Enter Corporal† Nym† and Lieutenant Bardolph†
Bardolph‡ Well met, Corporal Nym.
Nym Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.
Nym For my part, I care not. I say little, but when time shall serve 5there shall be smiles, but that shall be as it may†. I dare not fight, but I will wink† and hold out mine iron†. It is a simple one, but what though? It will toast cheese, and it will endure cold† as another man’s sword will, and there’s an end*†.
Bardolph I will bestow a breakfast to make you friends, and we’ll 10be all three sworn brothers† to France. Let’t be so, good Corporal Nym.
Nym Faith, I will live so long as I may, that’s the certain of it, and when I cannot live any longer I will do as I may†. That is my rest†, that is the rendezvous† of it.
15Bardolph It is certain, corporal, that he is married to Nell Quickly†, and certainly she did you wrong, for you were troth-plight to† her.
Nym I cannot tell†. Things must be as they may. Men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time, 20and some say knives† have edges. It must be as it may. Though‡ patience be a tired mare*†, yet she will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I cannot tell*.
Enter Pistol and Quickly
Bardolph‡ Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife. Good corporal, be patient here.
Pistol‡ Base tyke*†, call’st thou me host? Now by this hand I swear I scorn the term, nor shall my Nell keep lodgers†.
Hostess No, by my troth, not long, for we cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick 30of their needles but it will be thought we keep a bawdy house straight†. [Nym draws his sword†] Oh, welladay, Lady, if he be not hewn*† now, we shall see wilful adultery and murder committed.
[Pistol draws his sword†]
Nym Pish.
35Pistol Pish for thee, Iceland dog†, thou prick-eared cur of Iceland.
Hostess Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour, and put up† your sword.
†[They sheathe their swords]
Pistol Solus, egregious dog? O viper vile! The solus in thy most 40mervailous† face, the solus in thy teeth, and in thy throat, and in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw†, perdy, and, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the solus in thy bowels†, for I can take†, and Pistol’s cock† is up, and flashing fire will follow!
Nym I am not Barbason†, you cannot conjure† me. I have an humour† 45to knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul† with me, Pistol, I will scour† you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms†. If you would walk off I would prick your guts a little in good terms, as I may, and that’s the humour of it.
†Pistol O braggart vile, and damnèd† furious wight, the grave doth 50gape† and doting death is near. Therefore exhale*†!
[They draw their swords]
Bardolph Hear me, hear me what I say. [Draws his sword†] He that strikes the first stroke, I’ll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.
Pistol An oath of mickle might†, and fury shall abate. Give me thy 55fist, thy forefoot to me give. Thy spirits are most tall†.
Nym I will cut thy throat one time or other in fair terms, that is the humour of it.
Pistol Couple a gorge*†, that is the word. I defy thee† again! O hound of Crete, thinkst thou my spouse to get? No, to the‡ 60Spital† go, and from the powdering tub† of infamy fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind†, Doll Tearsheet†, she by name, and her espouse. I have, and I will hold† the quondam† Quickly for the only she, and pauca†, there’s enough. Go to*†.
Enter the Boy†.
Boy‡ Mine host† Pistol, you must come to my master†, and your*† 65hostess. He is very sick, and would to bed. Good Bardolph, put *thy face† between his sheets and do the office of a warming pan. Faith, he’s very ill.
Bardolph Away, you rogue.
Hostess‡ By my troth, he’ll yield the crow a pudding† one of these 70days. The king has killed his heart. Good husband, come home‡ presently†.
Bardolph Come, shall I make you two friends? We must to France together. Why the devil should we keep knives to cut one another’s throats?
Nym You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting?
Pistol Base is the slave that pays†.
Nym That now I will have. That’s the humour of it.
Pistol As manhood shall compound†. Push home.
[They] Draw [their swords]
80Bardolph [Draws his sword] By this sword, he that makes the first thrust, I’ll kill him, by this sword I will.
Pistol Sword† is an oath, and oaths must have their course.
[Sheathes his sword]
Bardolph Corporal Nym, an† thou wilt be friends, be friends. An †thou wilt not, why then be enemies with me too. Prithee put up*.
[Nym sheathes his sword]
85Pistol A noble† shalt thou have, and present pay†, and liquor likewise will I give to thee, and friendship shall combine, and brotherhood. I’ll live by Nym† and Nym shall live by me; is not this just? For I shall sutler† be unto the camp, and profits* will accrue. Give me thy hand.
Pistol In cash, most justly paid.
†Enter Hostess [and Boy]
Hostess‡ As ever you come of*† women, come in quickly to Sir John. Ah, poor heart, he is so shaked of a burning quotidian 95tertian† that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him.
Pistol Nym, thou hast spoke the right, his heart is fracted and 100corroborate†.
Nym The king is a good king, but it must be as it may. He passes some humours and careers†.
Pistol Let us condole the knight, for, lambkins, we will live†.
Textual variants from New Cambridge Shakespeare
Explanatory notes from New Cambridge Shakespeare
0 SD Corporal Barnabe Rich, in A Pathway to Military Practise, 1587, says ‘Of the Corporall or Launce-prezado: It is much beneficiall for the redines for service, that a company of men should be devided into fower squadrons, the weapons equally devided, and to be committed to the charge of foure Corporalls.’ (g3).
0 SD nym In F Compositor B spells the name ‘Nym’ for this scene and 4.4, while Compositor A elsewhere spells it ‘Nim’. Nym, a notably small and skinny man, does not appear in 2H4, but he is in Wiv. In thieving slang, to ‘nim’ meant to steal.
0 SD Lieutenant bardolph He is a corporal at 2H4 2.4.120, and at 3.2.2 below. Here the rank places him above ‘Ancient’ Pistol as well as Nym.
3 Ancient A rank below that of lieutenant but above corporal. Originally bearer of a company’s flag or ensign, it was the senior non-gentlemanly rank. Rich says ‘As the Ensigne in the fielde is the honour of the bande, so the Ensign bearer in like case should be honoured by his company, and this reputation is best attained, by his owne curteous demeanour towards ye soldiers, the loove of them concerneth greatly his owne safety, in all perrilles and attempts’ (g1v). Usually he was responsible for feeding the company, the ‘sutler’ post that Pistol claims for himself in line 88, for which honesty was an important qualification. In Oth. ‘honest’ Iago is Othello’s ‘ancient’. For the spelling, see Introduction, p. 70.
3 Pistol The name was pronounced ‘pizzle’. Mrs. Quickly in 2H4 2.4.128 calls him ‘Captaine Peesell’. See Cercignani, p. 345.
3 friends The reason for the quarrel between Nym and Pistol only becomes clear at 15–17.
4–5 shall … shall … shall be as it may The emphatic ‘shall’ leads up to a very ordinary proverbial saying (Dent t202), which Nym repeats as a catchphrase at 13, 18 and 101. His main comic idiom is the repetition of banal proverbial sayings.
6 wink close my eyes.
6 iron sword, useful for toasting cheese on.
7 endure cold Toasting cheese would make it hot, but not fighting.
8 there’s an end Another proverbial catchphrase (Dent e113.1). Q’s alternative, ‘there’s the humour of it’, is used by Nym more commonly in Wiv.
10 sworn brothers Bardolph means a brotherhood of thieves who swear loyalty to one another in blood. ‘France’ makes it an anticipation of Henry’s declaration at Agincourt, 4.3.61–3.
13 I will do as I may A perversion of the proverb used in 4–5. Here it compounds the more usual expression ‘I will die as I may.’ In view of the cause of the quarrel over which Nym is grieving here, ‘do’ probably means sexual doing.
14 rest (1) musically, a pause, (2) in primero (a card game), the reserved stake, the last chance.
14 rendezvous The first use of French in the play. It meant not so much a meeting place as a refuge.
15–16 Nell Quickly The Hostess of the Eastcheap tavern in 2H4.
16–17 troth-plight to engaged to marry.
18 I cannot tell Proverbial (Dent t85.1). Nym repeats it at the end of this speech.
19–20 throats … knives The first of several references to cutting throats. See Introduction, p. 27.
21 mare Q’s reading uses the old proverb. E. A. J. Honigmann, in MLR 50 (1955), 197, argues for the F ‘name’ on the ground that the puns Nym / name, plod / plot are deliberate distortions of the proverb. But Nym’s other proverbial phrases are plodding and undistorted.
25 SH nym Q’s attribution of this line must be right, since Nym is far more likely than the peace-making Bardolph to replace Pistol’s military title with the insulting name of a taverner. The form of address is a derisive allusion to his marriage to the Hostess.
26 tyke a mongrel or cur. Malone notes a ‘tick’ as a parasite, which would lodge on a ‘host’, and a pun may be intended. But on the strength of the frequent references to dogs in the play, F’s ‘tike’ seems preferable. F Lear has a ‘bobtail tike or trundle-tail’ in a list of dogs at 3.6.27.
27 lodgers By extension from the insulting ‘host’ of the previous line.
31 straight at once.
31 SD Nym draws his sword Judging from the Hostess’s cry about her new husband being ‘hewn’, Nym must draw his sword first. Neither F nor Q marks these actions.
32 hewn cut by a sword, reaped like corn. The word has behind it the figure of Death with his reaper’s scythe.
32 SD Pistol draws his sword Bardolph’s words at line 33 indicate that both Nym and Pistol have their swords out by now.
33 lieutenant A promotion, possibly as an appeasement for the stigma of ‘mine host’. At 3.7.10 Llewellyn calls him an ‘anchient lieutenant’, or sub-lieutenant, a more precise designation.
33 offer make no challenge to combat.
35 Iceland dog a small, hairy, quarrelsome lap-dog. Harrison’s ‘Description of England’ (in Volume i of Holinshed), p. 231, states of English dogs that ‘The last sort of dogs consisteth of the currish kind, meet for manie toies: of which the whappet or prickeared curre is one … Besides these also we have sholts or curs dailie brought out of Iseland, and much made of among us, bicause of their sawcinesse and quarrelling.’ Pistol’s slur picks up the quarrelsomeness.
36 show … put up reveal … sheathe. The Hostess is either being verbally sophisticated or typically self-contradictory.
37 SD This is the moment for the swords to be put back in their carriages, in obedience to Bardolph’s plea. The game of constant drawing and sheathing continues for the next forty lines.
38 shog off Slang addressed to the Hostess: go away.
38 solus A standard Latin stage direction, as with exit and manet. It means ‘alone’, though to Pistol it evidently means single, unmarried.
40 mervailous The original spelling for ‘marvellous’ was retained by Humphreys, on the grounds that it indicates a distinctive pronunciation. Taylor suggests that it was stressed on the second syllable. Holinshed spells it in Pistol’s form.
40–2 face … bowels Pistol verbally takes Nym’s insulting word step by step through his digestive system.
41 maw stomach.
43 take catch fire.
43 Pistol’s cock (1) the striking-lever of a hand-gun, (2) his penis, or pizzle.
44 conjure control by a magic spell.
44 humour Up to now Nym has not used the comic catchphrase he uses regularly in Wiv. He renews it at the end of this speech. Q redoubles his use in this and other scenes.
45 grow foul (1) speak of turds, (2) as a pistol, become fouled by firing.
46 scour clean a gun barrel with a ramrod.
46 in fair terms i.e. not foul terms, as Pistol has been doing. He repeats the phrase at line 56.
49–50 F sets these lines as verse, the only time it versifies Pistol in the play.
49 damnèd Pronunciation as a poetic doublesyllable seems appropriate even if the lines are not formal verse.
49–50 the grave doth gape Ultimately from the Bishops’ Bible, Isa. 5.14, ‘Therefore gapeth hell’. See Introduction, p. 27, note Footnote 1. It became proverbial (Dent gg2). The newly crowned Henry uses precisely this phrase to Falstaff as a half joke (‘Know / The grave doth gape for thee thrice wider …’) in his speech banishing Falstaff.
50 exhale An extravagant word for drawing a sword. Taylor suggests ‘ex-hale’, from ‘hale’ or ‘haul’, to heave. Cercignani (p. 336) suggests that Q’s ‘exell’ reflects the pronunciation.
51 SD Draws his sword By the time he makes his threat to skewer them up to the hilt of his sword (52), Bardolph too must have drawn.
54 mickle might great power. Used in 2H6 5.1.174 and elsewhere, the adjective’s emphatically poetic character is marked by its use in The Faerie Queene, 2.4.7.
55 tall brave (contrasting Nym’s ‘spirits’ with his small stature).
58 Couple a gorge Pistol is practising his French (strictly couper la gorge, or coupez la gorge). The cutting of French throats looms large at Agincourt. See Introduction, p. 25.
60 Spital The lazar hospital, a charitable institution for treating the poor, especially lepers.
60 powdering tub (1) a barrel for salting beef, (2) a sweating tub for treating venereal disease.
61 lazar kite of Cressid’s kind a diseased carrion bird like Cressida. Leprosy was thought to be a venereal disease. See 1.1.15 n. The phrase is probably a memory of one in Barnabe Rich’s book of stories, Rich’s Farewell to the Military Profession, 1581, which provided the story on which TN is based, and which is alluded to in Wiv. It mentions ‘these Kites of Cressides kind’ on sig. r2v. See also 4.8.57–8 n.
62 I have … hold A paraphrase of the wedding service.
62 quondam former (Latin).
63 pauca A Latin tag, pauca verba, in few words.
63 enough. Go to F’s reading appears to be a compositorial error.
64 Mine host The boy confirms Nym’s taunt.
64 my master i.e. Falstaff.
64 your Q and Hanmer normalise, but F’s reading is acceptable given the boy’s reference to Pistol as a ‘host’ and the fight over possession of the Hostess.
66 face Bardolph’s spectacular face looked red and heated, according to the boy at 3.2.28 and Llewellyn’s more detailed description at 3.7.87–91. It features in jokes at 1H4 3.3.20–33 and 2H4 2.4.269–71.
69 yield … pudding A proverbial periphrasis for dying (Dent c860).
71 presently at once.
71 SD Exeunt Neither F nor Q gives any notice of the boy’s departure. He may either leave with the Hostess or stay to witness the next bout of bravado and leave with the others at the end of the scene, where F gives no indication of how many leave. Since Falstaff is the boy’s master, and since respectable women did not walk the streets unescorted by a male, it seems likely that the boy would accompany her to Falstaff. But see note to line 92.
77 Base … pays A poetic perversion of the proverb ‘the poor man pays for all’ (Dent m357).
79 As … compound real men fight rather than pay up.
82 Sword i.e. God’s word.
83 an if.
84 Q’s addition is a renewal of the demand made at line 76. Most editions include it on the grounds that Pistol’s next speech is a direct reply. But the sword-waving has only interrupted Pistol’s answer to the original demand, which he now gives.
85 a noble a coin worth one-third of a pound, or six shillings and eightpence, which is distinctly less than eight shillings.
85 present day cash immediately.
87 by Nym Possibly an allusion to nimming as theft.
88 sutler seller of food.
92 If the boy leaves with the Hostess at line 65, he should return here. Along with Nym and Bardolph he should be present to hear Pistol declare ‘we will live’ at line 103, since the three of them do not.
93 come of Q normalises the F reading, which has a bawdy edge to it, as in ‘come off’. In 2H4 2.4.40 and 41 Falstaff says ‘to serve bravely is to come halting off’, and in the next line ‘to come off the breach with his pike bent’.
94–5 quotidian tertian A quotidian fever recurred daily, a tertian every third day. When joined, it was thought that both regimes prevailed, which made it the worst kind of sickness. See A. A. Mendilow, ‘Falstaff’s death of a sweat’, SQ 9 (1958), 479–83.
97 run bad humours Nym’s idiom means (1) that Henry made Falstaff melancholy, or (2) that he vented his bad temper on Falstaff.
97 the even the plain truth.
99–100 fracted and corroborate fractured and made secure. Like most of Pistol’s poetical lexis, each word sounds stronger than it means.
102 careers full gallops. Nym means that he has moods which include some made gallops.
103 we will live An emphatic affirmation that Falstaff’s companions will outlive him. In fact, only Pistol lives beyond Act 4.
Performance notes from Shakespeare in Production
2.1 Cut by Kemble, Kean and Phelps. Calvert combined this scene and 2.3, to serve as 1.2. Olivier's film sets this scene on the stage of the Globe, as the rain begins to drench the spectators in the yard. A board brought on indicates the setting of the Boar's Head, which is then hooked on a pillar to serve as the inn sign. Branagh sets the scene inside the tavern with the lugubrious duo of ‘middle-aged soldiers of misfortune’ (Branagh, p. 29) in hangover mood. The Folio is careful to identify the men by rank: ‘Enter Coporall Nym, and Lieutenant Bardolfe’, and the specificity of the stage direction is echoed by the men's greetings in lines 1–2 and 33.
1 For the BBC/Hayes version, Bardolph and Nym are both drunkenly lachrymose. Olivier's film has Nym make ‘an elaborately furtive entrance’ on to the balcony, from which he looks suspiciously up and down the imaginary street below. He climbs over the balcony rail, blowing a kiss up towards the balcony, and drops on to the stage, not knowing that Bardolph is watching this scene with mild interest. ‘He starts guiltily round as Bardolph addresses him’ (O, Fol). By contrast to this surreptitious entry, the Globe production immediately introduced a shouting exchange between Nym and Bardolph.
20 Hayes has Nym begin to strop his knife against the sole of his boot.
23 The Folio identifies the woman as ‘Quickly’ in the stage directions but uses ‘Host.’ for the speech prefixes in the scene, and ‘Hostess’ at line 92sd. The audience in Olivier's theatre grow restive and excited at the thought of Pistol's arrival: he is clearly a great favourite, and appreciative laughter punctuates the scene. The camera cuts to show a full-length shot of ‘Pistol and Mrs Pistol sunning themselves in their applause’ (O, Fol). For the English Shakespeare Company production, Pistol and Quickly entered to the strains of Mendelsohn's Wedding March, covered in confetti; confetti was also in evidence in Hayes' and Hands' productions. Daniels' Pistol and Quickly were also getting married: Bardolph, dressed in purple velvet with a floral buttonhole, entered carrying a large parcel wrapped in bright pink paper. A fat, red-faced cockney Pistol wore a top hat and white tailcoat with leather trousers; Quickly wore a short white dress with a veil, and there was a guard of honour with swords. The backdrop was a grubby concrete wall with barbed wire and red lights. Branagh introduces the pair with ‘a squeal of pleasure from Mistress Quickly as Pistol chases her lasciviously round a ladder, to be brought up short by seeing Nym, now standing, sword in hand, facing them’ (Branagh, p. 29). Richard Moore, who played Pistol in Hands' production, observed that ‘Nym, Pistol and Bardolph don't take their quarrelling and brawling seriously. They all know full well that they will never really fight, or damage each other – they just play a game of threatened fights that is understood as such between them’ (Beauman, p. 125). The Globe Quickly entered through the stage trapdoor, revealing herself (played by a male actor) to be very tall, much to the amusement of the audience. Noble also had Quickly and Pistol enter from the trapdoor in the stage.
26 Olivier's Pistol gives ‘a dangerous intensity’ to the possessive ‘my Nell’ and the camera cuts to a close-up of Nym ‘looking elaborately innocent’ (O, Fol).
33 The rest of the scene was cut by Hayes.
59 In Noble's production Pistol and Nym wrestled, and then Pistol chased Nym across the stage, stopping, uxoriously, to embrace Quickly en route.
64 Branagh's Boy speaks in serious tone.
69 By cutting the phrase about the pudding, Branagh stresses the poignant melancholy of the moment. Quickly goes upstairs with the Boy to Falstaff's room, and the film shows us a close-up of Falstaff's face ‘eyes closed, not moving’ (Branagh, p. 32).
70 Calvert cut all reference to Falstaff. A pregnant pause was left before ‘The king has killed his heart’ in Noble's production.
93 Judi Dench, in Branagh's film, tells them of Falstaff's sickness in a voice breaking with emotion, and leaves the three men in melancholic mood. Pistol speaks ‘for all of them: “Poor Sir John, a good portly man i'faith”’ (a description Falstaff gives himself, talking about himself in the third person, in 1 Henry IV 2.4.348), and this introduces a flashback scene, as through Pistol's eyes as he stares at the fire, intended to ‘make clear [Falstaff's] former relationship and estrangement from the young monarch’, partly to stress Henry's isolation in turning away from his tavern companions and partly to maximise the impact of the report of Falstaff's death (Branagh, p. 12). The interpolated sequence comprises Falstaff's lines from 1 Henry IV: ‘Ay, and of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye and a most noble carriage’ (2.4.348–9) delivered as a voice-over, and then a flashback to the Boar's Head, with Falstaff ‘standing by the roaring fire, laughing and throwing wide his arms to greet the now happy Pistol, Nym and Bardolph’ (Branagh, p. 33). He exclaims, again from I Henry IV ‘But do I not dwindle? My skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown’ (3.3.2–3), to much laughter from the assembled group, then his next lines are from the same scene: ‘Company, villainous company hath been the spoil of me’ (7–8) to further merriment. At this point a newcomer arrives, greeted by a smiling Falstaff: ‘Hal! Hal!’, and Falstaff hugs Henry. Falstaff gives the speech of self-promotion from 1 Henry IV ending with the serious plea ‘banish plump Jack and banish all the world’ (2.4.393–8). During the speech, Henry is shown in profile, smiling, but at the conclusion there is a cut to focus on ‘the King-to-be, the smiling features turn cold. He holds his look and we hear, in a chilling and ghostly tone’ (Branagh, p. 34), the voice-over ‘I do, I will.’ Falstaff's face registers the hurt of this snub, which is followed by a collage of lines from 2 Henry IV, including Falstaff's words of fellowship to Shallow made the keynote of Orson Welles' film of Falstaff's career, ‘We have heard the chimes at midnight’ (3.2.177), this time addressed to ‘Master Harry’. ‘Then, almost inaudibly, with the last painful ounce of pleading’ (Branagh, p. 34), ‘Jesus, the days that we have seen’ (3.2.180). These are followed, inevitably, by Henry's cold words of rejection, delivered as a voice-over against Henry's evident emotional discomfort, ‘I know thee not, old man’ (5.5.43). The film dissolves the flashback, and cuts to the present day with 2.1.97–103. At the Globe, the Hostess and the Boy were up on the balcony. At the Globe the pantomimic qualities of the male actor's performance prompted much audience laughter. In Hands' production the tone of the scene suddenly changed: in place of the performance of innuendo and mock-fighting, ‘something real is happening [… a] reminder of mortality draws the swaggerers out of caricature and into the play’ (Beauman, p. 25).
104 Macready's promptbook notes that the three exit ‘hand in hand quite good friends’. Pistol's attempt to change the mood in Branagh's film is met with doubts from the others.
