Get this No Fear to go!
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Enter Prince John of LANCASTER, WESTMORELAND, BLUNT, and others |
John of LANCASTER, WESTMORELAND, BLUNT, and others enter. |
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LANCASTER
The heat is past. Follow no further now.
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LANCASTER
The danger’s over: let’s stop here.
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A retreat is sounded. |
The trumpets sound a retreat. |
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Call in the powers, good cousin Westmoreland.
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Call off the operation, Westmoreland.
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Exit WESTMORELAND
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WESTMORELAND exits. |
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Now, Falstaff, where have you been all this while?
When everything is ended, then you come.
These tardy tricks of yours will, on my life,
One time or other break some gallows' back.
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Falstaff, where have you been all this time? When everything is over, that’s when you start. This habit of laziness of yours will bust a gallows to bits one of these days, mark my words.
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25 30 |
FALSTAFF
I would be sorry, my lord, but it should be thus. I never knew
yet but rebuke and check was the reward of valor. Do you
think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet? Have I in my poor
and old motion the expedition of thought? I have speeded
hither with the very extremest inch of possibility. I have
foundered ninescore and odd posts, and here, travel-tainted
as I am, have in my pure and immaculate valor taken Sir
John Colevile of the Dale, a most furious knight and
valorous enemy. But what of that? He saw me and yielded,
that I may justly say, with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome,
“There, cousin, I came, saw, and overcame.”
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FALSTAFF
I’m sorry to hear you say that: I never realized that brave behavior should be rewarded with scolding and admonishing. Do you think I’m a bird, or an arrow, or a bullet? With this old, broken-down body, do you think I can move as fast as thought? I’ve gotten here as fast as humanly possible. I’ve burned out more than 180 horses, and—even though I’m spent from all that travel—I’ve managed, with my extraordinary bravery, to capture Sir John Coleville of the Valley, a brave knight and terrible enemy. But so what? He simply saw me and surrendered. So I can say, just like Julius Caesar, that “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
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LANCASTER
It was more of his courtesy than your deserving.
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LANCASTER
He was just being polite; it’s not as if you did something to deserve it.
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35 |
FALSTAFF
I know not. Here he is, and here I yield him. And I beseech
your Grace let it be booked with the rest of this day’s deeds,
or, by the Lord, I will have it in a particular ballad else, with
mine own picture on the top on ’t, Colevile kissing my foot;
to the which course if I be enforced, if you do not all show
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FALSTAFF
I don’t know about that. Here he is: I turn him over to you. Please, sir, have it added to the record of things accomplished today. If you don’t, I’ll have a ballad printed about it, with a picture of Coleville kissing my foot on the cover. And if I’m forced to do that, and I
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