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SUMMARY
Falstaff has just been informed by his servant
what the doctor has said after examining the former's
'water' - i.e. urine
Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at
me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay,
man, is not able to invent anything that tends
to laughter, more than I invent or is invented
on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the
cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk
before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all
her litter but one. If the prince put thee into
my service for any other reason than to set me
off, why then I have no judgment. Thou whore-
son mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my
cap than to wait at my heels. I was never
manned with an agate till now; but I will set
you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel,
and send you back again to your master, for a
jewel; the juvenal, the prince your master, whose
chin is not yet fledged. I will sooner have a
beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall
get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick
to say, his face is a face-royal: God may finish it
when he will, it is not a hair amiss yet: he may
keep it still as a face-royal, for a barber shall
never earn sixpence out of it; and yet he will
be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his
father was a bachelor. He may keep his own
grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can assure
him.