Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Orson Welles: Sir John Falstaff

Photos 

Quotes 

• Falstaff : My King! My Jove! I speak to thee my heart!

  Henry V : I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester. I have long dreamed of such a kind of man, so surfeit-swelled, 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.

  [Falstaff laughs and rises] 

  Henry V : Reply not to me with a fool-born jest! Presume not that I am the thing I was.

• Falstaff : We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Robert Shallow.

• Falstaff : There lives not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old.

• Falstaff : This house is turned - bawdy house.

  Mistress Quickly : Bawdy house?

  Falstaff : They pick pockets!

  Mistress Quickly : We cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen who live honestly by the prick of their needles; but, it is thought we keep a bawdy house.

• Lord Chief Justice : Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.

  Falstaff : I would it were otherwise. I would my means were greater and my waist slender.

• Falstaff : Honour pricks me on. But how if honour prick me off when I come on, how then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then, no. What is honour? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.

• [first lines] 

  Shallow : Jesus, the days that we have seen! Do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in St. George's field?

  Falstaff : No more of that, Master Shallow.

  Shallow : It was a merry night!

• Shallow : Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?

  Falstaff : We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Robert Shallow.

  Shallow : That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we have! Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have seen! And to think how many of my old acquaintance are dead.

  Mr. Silence : We shall all f-f-ffff...

  Shallow : Certain, 'tis certain. Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all. All shall die.

• Falstaff : What time of day is it, lad?

  Prince Hal : What the devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack, clocks the tongues of bawds, dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

• Falstaff : Now I'm, a man should speak truly, a little better than one of the wicked. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house not above once in a quarter-of an hour. Villanous company hath been the spoil of me. If I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, call me a peppercorn, a brewer's horse. Well, I'll repent.

• Falstaff : Good faith, this same sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh. But that's no marvel, he drinks no wine! There's never any of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, that they're generally fools and cowards; which some of us should be too, but for inflammation.

• Falstaff : A good sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain and dries me there all the foolish, dull and curdy vapors which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes, which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood. The sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme.

• Falstaff : If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them would be this: to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves - to sack.

• Doll Tearsheet : Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson chops. Ah, rogue, I' faith, I love thee.

  Falstaff : I will toss the rogue in a blanket.

  Doll Tearsheet : Do, an thou darest for thy heart. An thou dost, I'll canvass thee between a pair of sheets.

• Falstaff : Come! Sing me a bawdy song to make me merry.

• Falstaff : Doll, forget me, when I'm gone.

  Doll Tearsheet : You'll start me weeping if you say so.

  Falstaff : Kiss me, Doll.

• Shallow : Jesus, the days that I have seen.

  Falstaff : Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying. This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth and every third word a lie.

• Falstaff : Who's next?

  Mr. Silence : Fff... ff.ff Ffff! Ffff!

  Shallow : Francis Feeble!

  Mr. Silence : Fff... Phew!