SCENE III. Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar’s Head Tavern.
Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.
FALSTAFF.
Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown. I am withered like an old apple-john. Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking. I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer’s horse. The inside of a church! Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.
BARDOLPH.
Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long.
FALSTAFF.
Why, there is it. Come, sing me a song, make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be, virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times—a week; went to a bawdy house not above once in a quarter—in an hour; paid money that I borrowed—three or four times; lived well and in good compass; and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.
BARDOLPH.
Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.
FALSTAFF.
Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life. Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but ’tis in the nose of thee. Thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp.
BARDOLPH.
Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
FALSTAFF.
No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s-head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face. My oath should be, “By this fire, that’s God’s angel.” But thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou ran’st up Gad’s Hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years, God reward me for it!
BARDOLPH.
’Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!