William Shakespeare: King Henry IV Part II

ACT III. 2. SCENE II. Gloucestershire. Before Justice Shallow's house.

[Enter Shallow and Silence, meeting; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart,
Feeble, Bullcalf, a Servant or two with them.]

SHALLOW.
Come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand, sir,
give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by the rood! And how
doth my good cousin Silence?

SILENCE.
Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

SHALLOW.
And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest
daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?

SILENCE.
Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow!

SHALLOW.
By yea and nay, sir, I dare say my cousin William is become
a good scholar: he is at Oxford still, is he not?

SILENCE.
Indeed, sir, to my cost.

SHALLOW.
A' must, then, to the inns o' court shortly. I was once of
Clement's Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet.

SILENCE.
You were called "lusty Shallow" then, cousin.

SHALLOW.
By the mass, I was called any thing; and I would have done any thing
indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of
Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and
Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in
all the inns o' court again: and I may say to you, we knew where the
bona-robas were and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was
Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of
Norfolk.

SILENCE.
This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?

SHALLOW.
The same Sir John, the very same. I see him break Skogan's head at the
court-gate, when a' was a crack not thus high: and the very same
day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind
Gray's Inn.
Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of my
old acquaintance are dead!