In 2 Henry IV, King Henry V tells Falstaff,
“I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream’d of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee,…show more content… In the second half of Act 2, Scene 5 the audience witnesses an enactment of Falstaff and Prince Hal being the King and Prince Hal and what the prince will say to his father regarding Falstaff’s presence in Hal’s life. It begins with Falstaff’s challenge, “Well, thou wilt be horribly chid tomorrow when thou comest to thy father. If thou love me, practice an answer” (2.5.340-341). To which Hal replies, “Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life” (2.5.342-343). The impersonation then begins with Falstaff as King Henry IV and Prince Hal as himself. Falstaff as King Henry IV refers to himself as
“A goodly portly man, i’faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by’r Lady, inclining to three-score. And now I remember me, his name is Falstaff. If that man should be lewdly given, he decieveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If, then, the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then peremptorily I speak it – there is virtue in that Falstaff. Him keep with; the rest banish”