Shal. Go to; I have spoke, at a word. Fare you well. [Exeunt SHALLOW and SILENce.

Fal. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. On, Bardolph; lead the men away. [Exeunt BARDolph, Recruits, &c.] As I return, I will fetch off these justices: I do see the bottom of justice Shallow. How subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull-street'; and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk's tribute. I do remember him at Clement's-inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: he was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invisible: he was the very Genius of famine; he came ever in the rearward of the fashion; and sung those tunes to the huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware-they were his fancies, or his good-nights3. And now is this Vice's dagger become a squire; and talks as familiarly of John of Gaunt, as if he had been sworn brother to him: and I'll be sworn he never saw him but once in the Tilt-yard; and then he burst his head, for crouding among the marshal's men. I saw it; and told John of Gaunt, he beat his own name': for you might have truss'd him, and all his apparel, into an eel-skin; the case of a treble haut-boy was a mansion for him, a court; and now has he land and beeves. Well; I will be acquainted with him, if I return: and it shall go hard, but I will make him a philosopher's stone to me: If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason, in the law of nature, but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there an end.

[Exit.

3 Titles of little poems.

2 In Clerkenwell. 4 A wooden dagger like that used by the modern Harlequin. 5 Gaunt is thin, slender.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.

A Forest in Yorkshire.

Enter the Archbishop of YORK, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and others.

Arch. What is this forest call'd?

Hast. 'Tis Gualtree forest, an't shall please your

grace.

Arch. Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers

forth,

To know the numbers of our enemies.

Hast. We have sent forth already.
Arch.

'Tis well done.
My friends, and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have receiv'd
New-dated letters from Northumberland;

Their cold intent, tenour and substance, thus : —
Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
As might hold sortance with his quality,
The which he could not levy; whereupon.
He is retir'd, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers,
That your attempts may overlive the hazard,
And fearful meeting of their opposite.

Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground,

And dash themselves to pieces.

Hast.

Enter a Messenger.

Now, what news?

Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,

In goodly form comes on the enemy:

6 Be suitable.

And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number Upon, or near, the rate of thirty thousand.

Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them

out.

Let us sway on, and face them in the field.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

Arch. What well-appointed leader fronts us here? Mowb. I think, it is my lord of Westmoreland. West. Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince, lord John and duke of Lancaster. Arch. Say on, my lord of Westmoreland in What doth concern your coming?

West.

peace;

Then, my lord, Unto your grace do I in chief address The substance of my speech. If that rebellion Came like itself, in base and abject routs, Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rage, And countenanc'd by boys, and beggary; I say, if vile commotion so appear'd, In his true, native, and most proper shape, You, reverend father, and these noble lords, Had not been here, to dress the ugly form Of base and bloody insurrection

With your fair honours. You, lord archbishop,-
Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd;

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd;
Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor❜d;
Whose white investments figure innocence,
The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself,
Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,
Into the harsh and boist'rous tongue of war?
Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
Your pens to lances; and
your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet, and a point of war?
Arch. Wherefore do 1 this? so.

stands.

the question

Briefly to this end : We are all diseas'd;

And, with our surfeiting, and wanton hours,
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it: of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I, as an enemy to peace,
Troop in the throngs of military men;
But, rather, show a while like fearful war,
To diet rank minds, sick of happiness;

And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.
I have in equal balance justly weigh'd

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,

And find our griefs' heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforc'd from our most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion:

And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which, long ere this, we offer'd to the king,
And might by no suit gain our audience:

When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person

Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
The dangers of the days but newly gone,
(Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet-appearing blood,) and the examples
Of
every minute's instance, (present now,)
Have put us in these ill-beseeming arms:
Not to break peace, or any branch of it;
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

West. When ever yet was your appeal denied? Wherein have you been galled by the king? What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you?

7. Grievances.

1

That you should seal this lawless bloody book
Of forg'd rebellion with a seal divine,
And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?

Arch. My brother general, the commonwealth,
I make my quarrel in particular.

West. There is no need of any such redress;
Or, if there were, it not belongs to you.

Mowb. Why not to him, in part; and to us all,
That feel the bruises of the days before;

And suffer the condition of these times

To lay a heavy and unequal hand

Upon our honours?

West.
Construe the times to their necessities,
And you shall say indeed,

O my good lord Mowbray,

it is the time, And not the king, that doth you injuries. Yet, for your part, it not appears to me, Either from the king, or in the present time, That you should have an inch of any ground To build a grief on: Were you not restor❜d To all the duke of Norfolk's signiories, Your noble and right well-remember'd father's? Mowb. What thing, in honour, had my father lost, That need to be reviv'd, and breath'd in me? The king, that lov'd him, as the state stood then, Was, force perforce, compell'd to banish him: And then, when Harry Bolingbroke, and he,Being mounted, and both roused in their seats, Their neighing coursers daring of the spur, Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down, Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel, And the loud trumpet blowing them together; Then, then, when there was nothing could have staid

My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,

O, when the king did throw his warder down,
His own life hung upon the staff he threw :

8 Truncheon.