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

Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow,— be what thou wilt; I am fortune’s steward—get on thy boots: we’ll ride all night. O sweet Pistol! Away, Bardolph!

[Exit Bardolph.]

Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master Shallow: I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man’s horses; the laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are they that have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief-justice!

PISTOL. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! “Where is the life that late I led?” say they: Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days!

[Exeunt.]

 

SCENE IV. London. A street.

[Enter Beadles, dragging in Hostess Quickly and Doll Tearsheet.]

HOSTESS. No, thou arrant knave; I would to God that I might die, that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint.

FIRST BEADLE. The constables have delivered her over to me; and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her: there hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

DOLL. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I’ll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal, an the child I now go with do miscarry, thou wert better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain.

HOSTESS. O the Lord, that Sir John were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

FIRST BEADLE. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you.

DOLL. I’ll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you as soundly swinged for this,—you blue-bottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not swinged, I’ll forswear half-kirtles.

FIRST BEADLE. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come.

HOSTESS. O God, that right should thus overcome might! Well, of sufferance comes ease.

DOLL. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.

HOSTESS. Ay, come, you starved blood-hound.

DOLL. Goodman death, goodman bones!

HOSTESS. Thou atomy, thou!

DOLL. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal!

FIRST BEADLE. Very well.

[Exeunt.]

 

SCENE V. A public place near Westminster Abbey.

[Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.]

FIRST GROOM. More rushes, more rushes.

SECOND GROOM. The trumpets have sounded twice.

FIRST GROOM. ‘Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the coronation: dispatch, dispatch.

[Exeunt.]

[Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph, and Page.]

FALSTAFF. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow; I will make the king do you grace: I will leer upon him as a’ comes by; and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.

PISTOL. God bless thy lungs, good knight!

FALSTAFF. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me. O, if I had had to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. But ‘tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

SHALLOW. It doth so.

FALSTAFF. It shows my earnestness of affection,—

SHALLOW. It doth so.

FALSTAFF. My devotion,—

SHALLOW. It doth, it doth, it doth.

FALSTAFF. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me,—

SHALLOW. It is best, certain.

FALSTAFF. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him; thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.

PISTOL. ‘Tis “semper idem,” for “obsque hoc nihil est:” ‘tis all in every part.

SHALLOW. ‘Tis so, indeed.

PISTOL. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, And make thee rage. Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts, Is in base durance and contagious prison; Haled thither By most mechanical and dirty hand: Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake, For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.

FALSTAFF. I will deliver her.

[Shouts, within, and the trumpets sound.]

PISTOL. There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.

[Enter the King and his train, the Lord Chief-Justice among them.]

FALSTAFF. God save thy grace, King Hal; my royal Hal!

PISTOL. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

FALSTAFF. God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING. My lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Have you your wits? know you what ‘tis you speak?

FALSTAFF. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING. I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dream’d of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell’d, 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. Reply not to me with a fool-born jest: Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn’d away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots: Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death, As I have done the rest of my misleaders, Not to come near our person by ten mile. For competence of life I will allow you, That lack of means enforce you not to evils: And, as we hear you do reform yourselves, We will, according to your strengths and qualities, Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform’d the tenour of our word. Set on.

[Exeunt King, &c.]

FALSTAFF. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.

SHALLOW. Yea, marry, Sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

FALSTAFF. That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world: fear not your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.

SHALLOW. I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.

FALSTAFF. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a colour.

SHALLOW. A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.

FALSTAFF. Fear no colours: go with me to dinner: come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph: I shall be sent for soon at night.

[Re-enter Prince John, the Lord Chief-Justice; Officers with them.]

CHIEF JUSTICE. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet: Take all his company along with him.

FALSTAFF. My lord, my lord,—

CHIEF JUSTICE. I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon. Take them away.

PISTOL. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.

[Exeunt all but Prince John and the Lord Chief-Justice.]

LANCASTER. I like this fair proceeding of the king’s: He hath intent his wonted followers Shall all be very well provided for; But all are banish’d till their conversations Appear more wise and modest to the world.

CHIEF JUSTICE. And so they are.

LANCASTER. The king hath call’d his parliament, my lord.

CHIEF JUSTICE. He hath.

LANCASTER. I will lay odds that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords and native fire As far as France: I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king. Come, will you hence?

[Exeunt.]

 

EPILOGUE.

Spoken by a Dancer.

First my fear; then my courtesy; last my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my courtesy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the urpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some and I will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me: if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloy’d with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a’ be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

 

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