Complete Plays, The (216 page)

O, my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee: the money is paid back again.

Falstaff

O, I do not like that paying back; ’tis a double labour.

Prince Henry

I am good friends with my father and may do any thing.

Falstaff

Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it with unwashed hands too.

Bardolph

Do, my lord.

Prince Henry

I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.

Falstaff

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 thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous: I laud them, I praise them.

Prince Henry

Bardolph!

Bardolph

My lord?

Prince Henry

Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster, to my brother John; this to my Lord of Westmoreland.

Exit Bardolph

Go, Peto, to horse, to horse; for thou and I have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner time.

Exit Peto

Jack, meet me to-morrow in the temple hall at two o’clock in the afternoon.
There shalt thou know thy charge; and there receive
Money and order for their furniture.
The land is burning; Percy stands on high;
And either we or they must lower lie.

Exit Prince Henry

Falstaff

Rare words! brave world! Hostess, my breakfast, come!
O, I could wish this tavern were my drum!

Exit

A
CT
IV

S
CENE
I. T
HE
REBEL
CAMP
NEAR
S
HREWSBURY
.

Enter Hotspur, Worcester, and Douglas

Hotspur

Well said, my noble Scot: if speaking truth
In this fine age were not thought flattery,
Such attribution should the Douglas have,
As not a soldier of this season’s stamp
Should go so general current through the world.
By God, I cannot flatter; I do defy
The tongues of soothers; but a braver place
In my heart’s love hath no man than yourself:
Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.

Earl Of Douglas

Thou art the king of honour:
No man so potent breathes upon the ground
But I will beard him.

Hotspur

Do so, and ’tis well.

Enter a Messenger with letters

What letters hast thou there?— I can but thank you.

Messenger

These letters come from your father.

Hotspur

Letters from him! why comes he not himself?

Messenger

He cannot come, my lord; he is grievous sick.

Hotspur

’Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick
In such a rustling time? Who leads his power?
Under whose government come they along?

Messenger

His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord.

Earl Of Worcester

I prithee, tell me, doth he keep his bed?

Messenger

He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth;
And at the time of my departure thence
He was much fear’d by his physicians.

Earl Of Worcester

I would the state of time had first been whole
Ere he by sickness had been visited:
His health was never better worth than now.

Hotspur

Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect
The very life-blood of our enterprise;
’Tis catching hither, even to our camp.
He writes me here, that inward sickness —
And that his friends by deputation could not
So soon be drawn, nor did he think it meet
To lay so dangerous and dear a trust
On any soul removed but on his own.
Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,
That with our small conjunction we should on,
To see how fortune is disposed to us;
For, as he writes, there is no quailing now.
Because the king is certainly possess’d
Of all our purposes. What say you to it?

Earl Of Worcester

Your father’s sickness is a maim to us.

Hotspur

A perilous gash, a very limb lopp’d off:
And yet, in faith, it is not; his present want
Seems more than we shall find it: were it good
To set the exact wealth of all our states
All at one cast? to set so rich a main
On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?
It were not good; for therein should we read
The very bottom and the soul of hope,
The very list, the very utmost bound
Of all our fortunes.

Earl Of Douglas

’Faith, and so we should;
Where now remains a sweet reversion:
We may boldly spend upon the hope of what
Is to come in:
A comfort of retirement lives in this.

Hotspur

A rendezvous, a home to fly unto.
If that the devil and mischance look big
Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

Earl Of Worcester

But yet I would your father had been here.
The quality and hair of our attempt
Brooks no division: it will be thought
By some, that know not why he is away,
That wisdom, loyalty and mere dislike
Of our proceedings kept the earl from hence:
And think how such an apprehension
May turn the tide of fearful faction
And breed a kind of question in our cause;
For well you know we of the offering side
Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement,
And stop all sight-holes, every loop from whence
The eye of reason may pry in upon us:
This absence of your father’s draws a curtain,
That shows the ignorant a kind of fear
Before not dreamt of.

Hotspur

You strain too far.
I rather of his absence make this use:
It lends a lustre and more great opinion,
A larger dare to our great enterprise,
Than if the earl were here; for men must think,
If we without his help can make a head
To push against a kingdom, with his help
We shall o’erturn it topsy-turvy down.
Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole.

Earl Of Douglas

As heart can think: there is not such a word
Spoke of in Scotland as this term of fear.

Enter Sir Richard Vernon

Hotspur

My cousin Vernon, welcome, by my soul.

Vernon

Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.
The Earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong,
Is marching hitherwards; with him Prince John.

Hotspur

No harm: what more?

Vernon

And further, I have learn’d,
The king himself in person is set forth,
Or hitherwards intended speedily,
With strong and mighty preparation.

Hotspur

He shall be welcome too. Where is his son,
The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,
And his comrades, that daff’d the world aside,
And bid it pass?

Vernon

 
All furnish’d, all in arms;
All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed;
Glittering in golden coats, like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d
Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

Hotspur

No more, no more: worse than the sun in March,
This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come:
They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war
All hot and bleeding will we offer them:
The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit
Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire
To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh
And yet not ours. Come, let me taste my horse,
Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt
Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales:
Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse,
Meet and ne’er part till one drop down a corse.
O that Glendower were come!

Vernon

There is more news:
I learn’d in Worcester, as I rode along,
He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.

Earl Of Douglas

That’s the worst tidings that I hear of yet.

Worcester

Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound.

Hotspur

What may the king’s whole battle reach unto?

Vernon

To thirty thousand.

Hotspur

Forty let it be:
My father and Glendower being both away,
The powers of us may serve so great a day
Come, let us take a muster speedily:
Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.

Earl Of Douglas

Talk not of dying: I am out of fear
Of death or death’s hand for this one-half year.

Exeunt

S
CENE
II. A
PUBLIC
ROAD
NEAR
C
OVENTRY
.

Enter Falstaff and Bardolph

Falstaff

Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack: our soldiers shall march through; we’ll to Sutton Co’fil’ tonight.

Bardolph

Will you give me money, captain?

Falstaff

Lay out, lay out.

Bardolph

This bottle makes an angel.

Falstaff

An if it do, take it for thy labour; and if it make twenty, take them all; I’ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at town’s end.

Bardolph

I will, captain: farewell.

Exit

Falstaff

If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused 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 house-holders, yeoman’s sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as lieve hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck. I pressed me none but 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 ostlers trade-fallen, the cankers of a calm world and a long peace, ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced ancient: and such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat: nay, and the villains march wide 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 an herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban’s, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that’s all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.

Enter the Prince and Westmoreland

Prince Henry

How now, blown Jack! how now, quilt!

Falstaff

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 Shrewsbury.

Westmoreland

Faith, Sir John,’tis more than time that I were there, and you too; but my powers are there already. The king, I can tell you, looks for us all: we must away all night.

Falstaff

Tut, never fear me: I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

Prince Henry

I think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?

Falstaff

Mine, Hal, mine.

Prince Henry

I did never see such pitiful rascals.

Falstaff

Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

Westmoreland

Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare, too beggarly.

Falstaff

’Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they had that; and for their bareness, I am sure they never learned that of me.

Prince Henry

No I’ll be sworn; unless you call three fingers on the ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste: Percy is already in the field.

Falstaff

What, is the king encamped?

Westmoreland

He is, Sir John: I fear we shall stay too long.

Falstaff

Well,
To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast
Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

Exeunt

S
CENE
III. T
HE
REBEL
CAMP
NEAR
S
HREWSBURY
.

Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Douglas, and Vernon

Hotspur

We’ll fight with him to-night.