Falstaff: I would you had the wit; 'twere better than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young 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 none of these demure boys come to any proof, for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then when they marry they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards - which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours 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, which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts' extremes. It illumineth the face, which as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that the skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work, and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath like lean, sterile, and bare land manured, husbanded, and tilled, with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.

2 Henry IV, 4.3.85-122.

Falstaff would not have been alone in believing sack possessed magical qualities. Some fifty years later, a writer records the life of a doctor who went amongst plague victims, armed only with a swig of sack:

Falstaff spends his time idly tippling. Both the medical literature (below) and legal literature of the time view the taverns and alehouses of the time as dens of iniquity, and some of the language Hal attacks Falstaff with is part of this moral environment. For instance, ‘the first original English writer on the pox', William Clowes, in A short and profitable Treatise touching the cure of the disease called (Morbus Gallicus) by unctions, London, 1579 - identifies the source of the pox's spread as 'lewd alehouses', peopled as it is with 'lewd and idell persons':

‘According to the following passage, St Bartholomew's Hospital, to which Clowes was surgeon, was three parts occupied by patients suffering from this malady: - "It is wonderfull to consider how huge multitudes there be of such as be infected with it, and that dayly increase, to the great daunger of the common wealth, and the stayne of the whole nation: the cause whereof I see none so great as the licentious and beastly disorder of a great number of rogues and vagabondes: The filthye lyfe of many lewd and idell persons, both men and women, aboutt he citye of London, and the great number of lewd alehouses, which are the very nests and harbourers of such filthy creatures; By meanes of which disordered persons some other of better disposition are many tymes infected, and many more lyke to be, except there be some speedy remedy provided for the same."' [disease called variously Morbus Gallicus or Morbus Neapolitanus, that is, the French or Neapoliton disease, more properly Lues Venera] (Creighton, A History of Epidemics, p.424)

The first Act relating to the licensing of alehouses is 11 Henry VII c.2 (1496)

Significantly, it is part of legislation to deal with vagabonds etc. - an indication of the low social status of the alehouse and its clientele. Its position at the end makes it look like an afterthought.

'Vagabonds, idle, and suspected Persons, shall be set in the Stocks, Three Days and Three Nights, and have none other Sustenance but Bread and Water, and then shall be put out of the Town; And whosoever shall give such idle Person more, shall foreit xii. d. Every Begganr not able to work, shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born, and there remain, upon the Pain aforesaid. ... No Artificer, Labourer, or Servant, shall play at any unlawful Game, but in Christmas. ... Two Justices of Peace may reject common selling of Ale, etc.'

This Act is altered by 5 & 6 Ed. 6. c.25 (1552), 'For Keepers of Alehouses and Tiplinghouses to be bound by Recognisance'

'Forasmuch as intolerable Hurts and Troubles to the Commonwealth of this Realm doth daily grow and increase through such Abuses and Disorders as are had and used in common Alehouses and other Houses called Tiplinghouses:'...

JPs are given power 'to remove, discharge and put away common selling of Ale and Beer in the said common Alehouses and Tiplinghouses, in such Town or Towns and Places, where they shall think meet and convenient: And that none after the first Day of May next coming shall be admitted or suffered to keep any common Alehouse or Tiplinghouse, but such as shall be thereunto admitted and allowed int he open Sessions of the Peace, or else by two Justices of the Peace'...

The justices are to 'take Bond and Surety from Time to Time by Recognisance of such as shall be admitted and allowed hereafter to keep any common Alehouse or Tiplinghouse, as well for and aginst the using of unlawful Gamdes, as also for the using and Maintenance of good Order and Rule to be had and used within the same, as by their Discretion shall be though necessary and convenient; for making of every which Recognisance, the Party or Parties that shall be so bound shall pay but twelve pence.'

This Act therefore firmly put alehouse and tiplinghouse landlords firmly in the power of the JPs.

The following year 1553 'taverns' were brought under control, 7 Edward 6. c.5 in 'The Act to avoid the excessive Prices of Wine'.

Inns remained exempt since they served the legitimate function of providing refreshments and lodging for travellers, as Justice Salkeld adjudged in Stephens versus Watson [Mich. 13 Will. 3] Referring to a later piece of legislation, 1 Jac. 1 c.9 (see below), he says: 'This statute extends not to inns, for they are for lodging of travellers; but if an inn degenerate to an ale-house, by suffering disorderly tippling, etc. it shall be deemed as such'. [An early version of the 'bona fide' traveller legislation so beloved in the Victorian period]

The preamble to 1 Jac. 1 c.9, (1604), an Act designed to strengthen the Acts above, are slightly later than the two Henry IV plays, and reads as if aimed directly at Falstaff:

An Act to restrain the inordinate Haunting and Tipling in Inns, Alehouse, and other Victualling Houses

'Whereas the ancient, true and principal Use of Inns, Alehouse and Victualling-houses was for the Receit, Relief and Lodging of Wayfaring People travelling from Place to Place, and for such Supply of the Wants of such People as are not able by greater Quantities to make their Provision of Victuals, and not meant for Entertainment and Harbouring of lewd and idle People to spend and consume their Money and their Time in lewd and drunken Manner.'

There were many acts during James I's reign targetting alehouses (a sign of how ineffectual they were in reality), and we also get the first act specific to drunkenness. Its definition of 'drunkenness' as the source of many other sins was typical moral rhetoric, authorised by the bible.

4 Jac. I c.5 (1606)

An Act for repressing the odious and loathsome Sin of Drunkenness

'Whereas the loathsome and odious Sin of Drunkenness is of late grown into Common Use within this Realm, being the Root and Foundation of many other enormous Sins, as Blood-shed, Stabbing, Murder, Swearing, Fornication, Adultery, and such like, to the great Dishonour of God, and of our Nation, the Overthrow of many good Arts and manual Trades, the Disabling of divers Workmen, and the general Impoverishing of many good Subjects, abusively wasting the good Creations of God'.