William Shakespeare: King Henry IV Part I

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

PRINCE.
O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert
taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blush'd extempore.
Thou hadst fire and sword on thy side, and yet thou rann'st away:
what instinct hadst thou for it?

BARD.
My lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these
exhalations?

PRINCE.
I do.

BARD.
What think you they portend?

PRINCE.
Hot livers and cold purses.

BARD.
Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.

PRINCE.
No, if rightly taken, halter.--Here comes lean Jack, here comes
bare-bone.--

[Enter Falstaff.]

How now, my sweet creature of bombast! How long is't ago, Jack,
since thou saw'st thine own knee?

FAL.
My own knee! when I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's
talon in the waist; I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring:
a plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder.
There's villanous news abroad: here was Sir John Bracy from your
father; you must to the Court in the morning.
That same mad fellow of the North, Percy; and he of Wales, that gave
Amaimon the bastinado, and swore the Devil his true liegeman upon the
cross of a Welsh hook,--what a plague call you him?

POINTZ.
O, Glendower.

FAL.
Owen, Owen,--the same; and his son-in-law Mortimer; and old
Northumberland; and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that
runs o' horseback up a hill perpendicular,--

PRINCE.
He that rides at high speed and with his pistol kills a sparrow
flying.

FAL.
You have hit it.

PRINCE.
So did he never the sparrow.

FAL.
Well, that rascal hath good metal in him; he will not run.