SHALLOW.
And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? And your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?
SILENCE.
Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow!
SHALLOW.
By yea and no, sir, I dare say my cousin William is become a good scholar. He is at Oxford still, is he not?
SILENCE.
Indeed, sir, to my cost.
SHALLOW.
He must, then, to the Inns o’ Court shortly. I was once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet.
SILENCE.
You were called “lusty Shallow” then, cousin.
SHALLOW.
By the mass, I was called anything, and I would have done anything indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man. You had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns o’ Court again. And I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.
SILENCE.
This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?
SHALLOW.
The same Sir John, the very same. I see him break Scoggin’s head at the court gate, when he was a crack not thus high; and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray’s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent! And to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!
SILENCE.
We shall all follow, cousin.