William Shakespeare - William Shakespeare - Complete Works

HOTSPUR.

My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul.

VERNON.

Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.

The Earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong,

Is marching hitherwards; with him Prince John.

HOTSPUR.

No harm: what more?

VERNON.

And further, I have learn’d

The King himself in person is set forth,

Or hitherwards intended speedily,

With strong and mighty preparation.

HOTSPUR.

He shall be welcome too. Where is his son,

The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,

And his comrades, that daff the world aside,

And bid it pass?

VERNON.

All furnish’d, all in arms;

All plumed like estridges that with the wind

Bate it; like eagles having lately bathed;

Glittering in golden coats, like images;

As full of spirit as the month of May

And gorgeous as the Sun at midsummer;

Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.

I saw young Harry—with his beaver on,

His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d—

Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury,

And vault it with such ease into his seat,

As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds,

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,

And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

HOTSPUR.

No more, no more: worse than the Sun in March,

This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come;

They come like sacrifices in their trim,

And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war,

All hot and bleeding, will we offer them:

The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit

Up to the 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 and 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; an if it make twenty,

take them all; I’ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant

Peto meet me at the 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’d me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons; inquired me out contracted bachelors, such as had been ask’d twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lief 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 press’d me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bodies 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 press’d 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 tack’d together and thrown over the shoulders like a 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 Prince Henry 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, to-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 learn’d 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.

[Exit.]

FALSTAFF.

What, is the King encamp’d?

WESTMORELAND.

He is, Sir John: I fear we shall stay too long.

[Exit.]

FALSTAFF.

Well,

To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast

Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

[Exit.]

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, 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