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with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.

FAL. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a colour.

SHAL. A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.

FAL. Fear no colours: go with me to dinner : come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph: I shall be sent for soon at night.

Re-enter PRINCE JOHN, the Lord Chief-Justice;
Officers with them.

CH. JUST. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet:
Take all his company along with him.

FAL. My lord, my lord,—

CH. JUST. I cannot now speak: I will hear you

soon.

Take them away.

PIST. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero contenta.

[Exeunt all but PRINCE JOHN and the
Chief-Justice.

LAN. I like this fair proceeding of the king's:
He hath intent his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for;

But all are banish'd till their conversations

Appear more wise and modest to the world.

CH. JUST. And so they are.

LAN. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord.

CH. JUST. He hath.

LAN. I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,

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We bear our civil swords and native fire

As far as France: I heard a bird so sing,

Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king. [Exeunt.

Come, will you

hence?

EPILOGUE.

SPOKEN BY A DANCER.

First my fear; then my courtesy; last my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my courtesy, my duty ; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove mine onn marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some and I will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven

me: if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do
not agree
with the gentlewomen, which was never seen
before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too
much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will
continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you
merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any
thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless
already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for Old-
castle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My
tongue is
weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you
good night and so kneel down before you; but,
indeed, to pray for the queen.

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Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

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