HENRY IV With vile participation; not an eye Save mine, which hath desir'd to see thee more; Which now doth that I would not have it do, Make blind itself with foolish tenderness. wounds of my intemperance: If not, the end of life cancels all bands; And I will die a hundred thousand deaths, Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow. K. Hen. A hundred thousand rebels die in this : P. Hen. I shall hereafter, my thrice-gracious Thou shalt have charge, and sovereign trust, lord, Be more myself. K. Hen. For all the world, As thou art to this hour, was Richard then, Leads ancient lords and reverend bishops on Through all the kingdoms that acknowledge Thrice bath this Hotspur Mars in swathing This infant warrior, in his enterprizes, And shake the peace and safety of our throne. The archbishop's grace of York, Douglas, Capitulate + against us and are up. Base inclination, and the start of spleen,) P. Hen. Do not think so, you shall not find it so; And God forgive them, that have so much Your majesty's good thoughts away from me! with it. And that shall be the day, whene'er it lights, bead my My shames redonbled! for the time will come, 1 Most fatal. herein. Enter BLUNT. How now, good Blunt? thy looks are full of speed. Blunt. So hath the business that I come to speak of. Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word, K. Hen. The earl of Westmoreland set forth With him my son, lord John of Lancaster; SCENE III.-Eastcheap.-A Room in the Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH. Bard. Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long. Fal. Why, there is it :-come, sing nie a bawdy song; make me merry. I was as virtuously given, as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough: swore little; diced, not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house, not above once in a quarter-of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three or four times; lived well, and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass. Bard. Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass; out of all reasonable compass, Sir John. Fal. Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life: Thou art our admiral, thon bearest the lantern in the poop,-but 'tis in the nose of thee; thou art the knight of the burning lamp. Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. Fal. No, I'll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death's head, or a memento mori: I never see thy face, but i think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be, By this fire: but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy Have some flesh. † Admiral's ship. 3 F face, the son of utter darkness. When thou ran'st up Gads hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money. O thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast sav'd me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me, would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler's in Europe. I have maintain'd that salamander of your's with fire, any time this two and thirty years; Heaven reward me for it! Bard. 'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly! Fal. God a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-burned. Enter HOSTESS. How now, dame Partlet the hen? have you inquired yet who picked my pocket? Host. Why, Sir John! what do you think, Sir John? Do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have searched, I have inquired, so has my husbaud, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant: the tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before. Fal. You lie, hostess; Bardolph was shaved, and lost many a hair: and I'll be sworn, my pocket was picked: Go to, you are a woman, go. Host. Who, II defy thee: I was never called so in mine own house before. Fal. Go to, I know you well enough. Host. No, Sir John, you do not know me, Sir John: I know you, Sir John: you owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it: I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back. Fal. Dowlas, filthy dowlas; I have given them away to bakers' wives, and they have made bolters of them. Host. Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell. You owe money here besides, Sir John, for your diet, and by-drinkings, and money lent you, four and twenty pound. Fal. He had his part of it; let him pay. Host. Het alas, he is poor; he hath thing. P. Hen. What didst thou lose, Jack? Fal. Wilt thou believe me, Hal: three or four bonds of forty pound a-piece, and a sealring of my grandfather's. P. Hen. A trifle, some eight-penny matter. Host. So I told him, my lord; and I said I heard your grace say so: And, my lord, be speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is: and said he would cudgel you. P. Hen. What! he did not? Host. There's neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else. Fal. There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune; nor no more truth in thee, than in a drawn fox; and for womanhood, med Marian may be the deputy's wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing, go. Host. Say, what thing? what thing? Fal. What thing? why a thing to thank God on. Host. I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou should'st know it; I am an honest man's wife; and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so. Fal. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise. Host. Say what beast, thou knave, thou? P. Hen. An otter, Sir John? why an otter! Fal. Why she's neither fish nor flesh, a man knows not where to have her. Host. Thou art an unjust man in saying so; thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave thou! P. Hen. Thou sayest true, hostess; and he slanders thee most grossly. Host. So he doth you, my lord; and said this other day you owed him a thousand pound. P. Hen Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound? Fal. A thousand pound, Hal? a million: thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love. Host. Nay, my lord, he called you Jack, and said he would cudgel you. Fal. Did I, Bardolph ? Bard. Indeed, Sir John, you said so. Fal. How! poor? look upon his face; What call you rich! let them coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks; I'll not pay a denier. What, will you make a younker of me? shall I not take mine ease in mine iun, but I shall have my pocket picked? I have lost a seal-ring of iny grandfather's worth forty mark. Host. O Jesu! I have heard the prince tell him, I know not how oft, that that ring was copper. Fal. Why, Hal, thou knowest, as thou art but man, I dare: but, as thou art prince, I fear thee as I fear the roaring of the lion's whelp. P. Hen. And why not, as the lion? Fal. The king himself is to be feared as the lion: Dost thou think I'll fear thee as I fear thy father? nay, an I do, I pray God my girdle break! P. Hen. Oh! if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! But, sirrab, there's no Fal. How the prince is a Jack, + a sneak-room for faith, truth, nor honesty, in this bosom cup; and if he were here, I would cudgel him of thine; it is filled up with guts and midlike a dog, if he would say so. Enter Prince HENRY and POINS, marching FALSTAFF meets the PRINCE, playing on his truncheon like a fife. Fal. How now, lad is the wind in that door i'faith? must we all march? Bard. Yea, two and two, Newgate-fashion? Host. Good my lord, hear me. Fal. The other night I fell asleep here be hind the arras, and had my pocket picked: this bouse is turned bawdy-house, they pick pockets. In the story-book of Reynard the Fox. • A term of contempt frequently used by Shakspeare. riff. Charge an honest woman with picking bossed + rascal, if there were any thing in the thy pocket! Why, thou whoreson, impudent em pocket but tavern-reckonings, memorandums of bawdy-houses, and one poor penny-worth of sugar-candy to make thee long winded; if thy pocket were enriched with any other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet you will stand to it; you will not pocket up wrong: Art thou not ashamed? Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do, in the days of villainy? Thou seest I bave more flesh than another man; and therefore more frailty.--You confess then, you picked my pocket? P. Hen. It appears so by the story. • A man dressed like a woman, who attends morria dancers. + Suola. HENRY IV ready breakfast; love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests: thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason: thou seest I am pacified-Still?-Nay, pr'ythee, be gone. [Erit HOSTESS.] Now, Hal, to the news at court: for the robbery, lad,-How is that answered ? P. Hen. O my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee :-The money is paid back again. Fal. O I do not like that paying back, 'tis a double labour. P. Hen. I am good friends with my father, and may do any thing. Fal. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it with unwashed hands too. Bard. Do, my lord. of foot. P. Hen. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge Fal. I would it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can steal well? O for a fine thief, of the age of two and twenty, or there. Well, abouts! I am heinously unprovided. God be thanked for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous; I laud them, I praise them. P. Hen. Bardolph—— P. Hen. Go bear this letter to lord John of My brother John; this to my lord of Westmore land.- Go, Poins, to horse, to horse; for thou and I Meet me to-morrow i'the temple hall At two o'clock i'the afternoon: ! how has he the leisure to be In such a justling time? Who leads his power? Wor. I pr'ythee, tell me, doth he keep his Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere 1 set And at the time of my departure thence, Wor. I would the state of time had first been His health was never better worth than now. off: And yet, in faith, 'tis not; his present want Seems more than we shall find it :-Were it good, There shalt thou know thy charge: and there re- To set the exact wealth of all our states ceive Money, and order for their furniture. [Exeunt PRINCE, POINS, and BARDOLPH. Fal. Rare words! brave world!--Hostess, my breakfast; come : OI could wish this tavern were my drum. ACT IV. [Exit. Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, and DOUGLAS. Hot. Weil said, my noble Scot: if speaking truth, In this fine age, were not thought flattery, Nay, task me to the word; approve me, lord. Hot. Do so, and 'tis well : Enter a MESSENGERS, with letters. What letters hast thou there ?-I can but thank you. Mess. These letters come from your fatuer,Hot. Letters from him! why comes he not bimself? Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he's grievous sick. All at one cast? to set so rich a main Doug. 'Faith, and so we should ! A comfort of retirement lives in this. Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, Wor. But yet I would your father had been The quality and hair of our attempt The eye of reason may pry in upon us : Hot. You strain too far. I, rather, of his absence make this use;- If we, without his help, can make a head T23 expression is applied by way of preeminence Spoke of in Scotland, as this term of fear. to the bead of the Douglas family. 1 Meet him face to face. • Line. + Whereas. Enter Sir RICHARD VERNON. Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul. Ver. Pray God, my news be worth a wel- The earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong, John. Hot. No harm: What more? Ver. And further, I have learn'd,- the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at the town's end. Bard. I will, captain: farewell. [Erit. Fal. If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a souced gurnet. • I have misused the king's press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomen's sons: inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the bans; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as lief hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver, worse than a struck fowl, Hot. He shall be welcome too. Where is his or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none bat son, The nimble-footed mad-cap prince of Wales, Ver. All furnish'd, all in arms, All plum'd like estridges that wing the wind; This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come; horse, such toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores: and such as, indeed, were never soldiers; but discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostiers tradefallen; the cankers of a calm world, and a long peace; ten times more dishonourably ragged than an old faced ancient : and such have 1, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought cut their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately conse from swine-keeping, from eating draff and busks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scare-crows. that's flat :-Nay, and the villains march wide I'll not march through Coventry with them, betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for, indeed, I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to my say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's, or the red-nose inn-keeper of Daintry.i But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge. Who is to bear me, like a thunderbolt, Ver. To thirty thousand. Hot. Forty let it be; My father and Glendower being both away, Doug. Talk not of dying; I ain out of fear Of death, or death's hand, for this one half year. [Exeunt. SCENE II.—A Public Road near Coventry. Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH. Fal. Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack: our soldiers shall march through; we'll to Sutton-Colfield tonight. Bard. Will you give me money, captain? Bard. This bottle makes an angel. Enter Prince HENRY and WESTMORE LAND. P. Hen. How now, blown Jack? how now, quilt? Fal. What, Hal? How now, mad wag? what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire -My good lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy; I thought your honour had already been at Shrews bury. that I were there, and you too; but my powers West. 'Faith, Sir John, 'tis more than time are there already: The king, I can tell you, looks for us all; we must away all night. Fal. Tut, never fear me; I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream. P. Hen. I think to steal cream indeed; for thy theft hath already made thee butter. Eat tell me, Jack; Whose fellows are these that come after ? Fal. Mine, Hal, mine. P. Hen. I did never see such pitiful rascals. powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit, as Fal. Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men. West. He is, Sir John; I fear, we shall stay | And pardon absolute yourself, and these, Herein misled by your suggestion. too long. Fal. Well, To the latter end of a fray, and the beginning of a feast, Fits a dull fighter, and a keen guest. Hot. The king is kind; and, well we know, Knows at what time to promise, when to pay. A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,- bury. Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, DOUGLAS, and And,-when he heard him swear, and vow to VERNON. Ilot. We'll fight with him to-night. Wor. It may not be. Doug. You give him then advantage. Fer. Not a whit. God, He came but to be duke of Lancaster, Hot. Why say you so? looks he not for sup- Now, when the lords and barons of the realm Ver. So do we. Hot. His is certain, our's is doubtful. Perceiv'd Northumberland did lean to him, Wor. Good cousin, be advis'd; stir not to- Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes, night. Ver. Do not, my lord. Doug. You do not counsel well; You speak it out of fear, and cold heart. life, (And I dare well maintain it with my life,) Doug. Yea, or to-night. Ver. Content. Hot. To-night, say' I. Ver. Come, come, it may not be. I wonder much, being men of such great ing, my Laid gifts before him, proffer'd him their oaths, That you foresee not what impediments And now their pride and mettle is asleep, Hot. So are the horses of the enemy ours: For God's sake, cousin, stay till all come in. (Who is, if every owner were well plac'd, Blunt. I come with gracious offers from the Into his title, the which we find You were of our determination! Some of us love you well; and even those some Blunt. And God defend, but still I should So long as, out of limit and true rule, bich he confesseth to be manifold, He bids you name your griefs, and, with all speed, You shall bave your desires with interest; SCENE IV.-York.-A Room in the Arch- Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, and a GEN- Arch. Hie, good Sir Michael, bear this sealed With winged haste, to the lord mareschal ; The delivery of his lands. 1 |