The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth

1 Enter the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, Hastings and others.
2 ARCHBISHOP.
3 What is this forest call’d?
4 HASTINGS.
5 ’Tis Gaultree Forest, an ’t shall please your Grace.
6 ARCHBISHOP.
7 Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth
8 To know the numbers of our enemies.
9 HASTINGS.
10 We have sent forth already.
11 ARCHBISHOP.
12 ’Tis well done.
13 My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
14 I must acquaint you that I have received
15 New-dated letters from Northumberland,
16 Their cold intent, tenor, and substance, thus:
17 Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
18 As might hold sortance with his quality,
19 The which he could not levy; whereupon
20 He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes,
21 To Scotland, and concludes in hearty prayers
22 That your attempts may overlive the hazard
23 And fearful meeting of their opposite.
24 MOWBRAY.
25 Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground
26 And dash themselves to pieces.
27 Enter a Messenger.
28 HASTINGS.
29 Now, what news?
30 MESSENGER.
31 West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,
32 In goodly form comes on the enemy,
33 And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number
34 Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.
35 MOWBRAY.
36 The just proportion that we gave them out.
37 Let us sway on and face them in the field.
38 Enter Westmoreland.
39 ARCHBISHOP.
40 What well-appointed leader fronts us here?
41 MOWBRAY.
42 I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.
43 WESTMORELAND.
44 Health and fair greeting from our general,
45 The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.
46 ARCHBISHOP.
47 Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace,
48 What doth concern your coming.
49 WESTMORELAND.
50 Then, my lord,
51 Unto your Grace do I in chief address
52 The substance of my speech. If that rebellion
53 Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
54 Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,
55 And countenanced by boys and beggary;
56 I say, if damn’d commotion so appear’d
57 In his true, native, and most proper shape,
58 You, reverend father, and these noble lords
59 Had not been here to dress the ugly form
60 Of base and bloody insurrection
61 With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop,
62 Whose see is by a civil peace maintain’d,
63 Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch’d,
64 Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor’d,
65 Whose white investments figure innocence,
66 The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,
67 Wherefore you do so ill translate yourself
68 Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace,
69 Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war;
70 Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
71 Your pens to lances and your tongue divine
72 To a loud trumpet and a point of war?
73 ARCHBISHOP.
74 Wherefore do I this? So the question stands.
75 Briefly to this end: we are all diseased,
76 And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
77 Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
78 And we must bleed for it; of which disease
79 Our late King Richard, being infected, died.
80 But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,
81 I take not on me here as a physician,
82 Nor do I as an enemy to peace
83 Troop in the throngs of military men,
84 But rather show awhile like fearful war
85 To diet rank minds sick of happiness,
86 And purge th’ obstructions which begin to stop
87 Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.
88 I have in equal balance justly weigh’d
89 What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
90 And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
91 We see which way the stream of time doth run,
92 And are enforced from our most quiet there
93 By the rough torrent of occasion,
94 And have the summary of all our griefs,
95 When time shall serve, to show in articles;
96 Which long ere this we offer’d to the King
97 And might by no suit gain our audience.
98 When we are wrong’d and would unfold our griefs,
99 We are denied access unto his person
100 Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
101 The dangers of the days but newly gone,
102 Whose memory is written on the earth
103 With yet-appearing blood, and the examples
104 Of every minute’s instance, present now,
105 Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms,
106 Not to break peace or any branch of it,
107 But to establish here a peace indeed,
108 Concurring both in name and quality.
109 WESTMORELAND.
110 Whenever yet was your appeal denied?
111 Wherein have you been galled by the King?
112 What peer hath been suborn’d to grate on you,
113 That you should seal this lawless bloody book
114 Of forged rebellion with a seal divine
115 And consecrate commotion’s bitter edge?
116 ARCHBISHOP.
117 My brother general, the commonwealth,
118 To brother born an household cruelty,
119 I make my quarrel in particular.
120 WESTMORELAND.
121 There is no need of any such redress,
122 Or if there were, it not belongs to you.
123 MOWBRAY.
124 Why not to him in part, and to us all
125 That feel the bruises of the days before,
126 And suffer the condition of these times
127 To lay a heavy and unequal hand
128 Upon our honours?
129 WESTMORELAND.
130 O, my good Lord Mowbray,
131 Construe the times to their necessities,
132 And you shall say indeed, it is the time,
133 And not the King, that doth you injuries.
134 Yet for your part, it not appears to me
135 Either from the King or in the present time
136 That you should have an inch of any ground
137 To build a grief on. Were you not restored
138 To all the Duke of Norfolk’s signories,
139 Your noble and right well rememb’red father’s?
140 MOWBRAY.
141 What thing, in honour, had my father lost,
142 That need to be revived and breathed in me?
143 The King that loved him, as the state stood then,
144 Was force perforce compell’d to banish him,
145 And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,
146 Being mounted and both roused in their seats,
147 Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,
148 Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,
149 Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,
150 And the loud trumpet blowing them together,
151 Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay’d
152 My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,
153 O, when the King did throw his warder down,
154 His own life hung upon the staff he threw;
155 Then threw he down himself and all their lives
156 That by indictment and by dint of sword
157 Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.
158 WESTMORELAND.
159 You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.
160 The Earl of Hereford was reputed then
161 In England the most valiant gentleman.
162 Who knows on whom fortune would then have smiled?
163 But if your father had been victor there,
164 He ne’er had borne it out of Coventry;
165 For all the country in a general voice
166 Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love
167 Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on
168 And bless’d and graced, indeed more than the King.
169 But this is mere digression from my purpose.
170 Here come I from our princely general
171 To know your griefs, to tell you from his Grace
172 That he will give you audience; and wherein
173 It shall appear that your demands are just,
174 You shall enjoy them, everything set off
175 That might so much as think you enemies.
176 MOWBRAY.
177 But he hath forc’d us to compel this offer,
178 And it proceeds from policy, not love.
179 WESTMORELAND.
180 Mowbray, you overween to take it so;
181 This offer comes from mercy, not from fear.
182 For, lo, within a ken our army lies,
183 Upon mine honour, all too confident
184 To give admittance to a thought of fear.
185 Our battle is more full of names than yours,
186 Our men more perfect in the use of arms,
187 Our armour all as strong, our cause the best;
188 Then reason will our hearts should be as good.
189 Say you not then our offer is compell’d.
190 MOWBRAY.
191 Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.
192 WESTMORELAND.
193 That argues but the shame of your offence:
194 A rotten case abides no handling.
195 HASTINGS.
196 Hath the Prince John a full commission,
197 In very ample virtue of his father,
198 To hear and absolutely to determine
199 Of what conditions we shall stand upon?
200 WESTMORELAND.
201 That is intended in the general’s name:
202 I muse you make so slight a question.
203 ARCHBISHOP.
204 Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule,
205 For this contains our general grievances.
206 Each several article herein redress’d,
207 All members of our cause, both here and hence,
208 That are insinew’d to this action,
209 Acquitted by a true substantial form
210 And present execution of our wills
211 To us and to our purposes confined,
212 We come within our awful banks again
213 And knit our powers to the arm of peace.
214 WESTMORELAND.
215 This will I show the general. Please you, lords,
216 In sight of both our battles we may meet,
217 And either end in peace, which God so frame!
218 Or to the place of difference call the swords
219 Which must decide it.
220 ARCHBISHOP.
221 My lord, we will do so.
222 [_Exit Westmoreland._]
223 MOWBRAY.
224 There is a thing within my bosom tells me
225 That no conditions of our peace can stand.
226 HASTINGS.
227 Fear you not that: if we can make our peace
228 Upon such large terms and so absolute
229 As our conditions shall consist upon,
230 Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.
231 MOWBRAY.
232 Yea, but our valuation shall be such
233 That every slight and false-derived cause,
234 Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason,
235 Shall to the King taste of this action;
236 That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love,
237 We shall be winnow’d with so rough a wind
238 That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff
239 And good from bad find no partition.
240 ARCHBISHOP.
241 No, no, my lord. Note this; the King is weary
242 Of dainty and such picking grievances;
243 For he hath found to end one doubt by death
244 Revives two greater in the heirs of life;
245 And therefore will he wipe his tables clean
246 And keep no tell-tale to his memory
247 That may repeat and history his loss
248 To new remembrance. For full well he knows
249 He cannot so precisely weed this land
250 As his misdoubts present occasion.
251 His foes are so enrooted with his friends
252 That, plucking to unfix an enemy,
253 He doth unfasten so and shake a friend.
254 So that this land, like an offensive wife
255 That hath enraged him on to offer strokes,
256 As he is striking, holds his infant up
257 And hangs resolved correction in the arm
258 That was uprear’d to execution.
259 HASTINGS.
260 Besides, the King hath wasted all his rods
261 On late offenders, that he now doth lack
262 The very instruments of chastisement;
263 So that his power, like to a fangless lion,
264 May offer, but not hold.
265 ARCHBISHOP.
266 ’Tis very true,
267 And therefore be assured, my good Lord Marshal,
268 If we do now make our atonement well,
269 Our peace will, like a broken limb united,
270 Grow stronger for the breaking.
271 MOWBRAY.
272 Be it so.
273 Here is return’d my Lord of Westmoreland.
274 Enter Westmoreland.
275 WESTMORELAND.
276 The prince is here at hand. Pleaseth your lordship
277 To meet his Grace just distance ’tween our armies.
278 MOWBRAY.
279 Your Grace of York, in God’s name then set forward.
280 ARCHBISHOP.
281 Before, and greet his Grace. My lord, we come.
282 [_Exeunt._]