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Authors: William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (236 page)

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Enter Hotspur

HOTSPUR

If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.

PRINCE HARRY

Thou speak’st as if I would deny my name.

HOTSPUR

My name is Harry Percy.

PRINCE HARRY Why then, I see

A very valiant rebel of the name.

I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy,
To share with me in glory any more.
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,
Nor can one England brook a double reign
Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.

HOTSPUR

Nor shall it, Harry, for the hour is come
To end the one of us, and would to God
Thy name in arms were now as great as mine.

PRINCE HARRY

I’ll make it greater ere I part from thee,
And all the budding honours on thy crest
I’ll crop to make a garland for my head.

HOTSPUR

I can no longer brook thy vanities.

They fight
.
Enter Sir John Oldcastle

SIR JOHN Well said, Hal! To it, Hal! Nay, you shall find no boy’s play here, I can tell you.

Enter Douglas. He fighteth with Sir John, who falls down as if he were dead. Exit Douglas. The Prince killeth Hotspur

HOTSPUR

O Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth.

I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me.
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my
flesh.
But thoughts, the slaves of life, and life, time’s fool,
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust,
And food for—
He dies

PRINCE HARRY

For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart.
Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound,
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead
Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.
If thou wert sensible of courtesy,
I should not make so dear a show of zeal;
But let my favours hide thy mangled face,

He covers Hotspur’s face

And even in thy behalf I’ll thank myself
For doing these fair rites of tenderness.
Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven.
Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,
But not remembered in thy epitaph.

He spieth Sir John on the ground

What, old acquaintance! Could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life ? Poor Jack, farewell.
I could have better spared a better man.

O, I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer today,
Though many dearer in this bloody fray.
Embowelled will I see thee by and by.
Till then, in blood by noble Percy lie.
Exit

Sir John riseth up

SIR JOHN Embowelled? If thou embowel me today, I’ll give you leave to powder me, and eat me too, tomorrow. ’Sblood, ’twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me, scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life. Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should counterfeit too, and rise ? By my faith, I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I’ll make him sure; yea, and I’ll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore, sirrah, (stabbing Hotspur) with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.

He takes up Hotspur on his back.
Enter Prince Harry and Lord John of Lancaster

PRINCE HARRY

Come, brother John. Full bravely hast thou fleshed
Thy maiden sword.

JOHN OF LANCASTER But soft; whom have we here? Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?

PRINCE HARRY I did; I saw him dead, Breathless and bleeding on the ground. (
To Sir John
) Art thou alive? Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight? I prithee speak; we will not trust our eyes Without our ears. Thou art not what thou seem’st.

SIR JOHN No, that’s certain: I am not a double man. But if I be not Jack Oldcastle, then am I a jack. There is Percy. If your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.

PRINCE HARRY

Why, Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead.

SIR JOHN Didst thou ? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath, and so was he; but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I’ll take’t on my death I gave him this wound in the thigh. If the man were alive and would deny it, zounds, I would make him eat a piece of my sword.

JOHN OF LANCASTER

This is the strangest tale that e’er I heard.

PRINCE HARRY

This is the strangest fellow, brother John.
(To Sir John) Come, bring your luggage nobly on your
back.
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

A retreat is sounded

The trumpet sounds retreat; the day is our.
Come, brother, let us to the highest of the field
To see what friends are living, who are dead.

Exeunt the Prince and Lancaster

SIR JOHN I’ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him. If I do grow great, I’ll grow less; for I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.

Exit, bearing Hotspur’s body

5.5
The trumpets sound. Enter King Henry, Prince Harry, Lord John of Lancaster, the Earl of Westmorland, with the Earl of Worcester and Sir Richard Vernon, prisoners,
⌈
and soldier
⌉

KING HENRY

Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.

Ill-spirited Worcester, did not we send grace,
Pardon, and terms of love to all of you ?
And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary,
Misuse the tenor of thy kinsman’s trust?
Three knights upon our party slain today,
A noble earl, and many a creature else,
Had been alive this hour
If like a Christian thou hadst truly borne
Betwixt our armies true intelligence.

WORCESTER

What I have done my safety urged me to,
And I embrace this fortune patiently,
Since not to be avoided it falls on me.

KING HENRY

Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too.

Other offenders we will pause upon.

Exeunt Worcester and Vernon, guarded

How goes the field?

PRINCE HARRY

The noble Scot Lord Douglas, when he saw
The fortune of the day quite turned from him,
The noble Percy slain, and all his men
Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest;
And falling from a hill he was so bruised
That the pursuers took him. At my tent
The Douglas is, and I beseech your grace
I may dispose of him.

KING HENRY With all my heart.

PRINCE HARRY

Then, brother John of Lancaster,
To you this honourable bounty shall belong.
Go to the Douglas, and deliver him
Up to his pleasure ransomless and free.
His valours shown upon our crests today
Have taught us how to cherish such high deeds
Even in the bosom of our adversaries.

JOHN OF LANCASTER

I thank your grace for this high courtesy,
Which I shall give away immediately.

KING HENRY

Then this remains, that we divide our power.
You, son John, and my cousin Westmorland,
Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed
To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scrope,
Who, as we hear, are busily in arms.
Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales,
To fight with Glyndwr and the Earl of March.
Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,
Meeting the check of such another day;
And since this business so fair is done,
Let us not leave till all our own be won.

Exeunt [
the
King, the Prince, and their power
at one
door, Lancaster, Westmorland, and their power at another
door
]

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

A LEGEND dating from 1702 claims that Shakespeare wrote
The Merry Wives of Windsor
in fourteen days and by command of Queen Elizabeth; in 1709 she was said to have wished particularly to see Falstaff in love. Whether or not this is true, a passage towards the end of the play alluding directly to the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, Britain’s highest order of chivalry, encourages the belief that the play has a direct connection with a specific occasion. In 1597 George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s company, was installed at Windsor as a Knight of the Garter. The Queen was not present at the installation but had attended the Garter Feast at the Palace of Westminster on St George’s Day (23 April). Shakespeare’s play was probably performed in association with this occasion, and may have been written especially for it. It was first printed, in a corrupt text, in 1602; a better text appears in the 1623 Folio.

Some of the characters—Sir John Falstaff, Mistress Quickly, Pistol, Nim, Justice Shallow—appear also in
I
and 2
Henry IV and Henry V
, but in spite of a reference to ’the wild Prince and Poins’ at 3.2.66-7, this is essentially an Elizabethan comedy, the only one that Shakespeare set firmly in England. The play is full of details that would have been familiar to Elizabethan Londoners, and the language is colloquial and up to date. The plot, however, is made up of conventional situations whose ancestry is literary rather than realistic. There are many analogues to Shakespeare’s basic plot situations in medieval and other tales, some in books that he probably or certainly knew. The central story, of Sir John’s unsuccessful attempts to seduce Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, and of Master Ford’s unfounded jealousy, is in the tradition of the Italian novella, and may have been suggested by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s
II Pecorone
(1558). Alongside it Shakespeare places the comical but finally romantic love story of Anne Page, wooed by the foolish but rich Abraham Slender and the irascible French Doctor Caius, but won by the young and handsome Fenton. The play contains a higher proportion of prose to verse than any other play by Shakespeare, and the action is often broadly comic; but it ends, after the midnight scene in Windsor Forest during which Sir John is frightened out of his lechery, in forgiveness and love.

The Merry Wives of Windsor
is known to have been acted for James I on 4 November 1604, and for Charles I in 1638. It was revived soon after the theatres reopened, in 1660; at first it was not particularly popular, but since 1720 it has consistently pleased audiences. Many artists have illustrated it, and it forms the basis for a number of operas, including Otto Nicolai’s
Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor
(1849) and Giuseppe Verdi’s comic masterpiece,
Falstaff
(1893)
.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY