This week one of my favourite passages in all Shakespeare: nothing dramatic, no exalted language, just two old men remembering the escapades of their youth, but showing how well, among all the Bard’s other gifts, he could capture the rhythms of common speech and bring out the latent poetry in them. It comes from ‘Henry IV, part 2’; Falstaff has met up with his old acquaintance Shallow, a Justice of the Peace, and they fall to reminiscing about old times. The passage always reminds me of conversations between my mother and my maternal uncle, who was the only one who kept in touch with their Suffolk side of the family. When he had come back from a visit there she would ask him after various relatives of theirs, aunts, uncles, cousins, and he would shake his head and say ‘Old, very old’ or sometimes, in tones of lugubrious relish, ‘Dead, long dead’. And I would think ‘Yes, it still goes on’.
Bona-roba: a showy, attractive, or well-dressed woman, often with connotations of a courtesan or prostitute. From the Italian, meaning ‘good stuff’.
Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tarry dinner. I am glad to see you, by my troth, Master Shallow.
O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in Saint George’s field?
No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more of that.
Ha! ’twas a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive?
Never, never; she would always say she could not abide Master Shallow.
By the mass, I could anger her to the heart. She was then a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?
Nay, she must be old; she cannot choose but be old; certain she’s old; and had Robin Nightwork by old Nightwork before I came to Clement’s Inn.
Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?
We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we have: our watch-word was ‘Hem boys!’ Come, let’s to dinner; come, let’s to dinner: Jesus, the days that we have seen! Come, come.
Exeunt FALSTAFF and Justices
William Shakespeare
David Sutton 