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

of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgement and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him! For the box of the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, God send the prince a better companion!

FALSTAFF. God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry: I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.

FALSTAFF. Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady Peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, and I brandish any thing but a bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head but I am thrust upon it: well, I cannot last ever: but it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is: I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition!

FALSTAFF. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?

CHIEF JUSTICE. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

[Exeunt Chief-Justice and Servant.]

FALSTAFF. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no more separate age and covetousness than ‘a can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!

PAGE. Sir?

FALSTAFF. What money is in my purse?

PAGE. Seven groats and two pence.

FALSTAFF. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair of my chin. About it: you know where to find me. [Exit Page.] A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. ‘Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will make use of any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity.

[Exit.]

 

SCENE III. York. The Archbishop’s palace.

[Enter the Archbishop, the Lords Hastings, Mowbray, Bardolph.]

ARCHBISHOP. Thus have you heard our cause and known our means; And, my most noble friends, I pray you all, Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes: And first, lord marshal, what say you to it?

MOWBRAY. I well allow the occasion of our arms; But gladly would be better satisfied How in our means we should advance ourselves To look with forehead bold and big enough Upon the power and puissance of the king.

HASTINGS. Our present musters grow upon the file To five and twenty thousand men of choice; And our supplies live largely in the hope Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns With an incensed fire of injuries.

LORD BARDOLPH. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus: Whether our present five and twenty thousand May hold up head without Northumberland?

HASTINGS. With him, we may.

LORD BARDOLPH. Yea, marry, there ‘s the point: But if without him we be thought too feeble, My judgement is, we should not step too far Till we had his assistance by the hand; For in a theme so bloody-faced as this Conjecture, expectation, and surmise Of aids incertain should not be admitted.

ARCHBISHOP. ‘Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed It was young Hotspur’s case at Shrewsbury.

LORD BARDOLPH. It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope, Eating the air on promise of supply, Flattering himself in project of a power Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts: And so, with great imagination Proper to madmen, led his powers to death And winking leap’d into destruction.

HASTINGS. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.

LORD BARDOLPH. Yes, if this present quality of war, Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot Lives so in hope as in an early spring We see the appearing buds; which to prove fruit, Hope gives not so much warrant as despair That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the figure of the house, Then we must rate the cost of the erection; Which if we find outweighs ability, What do we then but draw anew the model In fewer offices, or at least desist To build at all? Much more, in this great work, Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down And set another up, should we survey The plot of situation and the model, Consent upon a sure foundation, Question surveyors, know our own estate, How able such a work to undergo, To weigh against his opposite; or else We fortify in paper and in figures, Using the names of men instead of men; Like one that draws the model of a house Beyond his power to build it; who, half through, Gives o’er and leaves his part-created cost A naked subject to the weeping clouds And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.

HASTINGS. Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth, Should be still-born, and that we now possess’d The utmost man of expectation, I think we are a body strong enough, Even as we are, to equal with the king.

LORD BARDOLPH. What, is the king but five and twenty thousand?

HASTINGS. To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph. For his divisions, as the times do brawl, Are in three heads: one power against the French, And one against Glendower; perforce a third Must take up us: so is the unfirm king In three divided; and his coffers sound With hollow poverty and emptiness.

ARCHBISHOP. That he should draw his several strengths together And come against us in full puissance, Need not be dreaded.

HASTINGS. If he should do so, He leaves his back unarm’d, the French and Welsh Baying him at the heels: never fear that.

LORD BARDOLPH. Who is it like should lead his forces hither?

HASTINGS. The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland; Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth: But who is substituted ‘gainst the French, I have no certain notice.

ARCHBISHOP. Let us on, And publish the occasion of our arms. The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; Their over-greedy love hath surfeited: An habitation giddy and unsure Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart. O thou fond many, with what loud applause Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke, Before he was what thou wouldst have him be! And being now trimm’d in thine own desires, Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him, That thou provokest thyself to cast him up. So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard; And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these times? They that, when Richard lived, would have him die, Are now become enamour’d on his grave: Thou that threw’st dust upon his goodly head When through proud London he came sighing on After the admired heels of Bolingbroke, Criest now “O earth, yield us that king again, And take thou this!” O thoughts of men accursed! Past and to come seems best; things present worst.

MOWBRAY. Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?

HASTINGS. We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

[Exeunt.]

 

ACT II.

SCENE I. London. A street.

[Enter Hostess, Fang and his Boy with her, and Snare following.]

HOSTESS. Master Fang, have you entered the action?

FANG. It is entered.

HOSTESS. Where ‘s your yeoman? Is ‘t a lusty yeoman? will ‘a stand to ‘t?

FANG. Sirrah, where ‘s Snare?

HOSTESS. O Lord, ay! good Master Snare.

SNARE. Here, here.

FANG. Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.

HOSTESS. Yea, good Master Snare; I have entered him and all.

SNARE. It may chance cost some of our lives, for he will stab.

HOSTESS. Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly: in good faith, he cares not what mischief he does, if his weapon be out: he will foin like any devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child.

FANG. If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.

HOSTESS. No, nor I neither: I’ll be at your elbow.

FANG. An I but fist him once; an ‘a come but within my vice,—

HOSTESS. I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he ‘s an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure: good Master Snare, let him not ‘scape. A’ comes continuantly to Pie-corner—saving your manhoods—to buy a saddle; and he is indited to dinner to the Lubber’s-head in Lumbert Street, to Master Smooth’s the silkman: I pray ye, since my exion is entered and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear: and I have borne, and borne, and borne; and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and a beast, to bear every knave’s wrong. Yonder he comes; and that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, do your offices, Master Fang and Master Snare, do me, do me, do me your offices.

[Enter Falstaff, Page, and Bardolph.]

FALSTAFF. How now! whose mare’s dead? what’s the matter?

FANG. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly.

FALSTAFF. Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph: cut me off the villain’s head: throw the quean in the channel.

HOSTESS. Throw me in the channel! I’ll throw thee in the channel. Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue! Murder, murder! Ah, thou honey-suckle villain! wilt thou kill God’s officers and the king’s? Ah, thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed, a man-queller, and a woman-queller.

FALSTAFF. Keep them off, Bardolph.

FANG. A rescue! a rescue!

HOSTESS. Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou wo’t, wo’t thou? thou wo’t, wo’t ta? do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!

PAGE. Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.

[Enter the Lord Chief-Justice, and his men.]

CHIEF JUSTICE. What is the matter? keep the