William Shakespeare: King Henry IV Part II

ACT II. 2. SCENE II. London. Another street. (continued)

PRINCE.
Marry, I tell thee it is not meet that I should be sad, now my father
is sick: albeit I could tell to thee, as to one it pleases me, for
fault of a better, to call my friend, I could be sad, and sad indeed too.

POINS.
Very hardly upon such a subject.

PRINCE.
By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil's book as thou
and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man.
But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick:
and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from
me all ostentation of sorrow.

POINS.
The reason?

PRINCE.
What wouldst thou think of me, if I should weep?

POINS.
I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

PRINCE.
It would be every man's thought; and thou art a blessed fellow to
think as every man thinks: never a man's thought in the world keeps
the road-way better than thine: every man would think me an
hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought to
think so?

POINS.
Why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed
to Falstaff.

PRINCE.
And to thee.

POINS.
By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it with mine own
ears: the worst that they can say of me is that I am a second
brother and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two
things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph.

[Enter Bardolph and Page.]

PRINCE.
And the boy that I gave Falstaff: 'a had him from me Christian;
and look, if the fat villain have not transformed him ape.

BARDOLPH.
God save your grace!