Bardolph. "Will you give me money, captain ?" Falstaff. "Lay out, lay out." Bardolph. "This bottle makes an angel." Falstaff. "An if it do, take it for thy labour; and if it make twenty, take them all; I'll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at town's end." Bardolph. "I will, captain: farewell." Falstaff soliloquizes, and gives anything but a flattering picture of his soldiers. "There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like an herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge." In Act V. Scene 3 shows us the knight on the battlefield. Enter the PRINCE. Prince. "What, stand'st thou idle here? lend me thy sword : Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff Falstaff. "O Hal, I prithee, give me leave to breathe awhile. Turk Gregory never did such deeds in arms as I have done this day. I have paid Percy, I have made him sure." Prince. "He is, indeed; and living to kill thee. I prithee, lend me thy sword." Falstaff. "Nay, Hal, if Percy be alive, thou gett'st not my sword; but take my pistol, if thou wilt." Prince. "Give it me: what, is it in the case?” Falstaff. "Ay, Hal; 'tis hot, 'tis hot; there's that will sack a city." [The Prince draws it out, and finds it Prince. to be a bottle of sack. What, is it a time to jest and dally now?" [He throws the bottle at him. Exit. In the next scene, when the strife is over, Falstaff pulls himself together with the reflec tion: He that "I'll follow, as they say, for reward. rewards me, God reward him! If I do grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do." CHAPTER XII. SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.-"A RED LATTICE." KING HENRY V. KING HENRY VI. - JACK CADE. I N the "Second Part of King Henry IV.,' Falstaff's fondness for sack is still abundantly shown. In his interview with the chief justice, Act I. Scene 2, the knight defends the character of the Prince, and affirms, "for the box of the ear that the Prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack." In the same scene Falstaff declares, “If it be a hot day, and I brandish anything but my bottle, I would I might never spit white again." Halliwell says: "To spit white is equivalent to vowing, would he might never drink again, for to spit white is the result of inward heat produced by indulgence in drinking." Cowden Clarke, on the contrary, observes: "Spit white is reckoned a sign of thirst, which Falstaff, with his relish for wine, desires to feel, as giving anticipating zest." Spungins, in Massinger's "Virgin Martyr," says: "Had I been a Pagan still, I should not have spit white for want of drink." In Act II. Scene 1, the hostess does her best to get payment from the knight, and "that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him.” She tells the sheriff's officers that Falstaff "is indited to dinner at the Lubbard's Head, in Lumbert Street, to Master Smooth's, the silkman." "The Lubbard's Head" is a colloquial corruption of the Libbard's (Leopard's) or more probably of the Lombard's Head. "Malmsey-nose." Malmsey, or Malvasy, is the name of a sweet wine made from the Malvoisie grape ; and the hostess quickly forms this into an appropriate name for the vinously red-nosed Bardolph. Hostess. "By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers." Falstaff. Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking; and for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in water-work, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings and these fly-bitten tapestries." |