you see these meteors? do you behold these
exhalations? 357
Prince. I do.
Bard. What think you they portend?
Prince. Hot livers and cold purses. 360
Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.
Prince. No, if rightly taken, halter.—
Enter Falstaff.
Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone.—
How now, my sweet creature of bombast! How
long is 't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own
knee? 366
Fal. My own knee! When I was about thy
years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the
waist; I could have crept into any alderman's
thumb-ring. A plague of sighing and grief! it
blows a man up like a bladder. There's villain-
ous news abroad: here was Sir John Bracy from
your father: you must to the court in the morn-
ing. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy,
and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the basti-
nado and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore
the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a
Welsh hook—what a plague call you him? 378
Poins. O, Glendower.
Fal. Owen, Owen, the same; and his son-in-
law Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and
that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs
o' horseback up a hill perpendicular.
Prince. He that rides at high speed and with
his pistol kills a sparrow flying. 385
357 exhalations: meteors
364 bombast: cotton stuffing
375 Amaimon: a devil
bastinado: a cudgelling
378 Welsh hook: weapon resembling a halberd
