Henry IV, Part I, William Shakespeare [good books to read in english .TXT] 📗

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.

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.

Douglas

Talk not of dying: I am 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. 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,
To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast
Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest. Exeunt.

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:
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.

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