Complete Plays, The (222 page)

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 perceived the first white hair on 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 any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity.

Exit

S
CENE
III. Y
ORK
. T
HE
A
RCHBISHOP
’
S
PALACE
.

Enter the Archbishop Of York, the Lords Hastings, Mowbray, and Bardolph

Archbishop Of York

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 arms;
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-faced as this
Conjecture, expectation, and surmise
Of aids incertain should not be admitted.

Archbishop Of York

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

Lord Bardolph

It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope,
Eating the air on promise of supply,
Flattering 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 leap’d 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 the 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 must we 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 last 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 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 Of York

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 him at the 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 ’gainst the French,
I have no certain notice.

Archbishop Of York

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 provokest 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 lived, 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 the admired heels of Bolingbroke,
Criest now ‘O earth, yield us that king again,
And take thou this!’ O thoughts of men accursed!
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

A
CT
II

S
CENE
I. L
ONDON
. A
STREET
.

Enter Mistress Quickly, Fang and his Boy with her, and Snare following.

Mistress Quickly

Master Fang, have you entered the action?

Fang

It is entered.

Mistress Quickly

Where’s your yeoman? Is’t a lusty yeoman? will a’ stand to ’t?

Fang

Sirrah, where’s Snare?

Mistress Quickly

O Lord, ay! good Master Snare.

Snare

Here, here.

Fang

Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.

Mistress Quickly

Yea, good Master Snare; I have entered him and all.

Snare

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

Mistress Quickly

Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly: in good faith, he 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.

Mistress Quickly

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

Fang

An I but fist him once; an a’ come but within my vice,—

Mistress Quickly

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 ye, since my exion is entered 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 fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed 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. Yonder he comes; and that errant 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.

Enter Falstaff, Page, and Bardolph

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 villain’s head: throw the quean in the channel.

Mistress Quickly

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!

Mistress Quickly

Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou wo’t, wo’t thou? Thou wo’t, wo’t ta? do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!

Falstaff

Away, you scullion! you rampallion! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.

Enter the Lord Chief-Justice, and his men

Lord Chief-Justice

What is the matter? keep the peace here, ho!

Mistress Quickly

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

Lord 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 upon him?

Mistress Quickly

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

Lord Chief-Justice

For what sum?

Mistress Quickly

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 o’ nights like the mare.

Falstaff

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

Lord 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?

Mistress Quickly

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 a 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 a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath: deny it, if thou canst.

Falstaff

My lord, this is a poor mad soul; and she says up and down the town that the eldest son is like you: she hath been in good case, and the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. But for these foolish officers, I beseech you I may have redress against them.

Lord Chief-Justice

Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration: you have, as it appears to me, practised upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses both in purse and in person.

Mistress Quickly

Yea, in truth, my lord.

Lord Chief-Justice

Pray thee, peace. Pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villany you have done her: the one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.

Falstaff

My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You call honourable boldness impudent sauciness: if a man will make courtesy and say nothing, he is virtuous: no, my lord, my humble duty remembered, I will not be your suitor. I say to you, I do desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty employment in the king’s affairs.

Lord Chief-Justice

You speak as having power to do wrong: but answer in the effect of your reputation, and satisfy this poor woman.

Falstaff

Come hither, hostess.

Enter Gower

Lord Chief-Justice

Now, Master Gower, what news?

Gower