The Complete Works of William Shakespeare · William Shakespeare
SCENE V. A public place near Westminster Abbey.
Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes. FIRST GROOM. More rushes, more rushes. SECOND GROOM. The trumpets have sounded twice. FIRST GROOM. ’Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the coronation. Dispatch, dispatch. [_Exeunt._] Trumpets sound, and the King and his train pass over the stage. Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph and Page. FALSTAFF. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow. I will make the King do you grace. I will leer upon him as he comes by, and do but mark the countenance that he will give me. PISTOL. God bless thy lungs, good knight! FALSTAFF. Come here, Pistol, stand behind me. O, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. But ’tis no matter, this poor show doth better. This doth infer the zeal I had to see him. SHALLOW. It doth so. FALSTAFF. It shows my earnestness of affection— SHALLOW. It doth so. FALSTAFF. My devotion— SHALLOW. It doth, it doth, it doth. FALSTAFF. As it were, to ride day and night, and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me— SHALLOW. It is best, certain. FALSTAFF. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.
PISTOL. ’Tis _semper idem_, for _obsque hoc nihil est;_ ’tis all in every part. SHALLOW. ’Tis so, indeed. PISTOL. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, And make thee rage. Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts, Is in base durance and contagious prison, Haled thither By most mechanical and dirty hand. Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake, For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth. FALSTAFF. I will deliver her. [_Shouts within. The trumpets sound._] PISTOL. There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds. Enter the King and his train, the Lord Chief Justice among them. FALSTAFF. God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal! PISTOL. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame! FALSTAFF. God save thee, my sweet boy! KING. My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man. CHIEF JUSTICE. Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak? FALSTAFF. My King! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
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