Page 756 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.

FALSTAFF
Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack. Our soldiers
shall march through. We’ll to Sutton Co’fil’ to-night.

BARDOLPH
Will you give me money, captain?

FALSTAFF
Lay out, lay out. [5]

BARDOLPH
This bottle makes an angel.

FALSTAFF
An if it do, take it for thy labor; an if it make twenty, take them all; I’ll answer

the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at town’s end.

BARDOLPH
I will, captain. Farewell. [10]
Exit.

FALSTAFF
If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the

king’s press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers,
three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders,
yeomen’s sons; inquire me [15] out contracted bachelors, such as had been
asked twice on the banes − such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lieve
hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a

struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter,
with [20] hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, and they have
bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients,

corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies − slaves as ragged as
Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked his [25] sores;
and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen,
younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fall’n;