Page 1087 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male [90]
green-sickness, and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They are
generally fools and cowards, which some of us should be too, but for
inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends

me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and [95] crudy
vapors which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of
nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered o’er to the voice, the
tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of

your excellent sherris is the warming of the [100] blood, which, before cold
and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity
and cowardice. But the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards
to the parts extremes. It illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning

to all the rest of this [105] little kingdom, man, to arm, and then the vital
commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart,
who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage, and
this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing [110]

without sack, for that sets it a-work, and learning a mere hoard of gold kept
by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it
that Prince Harry is valiant, for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his
father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, [115] manured, husbanded,

and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile
sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the
first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin
potations and to addict themselves to sack. [120]

Enter Bardolph.
How now, Bardolph?

BARDOLPH
The army is discharged all and gone.

FALSTAFF
Let them go. I’ll through Gloucestershire, and there will I visit Master Robert
Shallow, esquire. I have him already tempering between my finger and my

[125] thumb, and shortly will I seal with him. Come away.
[Exeunt.]

Scene IV IT