1    First my fear; then my courtesy; last my speech.
2    My fear is, your displeasure; my courtesy, my duty;
3    and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look
4    for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have
5    to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I
6    should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring.
7    But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it
8    known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here
9    in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your
10   patience for it and to promise you a better. I
11   meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an
12   ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and
13   you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you
14   I would be and here I commit my body to your
15   mercies: bate me some and I will pay you some and,
16   as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.
17   If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will
18   you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but
19   light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a
20   good conscience will make any possible satisfaction,
21   and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have
22   forgiven me: if the gentlemen will not, then the
23   gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which
24   was never seen before in such an assembly.
25   One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too
26   much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will
27   continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make
28   you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for
29   any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat,
30   unless already a' be killed with your hard
31   opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is
32   not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are
33   too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down
34   before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen.