William Shakespeare: King Henry IV Part I

ACT II. 4. Scene IV. Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar's-Head Tavern. (continued)

PRINCE.
That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and
yet the son of a woman! His industry is up-stairs and down-stairs;
his eloquence the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet of Percy's
mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven
dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife,
Fie upon this quiet life! I want work. O my sweet Harry, says she,
how many hast thou kill'd to-day? Give my roan horse a drench,
says he; and answers, Some fourteen, an hour after,--a trifle, a
trifle.
I pr'ythee, call in Falstaff: I'll play Percy, and that damn'd
brawn shall play Dame Mortimer his wife. Rivo! says the drunkard.
Call in ribs, call in tallow.

[Enter Falstaff, Gadshill, Bardolph, and Peto; followed by
Francis with wine.]

POINTZ.
Welcome, Jack: where hast thou been?

FAL.
A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too! marry, and
amen!--
Give me a cup of sack, boy.--Ere I lead this life long, I'll sew
nether-stocks, and mend them and foot them too. A plague of all
cowards!--
Give me a cup of sack, rogue.--Is there no virtue extant?

[Drinks.]

PRINCE.
Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter? pitiful-hearted
butter, that melted at the sweet tale of the Sun! if thou didst,
then behold that compound.

FAL.
You rogue, here's lime in this sack too: there is nothing but roguery
to be found in villainous man: yet a coward is worse than a cup of
sack with lime in it, a villanous coward.--Go thy ways, old Jack: die
when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face
of the Earth, then am I a shotten herring. There live not three good
men unhang'd in England; and one of them is fat, and grows old: God
help the while! a bad world, I say.
I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or any thing. A plague of
all cowards! I say still.

PRINCE.
How now, wool-sack? what mutter you?