Chief Justice.—What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
Sir John Falstaff.—A wassel candle, my lord: all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.
Chief Justice.—There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity.
Sir John Falstaff.—His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.
Chief Justice__You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.
Sir John Falstaff.—Not so, my lord; your ill angel is light; but, I hope, he that looks upon me will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valour is turned bearherd. Pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, consider not the capacities of us that are young: you measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls; and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.
Chief Justice.—Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
Sir John Falstaff.—My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a round belly. For my voice,—I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To approve my youth farther, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o’ the ear that the Prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk, and old sack.
Chief Justice.—Well, God send the Prince a better companion!
Sir John Falstaff.—God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.