Page 1047 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

No, no, no; not so. I did not think thou wast [300] within hearing.

PRINCE
I shall drive you then to confess the willful abuse, and then I know how to
handle you.

FALSTAFF
No abuse, Hal, o’ mine honour, no abuse.

PRINCE
Not to dispraise me and call me pantler and [305] bread-chipper and I know
not what?

FALSTAFF
No abuse, Hal.

POINS
No abuse?

FALSTAFF
No abuse, Ned, i’ the world. Honest Ned, none. I dispraised him before the
wicked, that the wicked [310] might not fall in love with thee. In which doing,
I have done the part of a careful friend and a true subject, and thy father is to

give me thanks for it. No abuse, Hal. None, Ned, none. No, faith, boys, none.

PRINCE
See now, whether pure fear and entire cowardice [315] doth not make thee
wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us. Is she of the wicked? Is
thine hostess here of the wicked? Or is thy boy of the wicked? Or honest
Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the wicked?

POINS
Answer, thou dead elm, answer. [320]

FALSTAFF
The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph irrecoverable, and his face is Lucifer’s
privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. For the boy,