SUMMARY
{Falstaff, alone, honestly evaluates the quality
of the soldiers under his command.}

If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am
a soused gurnet. I have misused the king's 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, yeomen's
sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such
as had been asked twice on the banns; such a
commodity of warm slaves, as had as lief 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
pin's heads, and they have bought out their ser-
vices; and now my whole charge consists of
ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of
companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the
painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his
sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but
discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to
younger brothers, revolted tapsters and ostlers
trade-fallen, the cankers of a calm world and a
long peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged
than an old faced ancient: and such have I, to
fill up the rooms of them that have bought out
their services, that you would think that I had a
hundred 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.
I'll not march through Coventry with them,
that's flat: nay, and the villains march wide be-
twixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for, in-
deed I had the most of them out of prison.
There's but a shirt and a half in all my com-
pany; and the half shirt is two napkins tacked
together and thrown over the shoulders like a
herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say
the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's,
or the red-nose inn-keeper of Daventry. But
that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge.