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John Quincy Adams used to occasionally attend the theatre, and he was especially pleased with Hackett as Falstaff. Hackett looked the fat knight well, and his face interpreted many of his remarks and situations explicitly. He delivered the soliloquy upon honor with fine effect, and the scenes at Gad's Hill with Bardolph and his nose, with Mrs.
Bardolph knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his hands to the little steel cuffs, and walks away quite meekly. He is found out. He must go. "Good-by, Doll Tearsheet! Good-by, Mrs. Quickly, ma'am!" The other gentlemen and ladies de la societe look on and exchange mute adieux with the departing friends. And an assured time will come when the other gentlemen and ladies will be found out too.
He nodded his head with extreme gravity; then reached for a cup of sack that Bardolph held at the knight's elbow. "Indeed, I know not what your worship will do," said Mistress Quickly, rather sadly.
He was as virtuously given as other folk, but perhaps the devil had a handle for temptation in that congenital thirst of his. He was a social spirit too, and he tells us that company, villainous company, was the spoil of him. He was less than thirty when he took the faithful Bardolph into his service, and only just past that age when he made the acquaintance of the nimble Poins.
These were the plays that we loved, and must have read in common, or at least at the same time: but others that I more especially liked were the Histories, and among them particularly were the Henrys, where Falstaff appeared. This gross and palpable reprobate greatly took my fancy. I delighted in him immensely, and in his comrades, Pistol, and Bardolph, and Nym.
"Pshaw! a Jacobite? is that all?" Andrew looked at me with some astonishment, at hearing his information treated so lightly; and then muttering, "Aweel, it's the warst thing I ken aboot the lassie, howsoe'er," he resumed his spade, like the king of the Vandals, in Marmontel's late novel. Bardolph. The sheriff, with a monstrous watch, is at the door. Henry IV. First Part.
Puffington's hounds, read he again, wondering who had done it: Bardolph, the innkeeper; Allsop, the cabinet-maker; Tuggins, the doctor, were all out; so was Weatherhog, the butcher. Which of them could it be? Grimes, the editor, wasn't there; indeed, he couldn't ride, and the country was not adapted for a gig. He then began to read it, and the further he got the more he was disgusted.
But he came into the apartment singing, and, whatever the scuffling had meant, found Bardolph in one corner employed in sorting garments from a clothes-chest, while at the extreme end of the room Mistress Quickly demurely stirred the fire; which winked at the old knight rather knowingly. "Then came the bold Sir Caradoc," carolled Sir John. "Ah, mistress, what news? And eke Sir Pellinore.
I dare say I had a peep into the kitchen, and at the pigeons in the inn-yard, and at all things which were to be seen at "The Bell," while my two companions were still at their interminable punch. It was an old-fashioned inn, with a gallery round the court-yard. Heaven bless us! Falstaff and Bardolph may have stopped there on the road to Gadshill.
It bore the inscription of having been the gift of Francis Wythers, Knight, and was held, she told me, in exceeding great value, being considered very "antyke." This last opinion was strengthened by the shabby gentleman with the red nose and oilcloth hat, and whom I strongly suspected of being a lineal descendant from the variant Bardolph.
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