Act IV
Scene I
The rebel camp near Shrewsbury.
Enter Hotspur, Worcester, and Douglas. | |
Hotspur |
Well said, my noble Scot: if speaking truth
|
Douglas |
Thou art the king of honour:
|
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
|
Messenger | His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord. |
Worcester | I prithee, tell me, doth he keep his bed? |
Messenger |
He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth;
|
Worcester |
I would the state of time had first been whole
|
Hotspur |
Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect
|
Worcester | Your father’s sickness is a maim to us. |
Hotspur |
A perilous gash, a very limb lopp’d off:
|
Douglas |
’Faith, and so we should;
|
Hotspur |
A rendezvous, a home to fly unto,
|
Worcester |
But yet I would your father had been here.
|
Hotspur |
You strain too far.
|
Douglas |
As heart can think: there is not such a word
|
Enter Sir Richard Vernon. | |
Hotspur | My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul. |
Vernon |
Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.
|
Hotspur | No harm: what more? |
Vernon |
And further, I have learn’d,
|
Hotspur |
He shall be welcome too. Where is his son,
|
Vernon |
All furnish’d, all in arms;
|
Hotspur |
No more, no more: worse than the sun in March,
|
Vernon |
There is more news:
|
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:
|
Douglas |
Talk not of dying: I am out of fear
|
Scene II
A public road near Coventry.
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’ to-night. |
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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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,
|
Scene III
The rebel camp near Shrewsbury.
Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Douglas, and Vernon. | |
Hotspur | We’ll fight with him to-night. |
Worcester | It may not be. |
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. |
Worcester | Good cousin, be advised; stir not to-night. |
Vernon | Do not, my lord. |
Douglas |
You do not counsel well:
|
Vernon |
Do me no slander, Douglas: by my life,
|
Douglas | Yea, or to-night. |
Vernon | Content. |
Hotspur | To-night, say I. |
Vernon |
Come, come it nay not be. I wonder much,
|
Hotspur |
So are the horses of the enemy
|
Worcester |
The number of the king exceedeth ours:
|
Enter Sir Walter Blunt. | |
Blunt |
I come with gracious offers from the king,
|
Hotspur |
Welcome, Sir Walter Blunt; and would to God
|
Blunt |
And God defend but still I should stand so,
|
Hotspur |
The king is kind; and well we know the king
|
Blunt | Tut, I came not to hear this. |
Hotspur |
Then to the point.
|
Blunt | Shall I return this answer to the king? |
Hotspur |
Not so, Sir Walter: we’ll withdraw awhile.
|
Blunt | I would you would accept of grace and love. |
Hotspur | And may be so we shall. |
Blunt | Pray God you do. Exeunt. |
Scene IV
York. The Archbishop’s palace.
Enter the Archbishop of York and Sir Michael. | |
Archbishop |
Hie, good Sir Michael; bear this sealed brief
|
Sir Michael |
My good lord,
|
Archbishop |
Like enough you do.
|
Sir Michael |
Why, my good lord, you need not fear;
|
Archbishop | No, Mortimer is not there. |
Sir Michael |
But there is Mordake, Vernon, Lord Harry Percy,
|
Archbishop |
And so there is: but yet the king hath drawn
|
Sir Michael | Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well opposed. |
Archbishop |
I hope no less, yet needful ’tis to fear;
|