Act 4, Scene 3

Another part of the forest.

[Alarum. Excursions. Enter Falstaff and Colevile, meeting.]
Sir John Falstaff
2020 What 's your name, sir? of what condition are you, and of
2021 what place, I pray?
Sir John Colevile
2022 I am a knight sir; and my name is Colevile of the Dale.
Sir John Falstaff
2023 Well, then, Colevile is your name, a knight is your degree, and
2024 your place the dale: Colevile shall be still your name, a traitor
2025 your degree, and the dungeon your place, a place deep enough; so
2026 shall you be still Colevile of the dale.
Sir John Colevile
2027 Are not you Sir John Falstaff?
Sir John Falstaff
2028 As good a man as he, sir, whoe'er I am. Do ye yield, sir? or shall I
2029 sweat for you? If I do sweat, they are the drops of thy lovers, and
2030 they weep for thy death: therefore rouse up fear and trembling,
2031 and do observance to my mercy.
Sir John Colevile
2032 I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought yield me.
Sir John Falstaff
2033 I have a whole school of tongues in this belly of mine, and not a
2034 tongue of them all speaks any other word but my name. An I had but
2035 a belly of any indifferency, I were simply the most active fellow in
2036 Europe: my womb, my womb, my womb undoes me.
2037 Here comes our general.
[Enter Prince John of Lancaster, Westmoreland, Blunt, and others.]
Prince John of Lancaster
2038 The heat is past; follow no further now:
2039 Call in the powers, good cousin Westmoreland.
[Exit Westmoreland.]
Prince John of Lancaster
2040 Now, Falstaff, where have you been all this while?
2041 When everything is ended, then you come:
2042 These tardy tricks of yours will, on my life,
2043 One time or other break some gallows' back.
Sir John Falstaff
2044 I would be sorry, my lord, but it should be thus: I never knew yet
2045 but rebuke and check was the reward of valour. Do you think me a
2046 swallow, an arrow, or a bullet? have I, in my poor and old motion,
2047 the expedition of thought? I have speeded hither with the very
2048 extremest inch of possibility; I have foundered nine score and odd
2049 posts: and here, travel-tainted as I am, have, in my pure and
2050 immaculate valour, taken Sir John Colevile of the dale, a most furious
2051 knight and valorous enemy. But what of that? he saw me, and yielded;
2052 that I may justly say, with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, "I came,
2053 saw, and overcame."
Prince John of Lancaster
2054 It was more of his courtesy than your deserving.
Sir John Falstaff
2055 I know not: here he is, and here I yield him: and I beseech your
2056 grace, let it be booked with the rest of this day's deeds; or, by the
2057 Lord, I will have it in a particular ballad else, with mine own
2058 picture on the top on't, Colevile kissing my foot: to the which
2059 course if I be enforced, if you do not all show like gilt twopences to
2060 me, and I in the clear sky of fame o'ershine you as much as the full
2061 moon doth the cinders of the element, which show like pins' heads to
2062 her, believe not the word of the noble: therefore let me have right,
2063 and let desert mount.
Prince John of Lancaster
2064 Thine 's too heavy to mount.
Sir John Falstaff
2065 Let it shine, then.
Prince John of Lancaster
2066 Thine 's too thick to shine.
Sir John Falstaff
2067 Let it do something, my good lord, that may do me good, and
2068 call it what you will.
Prince John of Lancaster
2069 Is thy name Colevile?
Sir John Colevile
2070 It is, my lord.
Prince John of Lancaster
2071 A famous rebel art thou, Colevile.
Sir John Falstaff
2072 And a famous true subject took him.
Sir John Colevile
2073 I am, my lord, but as my betters are
2074 That led me hither: had they been ruled by me,
2075 You should have won them dearer than you have.
Sir John Falstaff
2076 I know not how they sold themselves: but thou, like a kind
2077 fellow, gavest thyself away gratis; and I thank thee for thee.
[Re-enter Westmoreland.]
Prince John of Lancaster
2078 Now, have you left pursuit?
Earl of Westmoreland
2079 Retreat is made and execution stay'd.
Prince John of Lancaster
2080 Send Colevile with his confederates
2081 To York, to present execution.
2082 Blunt, lead him hence; and see you guard him sure.
[Exeunt Blunt and others with Colevile.]
Prince John of Lancaster
2083 And now dispatch we toward the court, my lords:
2084 I hear the king my father is sore sick:
2085 Our news shall go before us to his majesty,
2086 Which, cousin, you shall bear to comfort him,
2087 And we with sober speed will follow you.
Sir John Falstaff
2088 My lord, I beseech you, give me leave to go through Gloucestershire:
2089 and, when you come to court, stand my good lord, pray, in your good
2090 report.
Prince John of Lancaster
2091 Fare you well, Falstaff: I, in my condition,
2092 Shall better speak of you than you deserve.
[Exeunt all but Falstaff.]
Sir John Falstaff
2093 I would you had but the wit: 'twere better than your dukedom.
2094 Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me;
2095 nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that 's no marvel, he drinks
2096 no wine. There 's never none of these demure boys come to any proof;
2097 for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many
2098 fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and
2099 then, when they marry, they get wenches: they are generally fools
2100 and cowards; which some of us should be too, but for inflammation.
2101 A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me
2102 into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy
2103 vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive,
2104 full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes; which, delivered o'er to
2105 the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit.
2106 The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the
2107 blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale,
2108 which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris
2109 warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes:
2110 it illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to all
2111 the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital
2112 commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the
2113 heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of
2114 courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon
2115 is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning a mere
2116 hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in
2117 act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the
2118 cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean,
2119 sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent
2120 endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he
2121 is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first
2122 humane principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin
2123 potations and to addict themselves to sack.
[Enter Bardolph.]
Sir John Falstaff
2124 How now, Bardolph!
Bardolph
2125 The army is discharged all and gone.
Sir John Falstaff
2126 Let them go. I'll through Gloucestershire; and there will I visit
2127 Master Robert Shallow, esquire: I have him already tempering between
2128 my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal with him. Come away.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 2023rhetorical device
“Colevile is your name, a knight is your degree, and your place the dale”
Falstaff seizes on Colevile's name, rank, and home in a triple repetition — 'name... degree... place' — and then inverts each term: name becomes a traitor's label, degree becomes 'traitor,' place becomes 'the dungeon.' The device is called tricolon (a set of three parallel clauses), and Shakespeare gives it to Falstaff here as comic, swaggering logic that turns a surrendered knight into Falstaff's trophy by sheer verbal trick.
TLN 2042wordplay
“tardy tricks of yours will, on my life, One time or other break some gallows' back”
Prince John jokes that Falstaff's laziness ('tardy tricks') will eventually earn him a hanging — the gallows will buckle under his enormous weight before it can execute him. The joke works on two levels: tardiness in a soldier is a capital offence, and Falstaff is so fat that the gallows itself might break. Prince John delivers this as a cold, back-handed witticism rather than true warmth.
TLN 2047archaic vocab
“the expedition of thought? I have speeded hither with the very extremest inch of possibility; I have foundered nine score and odd posts”
'Expedition' here means speed or swiftness, not a journey. 'Posts' are post-horses — horses kept at staging posts along the road and hired out to relay travelers as fast as possible, the Elizabethan equivalent of changing cars. 'Foundered' means lamed or broken down from overwork. Falstaff is sarcastically claiming he rode so hard that he crippled some 180-odd post-horses — a comic exaggeration since he clearly arrived late and on foot.
TLN 2052classical allusion
“with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, "I came, saw, and overcame."”
Falstaff is quoting Julius Caesar's famous three-word dispatch after his lightning victory over Pharnaces at Zela in 47 BCE — 'Veni, vidi, vici' ('I came, I saw, I conquered'). 'Hook-nosed' was a stock description of Caesar in Shakespeare's England. Falstaff borrows the most celebrated boast in history to describe walking up to a man who simply surrendered to him without a blow.
TLN 2059cultural context
“show like gilt twopences to me, and I in the clear sky of fame o'ershine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the element”
A 'gilt twopence' was a copper or base-silver two-penny coin washed with a thin coat of gold to make it look like a gold sovereign — a cheap counterfeit that fooled no one up close. Falstaff threatens that if Prince John does not record his deeds, he will publish a ballad making himself look so glorious that all the real soldiers will appear as fake as gilt twopences beside genuine gold — and as dim as sparks ('cinders of the element') beside the full moon. The image mixes economics and astronomy to threaten maximum humiliation.
TLN 2094cultural context
“this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that 's no marvel, he drinks no wine”
In Elizabethan medical theory (Galenic humoralism), the body was governed by four humors — blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile — and blood was the warm, cheerful humor associated with laughter, generosity, and courage. A 'sober-blooded' person had cold, sluggish blood and was by definition incapable of merriment or valor. Falstaff diagnoses Prince John's coldness and humorlessness as a physiological condition directly caused by his abstaining from wine, which was believed to heat and enliven the blood.
TLN 2097archaic vocab
“thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness”
'Green-sickness' (also called chlorosis) was a real medical diagnosis of the period, understood as an anemia-like condition affecting young women — pale, listless, without appetite for food or love — thought to result from cold, thin blood. Falstaff applies it sardonically to young men who drink water and eat fish instead of meat and wine: their cold, watery diet makes them as weak and pallid as girls with green-sickness, producing cowardice and fathering daughters ('wenches') rather than sons.
TLN 2101archaic vocab
“A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive”
'Sherris-sack' is a dry white wine from the Jerez (Xeres/Sherris) region of Spain — the ancestor of modern sherry. In Galenic medical theory, wine was warm and dry and could 'ascend' from the stomach to the brain as a vapor, clearing away the cold, damp 'vapors' that dulled the mind. 'Apprehensive' means quick to perceive; 'forgetive' (not standard, probably Falstaff's coinage) means fertile in invention, creative — 'forging' new ideas. 'Crudy' means crude, raw, undigested.
TLN 2107cultural context
“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”
In Elizabethan physiology (Galenic medicine), the liver was the organ that produced blood and was also the seat of courage. A hot, well-supplied liver produced red blood and a brave man; a cold liver produced pale blood and a coward. 'Pusillanimity' means smallness of spirit — the opposite of magnanimity. Falstaff argues that wine heats the liver, drives warm blood outward to the extremities, and thereby lights up the face like a beacon — turning cowards into soldiers.
TLN 2127wordplay
“I have him already tempering between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal with him”
Falstaff uses two legal-document metaphors for his plan to exploit Justice Shallow: 'tempering' means softening wax by rolling it warm between the fingers in preparation for a seal, and 'seal with him' means to conclude a binding legal agreement by pressing a personal seal into hot wax. Both verbs describe the final step of making a deed or bond official in Elizabethan law. The metaphor casts Shallow as a wax that Falstaff is already softening up — pliable, ready to be stamped with whatever impression Falstaff wants.