Act 2. Scene II - Page 2

would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

PRINCE HENRY
It would be every man's thought; and thou art a
blessed fellow to think as every man thinks: never
a man's thought in the world keeps the road-way
better than thine: every man would think me an
hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most
worshipful thought to think so?

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

PRINCE HENRY
And to thee.

POINS
By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it
with my own ears: the worst that they can say of
me is that I am a second brother and that I am a
proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I
confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph.

Enter BARDOLPH and Page

PRINCE HENRY
And the boy that I gave Falstaff: a' had him from
me Christian; and look, if the fat villain have not
transformed him ape.

BARDOLPH
God save your grace!

PRINCE HENRY
And yours, most noble Bardolph!

BARDOLPH
Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you
be blushing? wherefore blush you now? What a
maidenly man-at-arms are you become! Is't such a
matter to get a pottle-pot's maidenhead?

Page
A' calls me e'en now, my lord, through a red
lattice, and I could discern no part of his face
from the window: at last I spied his eyes, and
methought he had made two holes in the ale-wife's
new petticoat and so peeped through.

PRINCE HENRY
Has not the boy profited?

BARDOLPH
Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!

Page
Away, you rascally Althaea's dream, away!

PRINCE HENRY
Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy?

Page
Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamed she was delivered
of a fire-brand; and therefore I call him her dream.

PRINCE HENRY
A crown's worth of good interpretation: there 'tis,
boy.

POINS
O, that this good blossom could be kept from
cankers! Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.

BARDOLPH
An you do not make him hanged among you, the
gallows shall have wrong.

PRINCE HENRY
And how doth thy master, Bardolph?

BARDOLPH
Well, my lord. He heard of your grace's coming to
town: there's a letter for you.

POINS
Delivered with good respect. And how doth the
martlemas, your master?

BARDOLPH
In bodily health, sir.

POINS
Marry, the immortal part needs a physician; but
that moves not him: though that be sick, it dies
not.

PRINCE HENRY
I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my
dog; and he holds his place; for look you how be writes.

POINS
[Reads] 'John Falstaff,