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DOLL.

Goodman death, goodman bones!

HOSTESS.

Thou atomy, thou!

DOLL.

Come, you thin thing! come, you rascal!

FIRST BEADLE.

Very well. Exeunt

SCENE V. Westminster. Near the Abbey

Enter GROOMS, strewing rushes

FIRST GROOM.

More rushes, more rushes!

SECOND GROOM.

The trumpets have sounded twice.

THIRD GROOM.

'Twill be two o'clock ere they come from the

coronation. Dispatch, dispatch. Exeunt

Trumpets sound, and the KING and his train pass

over the stage. After them enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW,

PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and page

FALSTAFF.

Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow; I will make the

King do you grace. I will leer upon him, as 'a comes by; and do

but mark the countenance that he will give me.

PISTOL.

God bless thy lungs, good knight!

FALSTAFF.

Come here, Pistol; stand behind me. [To SHALLOW] O, if

I had had to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the

thousand pound I borrowed of you. But 'tis no matter; this poor

show doth better; this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

SHALLOW.

It doth so.

FALSTAFF.

It shows my earnestness of affection-

SHALLOW.

It doth so.

FALSTAFF.

My devotion-

SHALLOW.

It doth, it doth, it doth.

FALSTAFF.

As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate,

not to remember, not to have patience to shift me-

SHALLOW.

It is best, certain.

FALSTAFF.

But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with

desire to see him; thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs

else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.

PISTOL.

'Tis 'semper idem' for 'obsque hoc nihil est.' 'Tis all in every part.

SHALLOW.

'Tis so, indeed.

PISTOL.

My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver

And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,

Is in base durance and contagious prison;

Hal'd thither

By most mechanical and dirty hand.

Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto's snake,

For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.

FALSTAFF.

I will deliver her.

[Shouts,within, and the trumpets sound]

PISTOL.

There roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.

Enter the KING and his train, the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE

among them

FALSTAFF.

God save thy Grace, King Hal; my royal Hal!

PISTOL.

The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

FALSTAFF.

God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING.

My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.

CHIEF JUSTICE.

Have you your wits? Know you what 'tis you speak?

FALSTAFF.

My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING.

I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!

I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,

So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;

But being awak'd, I do despise my dream.

Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;

Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape

For thee thrice wider than for other men-

Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;

Presume not that I am the thing I was,

For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,

That I have turn'd away my former self;

So will I those that kept me company.

When thou dost hear I am as I have been,

Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,

The tutor and the feeder of my riots.

Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,

As I have done the rest of my misleaders,

Not to come near our person by ten mile.

For competence of life I will allow you,

That lack of means enforce you not to evils;

And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,

We will, according to your strengths and qualities,

Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,

To see perform'd the tenour of our word.

Set on. Exeunt the KING and his train

FALSTAFF.

Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.

SHALLOW.

Yea, marry, Sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

FALSTAFF.

That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at

this; I shall be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must

seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the

man