Page 1008 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound. Your day’s service at
Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s Hill. You
may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o’erposting that [145] action.

FALSTAFF
My lord?

CHIEF JUSTICE
But since all is well, keep it so. Wake not a sleeping wolf.

FALSTAFF
To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox. [150]

CHIEF JUSTICE
What! You are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

FALSTAFF
A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow. If I did say of wax, my growth would
approve the truth.

CHIEF JUSTICE
There is not a white hair in your face but [155] should have his effect of
gravity.

FALSTAFF

His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

CHIEF JUSTICE

You follow the young prince up and down like his ill angel.

FALSTAFF
Not so, my lord. Your ill angel is light, but I [160] hope he that looks upon me
will take me without weighing. And yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot
go. I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these costermongers’ times
that true valour is turned bearherd. Pregnancy is made a tapster, and [hath]

his quick wit [165] wasted in giving reckonings. All the other gifts appertinent
to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry.