is come to me and prings me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek: it was in a place where I could not breed no contention with him; but I will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.
Enter
Pistol.
Gower
Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.
Fluellen
’Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks. God pless you, Aunchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!
Pistol
Ha! art thou bedlam? dost thou thirst, base Trojan,
To have me fold up Parca’s fatal web?
Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.
Fluellen
I peseech you heartily, scurfy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek: because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections and your appetites and your digestions doo’s not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.
Pistol
Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.
Fluellen
There is one goat for you.
Strikes him. Will you be so good, scauld knave, as eat it?
Pistol
Base Trojan, thou shalt die.
Fluellen
You say very true, scauld knave, when God’s will is: I will desire you to live in the meantime, and eat your victuals: come, there is sauce for it.
Strikes him. You called me yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you today a squire of low degree. I pray you, fall to: if you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek.
Gower
Enough, captain: you have astonished him.
Fluellen
I say, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will peat his pate four days. Bite, I pray you; it is good for your green wound and your ploody coxcomb.
Pistol
Must I bite?
Fluellen
Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question too, and ambiguities.
Pistol
By this leek, I will most horribly revenge: I eat and eat, I swear—
Fluellen
Eat, I pray you: will you have some more sauce to your leek? there is not enough leek to swear by.
Pistol
Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see I eat.
Fluellen
Much good do you, scauld knave, heartily. Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at ’em; that is all.
Pistol
Good.
Fluellen
Ay, leeks is good: hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate.
Pistol
Me a groat!
Fluellen
Yes, verily and in truth you, shall take it; or I have another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat.
Pistol
I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.
Fluellen
If I owe you anything I will pay you in cudgels: you shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God b’ wi’ you, and keep you, and heal your pate.
Exit.
Pistol
All hell shall stir for this.
Gower
Go, go; you are a counterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel: you find it otherwise; and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition. Fare ye well.
Exit.
Pistol
Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now?
News have I, that my Doll is dead i’ the spital
Of malady of France;
And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.
Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs
Honour is cudgelled. Well, bawd I’ll turn,
And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.
To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal:
And patches will I get unto these cudgell’d scars,
And swear I got them in the Gallia wars. Exit.
Scene II
France. A royal palace.
Enter, at one door,
King Henry,
Exeter,
Bedford,
Gloucester,
Warwick,
Westmoreland, and other
Lords; at another, the
French King,
Queen Isabel, the
Princess Katharine,
Alice, and other Ladies; the
Duke of Burgundy, and his train.
King Henry
Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met!
Unto our brother France, and to our sister,
Health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes
To our most fair and princely cousin Katharine;
And, as a branch and member of this royalty,
By whom this great assembly is contrived,
We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy;
And, princes French, and peers, health to you all!
French King
Right joyous are we to behold your face,
Most worthy brother England; fairly met:
So are you, princes English, every one.
Queen Isabel
So happy be the issue, brother England,
Of this good day and of this gracious meeting,
As we are now glad to behold your eyes;
Your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them
Against the French, that met them in their bent,
The fatal balls of murdering basilisks:
The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,
Have lost their quality, and that this day
Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.
King Henry
To cry amen to that, thus we appear.
Queen Isabel
You English princes all, I do salute you.
Burgundy
My duty to you both, on equal love,
Great Kings of France and England! That I have labour’d,
With all my wits, my pains and strong endeavours,
To bring your most imperial majesties
Unto this bar and royal interview,
Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.
Since then my office hath so far prevail’d
That, face to face and royal eye to eye,
You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me,
If I demand, before this royal view,
What rub or what impediment there is,
Why that the naked, poor and mangled Peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties and joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,
And all
Comments (0)