**FALSTAFF** My good lord! God give you...

FALSTAFF My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad: I heard say your lordship was sick: I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I must humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverent care of your health.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

FALSTAFF An't please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE I talk not of his majesty: you would not come when I sent for you.

FALSTAFF And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Well, God mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.

FALSTAFF This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE What tell you me of it? be it as it is.

FALSTAFF It hath its original from much grief, from study and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE I think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.

FALSTAFF Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an't please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.

FALSTAFF I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but how should I be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

FALSTAFF As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

FALSTAFF He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.

FALSTAFF I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE You have misled the youthful prince.

FALSTAFF The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE 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'er-posting that action.

FALSTAFF My lord?

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 to smell a fox.

LORD 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.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE There is not a white hair on your face but should have his effect of gravity.

FALSTAFF His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

LORD 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 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 costermonger times that true valour is turned bear-herd: pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!

FALSTAFF My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him! For the box of the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have chequed him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Well, God send the prince a better companion!

FALSTAFF God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry: I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.

FALSTAFF Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady Peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, and I brandish any thing but a bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head but I am thrust upon it: well, I cannot last ever: but it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is: I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition!

FALSTAFF Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part Two, http://shakespeare.mit.edu/2henryiv/2henryiv.1.2.html