Henry IV, Part 2: Act 2

Where’s your yeoman?

Yonder he comes, and that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him.

I think I am as like to ride the mare if I have any vantage of ground to get up.

But, for these foolish officers, I beseech you I may have redress against them.

It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration.

It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration.

I say to you, I do desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty employment in the King’s affairs.

And for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal or the German hunting in waterwork is worth a thousand of these bed-hangers and these fly-bitten tapestries.

Come, an ’twere not for thy humors, there’s not a better wench in England.

Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner?

What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name, or to know thy face tomorrow, or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast—with these, and those that were thy peach-colored ones—or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one for superfluity and another for use.

But that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I, for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there...

But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.

Why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed to Falstaff.

He calls me e’en now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window.

Marry, my lord, Althea dreamt she was delivered of a firebrand, and therefore I call him her dream.

PRINCE: Peace! [Reads.] I will imitate the honorable Romans in brevity.
POINS: He sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.

Put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and wait upon him at his table as drawers.

Put not you on the visage of the times
And be, like them, to Percy troublesome.

He had no legs that practiced not his gait...

Fain would I go to meet the Archbishop,
But many thousand reasons hold me back.

Sirrah, here will be the Prince and Master Poins anon, and they will put on two of our jerkins and aprons, and Sir John must not know of it.

Charge me? I scorn you, scurvy companion. What, you poor, base, rascally, cheating lack-linen mate!

God’s light, these villains will make the word as odious as the word “occupy,” which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted.

Hark thee hither, Mistress Doll.

Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days.

Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days.

I’ll forswear keeping house afore I’ll be in these tirrits and frights.

The rogue fled from me like quicksilver.

...and wears his boots very smooth like unto the sign of the Leg, and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories, and such other gambol faculties he has that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the Prince admits him; for the Prince himself is such another.

...and wears his boots very smooth like unto the sign of the Leg, and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories, and such other gambol faculties he has that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the Prince admits him; for the Prince himself is such another.

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

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?

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

By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame
So idly to profane the precious time
When tempest of commotion, like the south
Borne with black vapor, doth begin to melt
And drop upon our bare unarmèd heads.