The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [2692]
Ch. Just. “Well, the King has served you and Prince Henry. I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.”
Fals. “Yes, I thank your pretty sweet wit for it; but look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: If it be a hot day, if I brandish any thing but a bottle, would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head but I am thrust upon it. Well I cannot last for ever.—But it was always the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing to make it too common. If you will needs say I am an old man you should give me rest: I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scour'd to nothing with perpetual motion.”
Ch. Just. “Well be honest, be honest, and heaven bless your expedition.”
Falstaff indulges himself here in humourous exaggeration;—these passages are not meant to be taken, nor are we to suppose that they were taken, literally;—but if there was not a ground of truth, if Falstaff had not had such a degree of Military reputation as was capable of being thus humourously amplified and exaggerated, the whole dialogue would have been highly preposterous and absurd, and the acquiescing answer of the Lord Chief Justice singularly improper.—But upon the supposition of Falstaff's being considered, upon the whole, as a good and gallant Officer, the answer is just, and corresponds with the acknowledgment which had a little before been made, “that his days service at Shrewsbury had gilded over his night's exploit at Gads Hill.—You may thank the unquiet time,” says the Chief Justice, “for your quiet o'erposting of that action”; agreeing with what Falstaff says in another place;—“Well, God be thanked for these Rebels, they offend none but the virtuous; I laud them, I praise them.”—Whether this be said in the true spirit of a Soldier or not, I do not determine; it is surely not in that of a mere Coward and Poltroon.
It will be needless to shew, which might be done from a variety of particulars, that Falstaff was known and had consideration at Court. Shallow cultivates him in the idea that a friend at Court is better than a penny in purse: Westmorland speaks to him in the tone of an equal: Upon Falstaff's telling him that he thought his lordship had been already at Shrewsbury, Westmorland replies,—“Faith Sir John, 'tis more than time that I were there, and you too; the King I can tell you looks for us all; we must away all to night.”—“Tut,” says Falstaff, “never fear me, I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.”—He desires, in another place, of my lord John of Lancaster, “that when he goes to Court, he may stand in his good report.” His intercourse and correspondence with both these lords seem easy and familiar. “Go,” says he to the page, “bear this to my Lord of Lancaster, this to the Prince, this to the Earl of Westmorland, and this (for he extended himself on all sides) to old Mrs. Ursula,” whom, it seems, the rogue ought to have married many years before.—But these intimations are needless: We see him ourselves in the Royal Presence; where, certainly, his buffooneries never brought him; never was the Prince of a character to commit so high an indecorum, as to thrust, upon a solemn occasion, a mere Tavern companion into his father's Presence, especially in a moment when he himself deserts his looser character, and takes up that of a Prince indeed.—In a very important scene, where Worcester is expected with proposals from Percy, and wherein he is received, is treated with, and carries back offers of accommodation