King Henry IV, Part 2 - William Shakespeare (short books to read txt) 📗

which he could not levy; whereupon He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes, To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers That your attempts may overlive the hazard And fearful meeting of their opposite.

MOWBRAY. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground And dash themselves to pieces.

[Enter a Messenger.]

HASTINGS. Now, what news?

MESSENGER. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, In goodly form comes on the enemy; And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.

MOWBRAY. The just proportion that we gave them out. Let us sway on and face them in the field.

ARCHBISHOP. What well-appointed leader fronts us here?

[Enter Westmoreland.]

MOWBRAY. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.

WESTMORELAND. Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.

ARCHBISHOP. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace: What doth concern your coming?

WESTMORELAND. Then, my lord, Unto your grace do I in chief address The substance of my speech. If that rebellion Came like itself, in base and abject routs, Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags, And countenanced by boys and beggary, I say, if damn’d commotion so appear’d, In his true, native, and most proper shape, You, reverend father, and these noble lords Had not been here, to dress the ugly form Of base and bloody insurrection With your fair honours. You, lord archbishop, Whose see is by a civil peace maintain’d, Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch’d, Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor’d, Whose white investments figure innocence, The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, Wherefore you do so ill translate yourself Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace, Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war; Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, Your pens to lances and your tongue divine To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

ARCHBISHOP. Wherefore do I this? so the question stands. Briefly to this end: we are all diseased, And with our surfeiting and wanton hours Have brought ourselves into a burning fever, And we must bleed for it; of which disease Our late king, Richard, being infected, died. But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland, I take not on me here as a physician, Nor do I as an enemy to peace Troop in the throngs of military men; But rather show awhile like fearful war, To diet rank minds sick of happiness, And purge the obstructions which begin to stop Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly. I have in equal balance justly weigh’d What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, And find our griefs heavier than our offences. We see which way the stream of time doth run, And are enforced from our most quiet there By the rough torrent of occasion; And have the summary of all our griefs, When time shall serve, to show in articles; Which long ere this we offer’d to the king, And might by no suit gain our audience: When we are wrong’d and would unfold our griefs, We are denied access unto his person Even by those men that most have done us wrong. The dangers of the days but newly gone, Whose memory is written on the earth With yet appearing blood, and the examples Of every minute’s instance, present now, Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms, Not to break peace or any branch of it, But to establish here a peace indeed, Concurring, both in name and quality.

WESTMORELAND. When ever yet was your appeal denied? Wherein have you been galled by the king? What peer hath been suborn’d to grate on you, That you should seal this lawless bloody book Of forged rebellion with a seal divine And consecrate commotion’s bitter edge?

ARCHBISHOP. My brother general, the commonwealth, To brother born an household cruelty, I make my quarrel in particular.

WESTMORELAND. There is no need of any such redress; Or if there were, it not belongs to you.

MOWBRAY. Why not to him in part, and to us all That feel the bruises of the days before, And suffer the condition of these times To lay a heavy and unequal hand Upon our honours?

WESTMORELAND. O, my good Lord Mowbray, Construe the times to their necessities, And you shall say indeed, it is the time, And not the king, that doth you injuries. Yet for your part, it not appears to me Either from the king or in the present time That you should have an inch of any ground To build a grief on: were you not restored To all the Duke of Norfolk’s signories, Your noble and right well rememb’red father’s?

MOWBRAY. What thing, in honour, had my father lost, That need to be revived and breathed in me? The king that loved him, as the state stood then, Was force perforce compell’d to banish him: And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he, Being mounted and both roused in their seats, Their neighing coursers daring of the spur, Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down, Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel, And the loud trumpet blowing them together, Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay’d My father from the breast of Bolingbroke, O, when the king did throw his warder down, His own life hung upon the staff he threw; Then threw he down himself and all their lives That by indictment and by dint of sword Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.

WESTMORELAND. You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what. The Earl of Hereford was reputed then In England the most valiant gentleman: Who knows on whom fortune would then have smiled? But if your father had been victor there, He ne’er had borne it out of Coventry: For all the country in a general voice Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on And bless’d and graced indeed, more than the king. But this is mere digression from my purpose. Here come I from our princely general To know your griefs; to tell you from his grace That he will give you audience; and wherein It shall appear that your demands are just, You shall enjoy them, everything set off That might so much as think you enemies.

MOWBRAY. But he hath forc’d us to compel this offer; And it proceeds from policy, not love.

WESTMORELAND. Mowbray, you overween to take it so; This offer comes from mercy, not from fear: For, lo! within a ken our army lies, Upon mine honour, all too confident To give admittance to a thought of fear. Our battle is more full of names than yours, Our men more perfect in the use of arms, Our armour all as strong, our cause the best; Then reason will our hearts should be as good: Say you not then our offer is compell’d.

MOWBRAY. Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.

WESTMORELAND. That argues but the shame of your offence: A rotten case abides no handling.

HASTINGS. Hath the Prince John a full commission, In very ample virtue of his father, To hear and absolutely to determine Of what conditions we shall stand upon?

WESTMORELAND. That is intended in the general’s name: I muse you make so slight a question.

ARCHBISHOP. Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule, For this contains our general grievances: Each several article herein redress’d, All members of our cause, both here and hence, That are insinew’d to this action, Acquitted by a true substantial form And present execution of our wills To us and to our purposes confined, We come within our awful banks again And knit our powers to the arm of peace.

WESTMORELAND. This will I show the general. Please you, lords, In sight of both our battles we may meet; And either end in peace, which God so frame! Or to the place of difference call the swords Which must decide it.

ARCHBISHOP. My lord, we will do so.

[Exit Westmoreland.]

MOWBRAY. There is a thing within my bosom tells me That no conditions of our peace can stand.

HASTINGS. Fear you not that: if we can make our peace Upon such large terms and so absolute As our conditions shall consist upon, Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.

MOWBRAY. Yea, but our valuation shall be such That every slight and false-derived cause, Yea, every idle, nice and wanton reason Shall to the king taste of this action; That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love, We shall be winnow’d with so rough a wind That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff And good from bad find no partition.

ARCHBISHOP. No, no, my lord. Note this; the king is weary Of dainty and such picking grievances: For he hath found to end one doubt by death Revives two greater in the heirs of life, And therefore will he wipe his tables clean And keep no tell-tale to his memory That may repeat and history his loss To new remembrance; for full well he knows He cannot so precisely weed this land As his misdoubts present occasion: His foes are so enrooted with his friends That, plucking to unfix an enemy, He doth unfasten so and shake a friend: So that this land, like an offensive wife That hath enraged him on to offer strokes, As he is striking, holds his infant up And hangs resolved correction in the arm That was uprear’d to execution.

HASTINGS. Besides, the king hath wasted all his rods On late offenders, that he now doth lack The very instruments of chastisement: So that his power, like to a fangless lion, May offer, but not hold.

ARCHBISHOP. ‘Tis very true: And therefore be assured, my good lord marshal, If we do now make our atonement well, Our peace will, like a broken limb united, Grow stronger for the breaking.

MOWBRAY. Be it so. Here is return’d my Lord of Westmoreland.

[Re-enter Westmoreland.]

WESTMORELAND. The prince is here at hand: pleaseth your lordship To meet his grace just distance ‘tween our armies.

MOWBRAY. Your grace of York, in God’s name then, set forward.

ARCHBISHOP. Before, and greet his grace: my lord, we come.

[Exeunt.]

 

SCENE II. Another part of the forest.

[Enter, from one side, Mowbray, attended; afterwards, the Archbishop, Hastings, and others; from the other side, Prince John of Lancaster, and Westmoreland; Officers, and others with them.]

LANCASTER. You are well encounter’d here, my cousin Mowbray: Good day to you, gentle lord Archbishop; And so to you, Lord Hastings, and to all. My Lord of York, it better show’d with you When that your flock, assembled by the bell, Encircled you to hear with reverence Your exposition on the holy text Than now to see you here an iron man, Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum, Turning the word to sword and life to death. That man that sits within a monarch’s heart, And ripens in the sunshine of his favour, Would he abuse the countenance of the king, Alack, what mischiefs might he set abroach In shadow of such greatness! With you, lord bishop, It is even so. Who hath not heard it spoken How deep you were within the books of God? To us the speaker in his parliament; To us the imagined voice of God himself; The very opener and intelligencer Between the grace, the sanctities of heaven And our dull workings. O, who shall believe But you misuse the reverence of your place, Employ the countenance and grace of heaven, As a false favourite doth his prince’s name, In deeds dishonourable? You have ta’en up, Under the counterfeited zeal of God, The subjects of his substitute, my father, And both against the peace of heaven and him Have