The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare [book recommendations based on other books txt] 📗

and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!

PAGE. Sir?

FALSTAFF. What money is in my purse?

PAGE. Seven groats and two pence.

FALSTAFF. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the Prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceiv’d the first white hair of my chin. About it; you know where to find me. [Exit PAGE] A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. ‘Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity.

Exit

 

SCENE III.

York. The ARCHBISHOP’S palace

 

Enter the ARCHBISHOP, THOMAS MOWBRAY the EARL MARSHAL, LORD HASTINGS, and LORD BARDOLPH

 

ARCHBISHOP. Thus have you heard our cause and known our means; And, my most noble friends, I pray you all Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes-And first, Lord Marshal, what say you to it?

MOWBRAY. I well allow the occasion of our amis; But gladly would be better satisfied

How, in our means, we should advance ourselves To look with forehead bold and big enough Upon the power and puissance of the King.

HASTINGS. Our present musters grow upon the file To five and twenty thousand men of choice; And our supplies live largely in the hope Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns With an incensed fire of injuries.

LORD BARDOLPH. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus: Whether our present five and twenty thousand May hold up head without Northumberland?

HASTINGS. With him, we may.

LORD BARDOLPH. Yea, marry, there’s the point; But if without him we be thought too feeble, My judgment is we should not step too far Till we had his assistance by the hand; For, in a theme so bloody-fac’d as this, Conjecture, expectation, and surmise

Of aids incertain, should not be admitted.

ARCHBISHOP. ‘Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed It was young Hotspur’s case at Shrewsbury.

LORD BARDOLPH. It was, my lord; who lin’d himself with hope, Eating the air and promise of supply, Flatt’ring himself in project of a power Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts; And so, with great imagination

Proper to madmen, led his powers to death, And, winking, leapt into destruction.

HASTINGS. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.

LORD BARDOLPH. Yes, if this present quality of war-Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot-Lives so in hope, as in an early spring We see th’ appearing buds; which to prove fruit Hope gives not so much warrant, as despair That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the figure of the house, Then we must rate the cost of the erection; Which if we find outweighs ability,

What do we then but draw anew the model In fewer offices, or at least desist

To build at all? Much more, in this great work-Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down And set another up-should we survey

The plot of situation and the model,

Consent upon a sure foundation,

Question surveyors, know our own estate How able such a work to undergo-To weigh against his opposite; or else We fortify in paper and in figures,

Using the names of men instead of men; Like one that draws the model of a house Beyond his power to build it; who, half through, Gives o’er and leaves his part-created cost A naked subject to the weeping clouds And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.

HASTINGS. Grant that our hopes-yet likely of fair birth-Should be still-born, and that we now possess’d The utmost man of expectation,

I think we are so a body strong enough, Even as we are, to equal with the King.

LORD BARDOLPH. What, is the King but five and twenty thousand?

HASTINGS. To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph; For his divisions, as the times do brawl, Are in three heads: one power against the French, And one against Glendower; perforce a third Must take up us. So is the unfirm King In three divided; and his coffers sound With hollow poverty and emptiness.

ARCHBISHOP. That he should draw his several strengths together And come against us in full puissance Need not be dreaded.

HASTINGS. If he should do so,

He leaves his back unarm’d, the French and Welsh Baying at his heels. Never fear that.

LORD BARDOLPH. Who is it like should lead his forces hither?

HASTINGS. The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland; Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth; But who is substituted against the French I have no certain notice.

ARCHBISHOP. Let us on,

And publish the occasion of our arms.

The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; Their over-greedy love hath surfeited.

An habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

O thou fond many, with what loud applause Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!

And being now trimm’d in thine own desires, Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him That thou provok’st thyself to cast him up.

So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard; And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these times?

They that, when Richard liv’d, would have him die Are now become enamour’d on his grave.

Thou that threw’st dust upon his goodly head, When through proud London he came sighing on After th’ admired heels of Bolingbroke, Criest now ‘O earth, yield us that king again, And take thou this!’ O thoughts of men accurs’d!

Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.

MOWBRAY. Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?

HASTINGS. We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Exeunt

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ACT II. SCENE I.

London. A street

 

Enter HOSTESS with two officers, FANG and SNARE

 

HOSTESS. Master Fang, have you ent’red the action?

FANG. It is ent’red.

HOSTESS. Where’s your yeoman? Is’t a lusty yeoman? Will ‘a stand to’t?

FANG. Sirrah, where’s Snare?

HOSTESS. O Lord, ay! good Master Snare.

SNARE. Here, here.

FANG. Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.

HOSTESS. Yea, good Master Snare; I have ent’red him and all.

SNARE. It may chance cost some of our lives, for he will stab.

HOSTESS. Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabb’d me in mine own house, and that most beastly. In good faith, ‘a cares not what mischief he does, if his weapon be out; he will foin like any devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child.

FANG. If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.

HOSTESS. No, nor I neither; I’ll be at your elbow.

FANG. An I but fist him once; an ‘a come but within my vice!

HOSTESS. I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he’s an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure.

Good Master Snare, let him not scape. ‘A comes continuantly to Pie-corner- saving your manhoods-to buy a saddle; and he is indited to dinner to the Lubber’s Head in Lumbert Street, to Master Smooth’s the silkman. I pray you, since my exion is ent’red, and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear; and I have borne, and borne, and borne; and have been fubb’d off, and fubb’d off, and fubb’d off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and a beast, to bear every knave’s wrong.

 

Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, PAGE, and BARDOLPH

 

Yonder he comes; and that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, do your offices, Master Fang and Master Snare; do me, do me, do me your offices.

FALSTAFF. How now! whose mare’s dead? What’s the matter?

FANG. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly.

FALSTAFF. Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph. Cut me off the villian’s head. Throw the quean in the channel.

HOSTESS. Throw me in the channel! I’ll throw thee in the channel.

Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue! Murder, murder! Ah, thou honeysuckle villain! wilt thou kill God’s officers and the King’s? Ah, thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed; a man-queller and a woman-queller.

FALSTAFF. Keep them off, Bardolph.

FANG. A rescue! a rescue!

HOSTESS. Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou wot, wot thou!

thou wot, wot ta? Do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!

PAGE. Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian!

I’ll tickle your catastrophe.

 

Enter the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE and his men CHIEF JUSTICE. What is the matter? Keep the peace here, ho!

HOSTESS. Good my lord, be good to me. I beseech you, stand to me.

CHIEF JUSTICE. How now, Sir John! what, are you brawling here?

Doth this become your place, your time, and business?

You should have been well on your way to York.

Stand from him, fellow; wherefore hang’st thou upon him?

HOSTESS. O My most worshipful lord, an’t please your Grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.

CHIEF JUSTICE. For what sum?

HOSTESS. It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all-all I have. He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his. But I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee a nights like a mare.

FALSTAFF. I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any vantage of ground to get up.

CHIEF JUSTICE. How comes this, Sir John? Fie! What man of good temper would endure this tempest of exclamation? Are you not ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by her own?

FALSTAFF. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

HOSTESS. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking his father to singing-man of Windsor-thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher’s wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? Coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar, telling us she had a good dish of prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such