CHAPTER V - LONDON

Summary

Shallow. I'll drink to Master Bardolph and to all the cavaleiroes about London.

Davy. I hope to see London once ere I die.

2 Henry IV, v. iii. 60–1

Shallow. O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in Saint George's fields?…

Silence. That's fifty-five year ago.

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 Shallow.

Shallow. That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we have. Our watchword was, ‘Hem, boys!’ Come, let's to dinner; come, let's to dinner. Jesus, the days that we have seen! come, come.

Ibid. iii. ii. 208–37

THE ROAD TO LONDON

Jog on, jog on the foot-path way,

And merrily hent the stile-a:

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.

The Winter's Tale, iv. ii. 133–6

The State of the Roads

Now to speak generally of our common highways through the English part of the isle (for of the rest I can say nothing), you shall understand that in the clay or cledgy soil they are often very deep and troublesome in the winter half. Wherefore by authority of parliament an order is taken for their yearly amendment, whereby all sorts of the common people do employ their travail for six days in summer upon the same.