| [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] |
| [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] |
| [Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, DOUGLAS, and VERNON] | |
| HOTSPUR | We'll fight with him to-night. |
| EARL OF WORCESTER | It may not be. |
| EARL OF DOUGLAS | You give him then the advantage. |
| VERNON | Not a whit. |
| HOTSPUR | Why say you so? looks he not for supply? |
| VERNON | So do we. |
| HOTSPUR | His is certain, ours is doubtful. |
| EARL OF WORCESTER | Good cousin, be advised; stir not tonight. |
| VERNON | Do not, my lord. |
| EARL OF DOUGLAS | You do not counsel well:
You speak it out of fear and cold heart. |
| VERNON | Do me no slander, Douglas: by my life,
And I dare well maintain it with my life, If well-respected honour bid me on, I hold as little counsel with weak fear As you, my lord, or any Scot that this day lives: Let it be seen to-morrow in the battle Which of us fears. |
| EARL OF DOUGLAS | Yea, or to-night. |
| VERNON | Content. |
| HOTSPUR | To-night, say I. |
| VERNON | Come, come it nay not be. I wonder much,
Being men of such great leading as you are, That you foresee not what impediments Drag back our expedition: certain horse Of my cousin Vernon's are not yet come up: Your uncle Worcester's horse came but today; And now their pride and mettle is asleep, Their courage with hard labour tame and dull, That not a horse is half the half of himself. |
| HOTSPUR | So are the horses of the enemy
In general, journey-bated and brought low: The better part of ours are full of rest. |
| EARL OF WORCESTER | The number of the king exceedeth ours:
For God's sake. cousin, stay till all come in. |
| [The trumpet sounds a parley] | |
| [Enter SIR WALTER BLUNT] | |
| SIR WALTER BLUNT | I come with gracious offers from the king,
if you vouchsafe me hearing and respect. |
| HOTSPUR | Welcome, Sir Walter Blunt; and would to God
You were of our determination! Some of us love you well; and even those some Envy your great deservings and good name, Because you are not of our quality, But stand against us like an enemy. |
| SIR WALTER BLUNT | And God defend but still I should stand so,
So long as out of limit and true rule You stand against anointed majesty. But to my charge. The king hath sent to know The nature of your griefs, and whereupon You conjure from the breast of civil peace Such bold hostility, teaching his duteous land Audacious cruelty. If that the king Have any way your good deserts forgot, Which he confesseth to be manifold, He bids you name your griefs; and with all speed You shall have your desires with interest And pardon absolute for yourself and these Herein misled by your suggestion. |
| HOTSPUR | The king is kind; and well we know the king
Knows at what time to promise, when to pay. My father and my uncle and myself Did give him that same royalty he wears; And when he was not six and twenty strong, Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low, A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home, My father gave him welcome to the shore; And when he heard him swear and vow to God He came but to be Duke of Lancaster, To sue his livery and beg his peace, With tears of innocency and terms of zeal, My father, in kind heart and pity moved, Swore him assistance and perform'd it too. Now when the lords and barons of the realm Perceived Northumberland did lean to him, The more and less came in with cap and knee; Met him in boroughs, cities, villages, Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes, Laid gifts before him, proffer'd him their oaths, Gave him their heirs, as pages follow'd him Even at the heels in golden multitudes. He presently, as greatness knows itself, Steps me a little higher than his vow Made to my father, while his blood was poor, Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh; And now, forsooth, takes on him to reform Some certain edicts and some strait decrees That lie too heavy on the commonwealth, Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep Over his country's wrongs; and by this face, This seeming brow of justice, did he win The hearts of all that he did angle for; Proceeded further; cut me off the heads Of all the favourites that the absent king In deputation left behind him here, When he was personal in the Irish war. |
| SIR WALTER BLUNT | Tut, I came not to hear this. |
| HOTSPUR | Then to the point.
In short time after, he deposed the king; Soon after that, deprived him of his life; And in the neck of that, task'd the whole state: To make that worse, suffer'd his kinsman March, Who is, if every owner were well placed, Indeed his king, to be engaged in Wales, There without ransom to lie forfeited; Disgraced me in my happy victories, Sought to entrap me by intelligence; Rated mine uncle from the council-board; In rage dismiss'd my father from the court; Broke oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong, And in conclusion drove us to seek out This head of safety; and withal to pry Into his title, the which we find Too indirect for long continuance. |
| SIR WALTER BLUNT | Shall I return this answer to the king? |
| HOTSPUR | Not so, Sir Walter: we'll withdraw awhile.
Go to the king; and let there be impawn'd Some surety for a safe return again, And in the morning early shall my uncle Bring him our purposes: and so farewell. |
| SIR WALTER BLUNT | I would you would accept of grace and love. |
| HOTSPUR | And may be so we shall. |
| SIR WALTER BLUNT | Pray God you do. |
| [Exeunt] |
| [Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK and SIR MICHAEL] | |
| ARCHBISHOP OF YORK | Hie, good Sir Michael; bear this sealed brief
With winged haste to the lord marshal; This to my cousin Scroop, and all the rest To whom they are directed. If you knew How much they do to import, you would make haste. |
| SIR MICHAEL | My good lord,
I guess their tenor. |
| ARCHBISHOP OF YORK | Like enough you do.
To-morrow, good Sir Michael, is a day Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men Must bide the touch; for, sir, at Shrewsbury, As I am truly given to understand, The king with mighty and quick-raised power Meets with Lord Harry: and, I fear, Sir Michael, What with the sickness of Northumberland, Whose power was in the first proportion, And what with Owen Glendower's absence thence, Who with them was a rated sinew too And comes not in, o'er-ruled by prophecies, I fear the power of Percy is too weak To wage an instant trial with the king. |
| SIR MICHAEL | Why, my good lord, you need not fear;
There is Douglas and Lord Mortimer. |
| ARCHBISHOP OF YORK | No, Mortimer is not there. |
| SIR MICHAEL | But there is Mordake, Vernon, Lord Harry Percy,
And there is my Lord of Worcester and a head Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen. |
| ARCHBISHOP OF YORK | And so there is: but yet the king hath drawn
The special head of all the land together: The Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster, The noble Westmoreland and warlike Blunt; And moe corrivals and dear men Of estimation and command in arms. |
| SIR MICHAEL | Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well opposed. |
| ARCHBISHOP OF YORK | I hope no less, yet needful 'tis to fear;
And, to prevent the worst, Sir Michael, speed: For if Lord Percy thrive not, ere the king Dismiss his power, he means to visit us, For he hath heard of our confederacy, And 'tis but wisdom to make strong against him: Therefore make haste. I must go write again To other friends; and so farewell, Sir Michael. |
| [Exeunt] |