,

He’s followed both with body and with mind,

And doth enlarge his rising with the blood

Of fair King Richard, scraped from Pomfret stones;

Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;

Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land

Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;

And more and less do flock to follow him.

NORTHUMBERLAND

I knew of this before, but, to speak truth,

This present grief had wiped it from my mind.

Go in with me, and counsel every man

The aptest way for safety and revenge.

Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed.

Never so few, and never yet more need. Exeunt

1.2 Enter Sir John Falstaff, ⌈followed by⌉ his Page bearing his sword and buckler

SIR JOHN Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?

PAGE He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water, but, for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.

SIR JOHN Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath o‘erwhelmed all her litter but one. If the Prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then, I have no judgement. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now; but I will set you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master for a jewel—the juvenal the Prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one off his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say his face is a face-royal. God may finish it when he will; ’tis not a hair amiss yet. He may keep it still at a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it. And yet he’ll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he’s almost out of mine, I can assure him. What said Master Dumbleton about the satin for my short cloak and slops?

PAGE He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph. He would not take his bond and yours; he liked not the security.

SIR JOHN Let him be damned like the glutton! Pray God his tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel, a rascally yea-forsooth knave, to bear a gentleman in hand and then stand upon security! The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is through with them in honest taking-up, then they must stand upon security. I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security. I looked a should have sent me two-and-twenty yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me ‘security’! Well, he may sleep in security, for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it; and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lanthorn to light him. Where’s Bardolph?

PAGE He’s gone in Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.

SIR JOHN I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield. An I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.

Enter the Lord Chief Justice and his Servant

PAGE Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the

Prince for striking him about Bardolph.

SIR JOHN ⌈moving away⌉ Wait close; I will not see him.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE (to his Servant) What’s he that goes there ?

SERVANT Falstaff, an’t please your lordship.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE He that was in question for the robbery?