William Shakespeare: King Henry IV Part II

ACT I. 2. SCENE II. London. A street. (continued)

FALSTAFF.
An 't please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned
with some discomfort from Wales.

CHIEF JUSTICE.
I talk not of his majesty: you would not come when I
sent for you.

FALSTAFF.
And I hear, moreover, his highness is fall'n into this same
whoreson apoplexy.

CHIEF JUSTICE.
Well God mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.

FALSTAFF.
This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an 't please
your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

CHIEF JUSTICE.
What tell you me of it? be it as it is.

FALSTAFF.
It hath it original from much grief, from study and perturbation
of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen:
it is a kind of deafness.

CHIEF JUSTICE.
I think you are fallen into the disease, for you hear not
what I say to you.

FALSTAFF.
Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an 't please you, it
is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that
I am troubled withal.

CHIEF JUSTICE.
To punish you by the heels would amend the attention
of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.

FALSTAFF.
I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient: your lordship
may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty;
but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions,
the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.

CHIEF JUSTICE.
I sent for you, when there were matters against you
for your life, to come speak with me.

FALSTAFF.
As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws
of this land-service, I did not come.