King Henry Iv Shakespeare Essay Example For Students

King Henry Iv Shakespeare Essay A monologue from the play by William ShakespeareFALSTAFF: If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the kings press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomens sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banes such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lieve hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the gluttons dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-falln; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten times more dishonorable ragged than an old fazed ancient; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them as have bought out their services that you would think that I had a hundre d and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. Ill not march through Coventry with them, thats flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on, for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. Theres not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a heralds coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stoln from my host at Saint Albans, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But thats all one; theyll find linen enough on every hedge.