_Enter_ PRINCE HENRY _and_ POINS; BARDOLPH _and_ PETO _at some
distance_.
_Poins._ Come, shelter, shelter; I have removed Falstaff’s horse,
and he frets like a gummed velvet.
_Pr. Henry._ Stand close. [_Enter_ FALSTAFF.]
_Falst._ Poins! Poins, and be hanged! Poins!
_Pr. Henry._ Peace, ye fat-kidneyed rascal: what a brawling dost
thou keep!
_Falst._ Where’s Poins, Hal?
_Pr. Henry._ He is walked up to the top of the hill; I’ll go seek
him. [_Pretends to seek_ POINS.]
_Falst._ I am accursed to rob in that thief’s company; the rascal
hath removed my horse, and tied him I know not where. If I travel
but four foot by the squire further afoot, I shall break my wind.
Well, I doubt not but to die a fair death for all this, if I ’scape
hanging for killing that rogue. I have foresworn his company hourly
any time this two-and-twenty years; and yet I am bewitched with the
rogue’s company. If the rascal hath not given me medicines to make
me love him, I’ll be hang’d; it could not be else; I have drunk
medicines.--Poins! Hal! a plague upon you both. Bardolph! Peto!
I’ll starve ere I rob a foot further. An ’twere not as good a deed
as drink, to turn true man, and leave these rogues, I am the
veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth. Eight yards of uneven
ground is three score and ten miles afoot with me; and the
stony-hearted villains know it well enough. A plague upon’t, when
thieves cannot be true to one another! [_His companions whistle._]
Whew! a plague upon you all! Give me my horse, you rogues: give me
my horse, and be hanged!
_Pr. Henry._ Peace, ye fat-guts! lie down; lay thine ear close to
the ground, and list if thou canst hear the tread of travellers.
_Falst._ Have ye any levers to lift me up again, being down?
’Sblood, I’ll not bear mine own flesh so far afoot again for all
the coin in thy father’s exchequer. What a plague mean ye to colt
me thus?
_Pr. Henry._ Thou liest; thou art not colted--thou art uncolted.
_Falst._ I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good
king’s son!
_Pr. Henry._ Out, you rogue! shall I be your ostler?
_Falst._ Go hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters. If I
be ta’en, I’ll peach for this. An I have not ballads made on you
all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison. When
a jest is so forward, and afoot to,--I hate it. [_Enter_ GADSHILL.]
_Gads._ Stand!
_Falst._ So I do, against my will.
But we must here close the quotation. The reader will readily imagine
himself a spectator of the scene, where the thieves rob the true men,
and where retaliation is made upon the thieves by “two of their own
gang, in forcibly taking from them their rich booty;” and he will again
enjoy the conceit of Falstaff with his cups of limed sack, telling
“incomprehensible falsehoods,” in order to cover his own cowardice; his
long rencounter with the two “rogues in buckram suits, growing up into
eleven,” all of whom he peppered and payed till three misbegotten knaves
in “Kendal green (“for it was so dark, Hal, thou couldst not see thy
hand!”) came at his back and let drive at him!” Thus, on the stage, in
the closet, on the road--as a local writer has well observed--Falstaff’s
adventure at Gadshill is likely to be “not only an argument for a week,
laughter for a month, but a good jest forever.”
AUTHORITIES:--Radcliffe.--Caumont.--Culmien.--Hasted.--France
Monumentale.--Matth. Paris.--Hist. Angl.--Hist. of Eng. Civil and
Milit.--Pictorial Hist. of Engl.--Holinshed.--Fabyan.--Hist. and
Antiq. of Rochest.--Hist. of the Castle and Cathed.--Lambard,
1576.--Kentish Tourist.--King.--Grose.--Denne.--Kilburne.--Local
Pamphlets.--Dallaway.--Milit. Archit.--Discourses, Antiquities of
Kent.--Hardynge.--Registrum Roffense, by Thorpe.--Eadmer.--Polyd.
Virg.--Selecta Monumenta.--Camden.--Somner.--Battely.--Antiq.
Itiner., etc. etc.
[Illustration: TEWKESBURY ABBEY.]
[Illustration: May iiii. MCCCCLXXI.]