SCENE VII.
A publick Place near Westminster-Abbey.
Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.
1 Groom.
More rushes,* note more rushes.
2 Groom.
The trumpets have sounded twice.
1 Groom.
It will be two of the clock ere they come
from the Coronation: despatch, despatch.
[Exeunt Grooms.
Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph, and the boy.
Fal.
Stand here by me, master Robert Shallow, I
-- 351 --
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.
Pist.
Bless thy lungs, good Knight.
Fal.
Come here, Pistol; stand behind me. O, if I
had had time to have made new liveries, I would have
bestow'd the thousand pound I borrow'd of you. [To
Shallow.] But it is no matter, this poor Show doth
better; this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.
Shal.
It doth so.
Fal.
It shews my earnestness of affection.
Pist.
It doth so.
Fal.
My devotion.
Pist.
It doth, it doth, it doth.3 note
Fal.
As it were, to ride day and night, and not to
deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to
shift me.
Shal.
It is most certain.
Fal.
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.
Pist.
'Tis semper idem; for absque hoc nihil est. 'Tis
all in every part.4 note
Shal.
'Tis so, indeed.
Pist.
My Knight, I will enflame thy noble liver,
And make thee rage.
Thy Dol and Helen of thy noble thoughts
Is in base durance and contagious prison;
-- 352 --
Haul'd thither by mechanick dirty hands.
Rouze up revenge from Ebon den, with fell Alecto's snake,
For Dol is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.
Fal.
I will deliver her.
Pist.
There roar'd the sea; and trumpet-clangour
sounds.
Samuel Johnson [1765], The plays of William Shakespeare, in eight volumes, with the corrections and illustrations of Various Commentators; To which are added notes by Sam. Johnson (Printed for J. and R. Tonson [and] C. Corbet [etc.], London) [word count] [S11001].
