Fal.

Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack: our soldiers shall march through; we'll to Sutton Co'fil' ^note to-night.

Bard.

Will you give me money, captain?

Fal.

Lay out, lay out.

Bard.

This bottle makes an angel.

Fal.

An if it do ^note, take it for thy labour; and if it make twenty, take them all; I'll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at ^note town's end.

Bard.

I will, captain: farewell.

Fal.

If I be not ^note ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the king's press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty ^note soldiers, three hundred ^note and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeoman's sons; inquire ^note me out contracted bachelors,

such as had been asked twice on the banns ^note; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as lieve hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver ^note worse than a struck fowl ^note or a hurt wild-duck ^note. I pressed ^note me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins'-heads, and they have bought ^note out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked ^note his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters and ostlers ^note trade-fallen, the cankers of a calm world and a long ^note peace, ten ^note times more dishonourable ^note ragged than an old faced ^note ancient: and such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have ^note bought out their services, that you would think that I had ^note a hundred and fifty tattered ^note prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through ^note Coventry with them, that's flat: nay, and the villains march wide betwixt ^note the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There's but ^note a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over

the shoulders like an herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at ^note Saint Alban's, or the red-nose ^note innkeeper of Daventry ^note. But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge.