The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth

1 Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.
2 FIRST GROOM.
3 More rushes, more rushes.
4 SECOND GROOM.
5 The trumpets have sounded twice.
6 FIRST GROOM.
7 ’Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the coronation. Dispatch,
8 dispatch.
9 [_Exeunt._]
10 Trumpets sound, and the King and his train pass over the stage. Enter
11 Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph and Page.
12 FALSTAFF.
13 Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow. I will make the King do you
14 grace. I will leer upon him as he comes by, and do but mark the
15 countenance that he will give me.
16 PISTOL.
17 God bless thy lungs, good knight!
18 FALSTAFF.
19 Come here, Pistol, stand behind me. O, if I had had time to have made
20 new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of
21 you. But ’tis no matter, this poor show doth better. This doth infer
22 the zeal I had to see him.
23 SHALLOW.
24 It doth so.
25 FALSTAFF.
26 It shows my earnestness of affection—
27 SHALLOW.
28 It doth so.
29 FALSTAFF.
30 My devotion—
31 SHALLOW.
32 It doth, it doth, it doth.
33 FALSTAFF.
34 As it were, to ride day and night, and not to deliberate, not to
35 remember, not to have patience to shift me—
36 SHALLOW.
37 It is best, certain.
38 FALSTAFF.
39 But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him,
40 thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if
41 there were nothing else to be done but to see him.
42 PISTOL.
43 ’Tis _semper idem_, for _obsque hoc nihil est;_ ’tis all in every part.
44 SHALLOW.
45 ’Tis so, indeed.
46 PISTOL.
47 My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver,
48 And make thee rage.
49 Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,
50 Is in base durance and contagious prison,
51 Haled thither
52 By most mechanical and dirty hand.
53 Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake,
54 For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.
55 FALSTAFF.
56 I will deliver her.
57 [_Shouts within. The trumpets sound._]
58 PISTOL.
59 There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.
60 Enter the King and his train, the Lord Chief Justice among them.
61 FALSTAFF.
62 God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal!
63 PISTOL.
64 The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!
65 FALSTAFF.
66 God save thee, my sweet boy!
67 KING.
68 My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.
69 CHIEF JUSTICE.
70 Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak?
71 FALSTAFF.
72 My King! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
73 KING.
74 I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.
75 How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester!
76 I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,
77 So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane;
78 But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
79 Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
80 Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
81 For thee thrice wider than for other men.
82 Reply not to me with a fool-born jest.
83 Presume not that I am the thing I was;
84 For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
85 That I have turn’d away my former self;
86 So will I those that kept me company.
87 When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
88 Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
89 The tutor and the feeder of my riots.
90 Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,
91 As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
92 Not to come near our person by ten mile.
93 For competence of life I will allow you,
94 That lack of means enforce you not to evils.
95 And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
96 We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
97 Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
98 To see perform’d the tenor of our word.
99 Set on.
100 [_Exeunt King with his train._]
101 FALSTAFF.
102 Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.
103 SHALLOW.
104 Yea, marry, Sir John, which I beseech you to let me have home with me.
105 FALSTAFF.
106 That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall
107 be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must seem thus to the
108 world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall
109 make you great.
110 SHALLOW.
111 I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet and stuff me out
112 with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of
113 my thousand.
114 FALSTAFF.
115 Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that you heard was but a
116 colour.
117 SHALLOW.
118 A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.
119 FALSTAFF.
120 Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant Pistol; come,
121 Bardolph. I shall be sent for soon at night.
122 Enter the Lord Chief Justice and Prince John, Officers with them.
123 CHIEF JUSTICE.
124 Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet.
125 Take all his company along with him.
126 FALSTAFF.
127 My lord, my lord,—
128 CHIEF JUSTICE.
129 I cannot now speak. I will hear you soon.
130 Take them away.
131 PISTOL.
132 _Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta._
133 [_Exeunt all but Prince John and the Lord Chief Justice._]
134 LANCASTER.
135 I like this fair proceeding of the King’s.
136 He hath intent his wonted followers
137 Shall all be very well provided for,
138 But all are banish’d till their conversations
139 Appear more wise and modest to the world.
140 CHIEF JUSTICE.
141 And so they are.
142 LANCASTER.
143 The King hath call’d his parliament, my lord.
144 CHIEF JUSTICE.
145 He hath.
146 LANCASTER.
147 I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,
148 We bear our civil swords and native fire
149 As far as France. I heard a bird so sing,
150 Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the King.
151 Come, will you hence?
152 [_Exeunt._]
153 EPILOGUE.
154 First my fear; then my curtsy; last my speech. My fear is your
155 displeasure; my curtsy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If
156 you look for a good speech now, you undo me, for what I have to say is
157 of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove
158 mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it
159 known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a
160 displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a
161 better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill
162 venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors,
163 lose. Here I promised you I would be, and here I commit my body to your
164 mercies. Bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors
165 do, promise you infinitely.
166 If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to
167 use my legs? And yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your
168 debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so
169 would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen
170 will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which
171 was never seen before in such an assembly.
172 One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat
173 meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it,
174 and make you merry with fair Katharine of France; where, for anything I
175 know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with
176 your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the
177 man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good
178 night.