Falstaff. Have a mind to silence and let bigger men speak for you.
Launce. Then I can tell who will do all the tongue-wagging, sir, for I spy none here that is bigger i’ the girth than yourself.
Falstaff. As for the girth, Shaveling, that cometh of sack.
Trinculo. And pillage of the larder, too, or I’m no true woman’s son.
Falstaff. No inn within this heathen isle, no sack within the inn! Is this a fit place to bring a good Christian knight? ’Twere enough to make a man of my sanguine and fiery composition turn Muscovite on the instant, for your Muscovite, as I take it, is a most ungodly knave, and an infidel to boot, and without a moderate deal of sack, such as is needful for a man of my kidney, how is Christendom to be kept on its legs? What gives the justice discretion? Why, sack! What gives the lover whereby to gain the hand of his mistress? Why, sack! What gives the young man a merry heart and the old man a sanguine favour? Why, sack! What gives the soldier courage in the day of battle? Why, sack! Marry, then, he that hath his bellyful of sack hath discretion, courage, a ruddy visage, a merry heart and a nimble tongue.
Launce [aside] The discretion that cometh with what he calls sack is e’en but a scurvy kind of discretion, to my thinking, for all of the stout gentleman’s saying. Here’s Crab, my dog, and he be not so niggard of his tongue, could tell so much as that comes to, on any day i’ the week.
Falstaff. What be these folk that forswear sack? Why, lean anatomies with not so much blood in their bodies as would suffice for a flea’s breakfast. The skin hangs upon their bones for all the world like a loose garment. You may feel the wind blow through their bodies. ’Twere a simple abuse of terms to call such starvelings men: your poor forked radish would become the name better.
Miranda. This stout knight hath a nimble wit, in sooth,
But yet he doth not please me, for his eye
Bespeaks wanton desires, intemperate loves,