Why, then, good morrow to you all, my lords.
Have you read o’er the letters that I sent you?
Then you perceive the body of our kingdom
How foul it is; what rank diseases grow,
And with what danger, near the heart of it.
It is but as a body yet distemper’d;
Which to his former strength may be restored
With good advice and little medicine:
My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool’d.
O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
’Tis not ten years gone
Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,
Did feast together, and in two years after
Were they at wars: it is but eight years since
This Percy was the man nearest my soul,
Who like a brother toil’d in my affairs
And laid his love and life under my foot,
Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard
Gave him defiance. But which of you was by—
You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember—To Warwick.
When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears,
Then check’d and rated by Northumberland,
Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy?
“Northumberland, thou ladder by the which
My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;”
Though then, God knows, I had no such intent,
But that necessity so bow’d the state
That I and greatness were compell’d to kiss:
“The time shall come,” thus did he follow it,
“The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption:” so went on,
Foretelling this same time’s condition
And the division of our amity.
There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time;
And by the necessary form of this
King Richard might create a perfect guess
That great Northumberland, then false to him,
Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness;
Which should not find a ground to root upon,
Unless on you.
Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them like necessities:
And that same word even now cries out on us:
They say the bishop and Northumberland
Are fifty thousand strong.
It cannot be, my lord;
Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,
The numbers of the fear’d. Please it your grace
To go to bed. Upon my soul, my lord,
The powers that you already have sent forth
Shall bring this prize in very easily.
To comfort you the more, I have received
A certain instance that Glendower is dead.
Your majesty hath been this fortnight ill,
And these unseason’d hours perforce must add
Unto your sickness.
I will take your counsel:
And were these inward wars once out of hand,
We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land. Exeunt.
Scene II
Gloucestershire. Before Justice Shallow’s house.
| Enter Shallow and Silence, meeting; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, Bullcalf, a Servant or two with them. | |
| Shallow | Come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by the rood! And how doth my good cousin Silence? |
| Silence | Good morrow, good cousin Shallow. |
| Shallow | And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen? |
| Silence | Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow! |
| Shallow | By yea and nay, sir, I dare say my cousin William is become a good scholar: he is at Oxford still, is he not? |
| Silence | Indeed, sir, to my cost. |
| Shallow | A’ must, then, to the inns o’ court shortly. I was once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet. |
| Silence | You were called “lusty Shallow” then, cousin. |
| Shallow | By the mass, I was called any thing; and I would have done any thing indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns o’ court again: and I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. |
| Silence | This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers? |
| Shallow | The same Sir John, the very same. I see him break Skogan’s head at the court-gate, when a’ was a crack not thus high: and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray’s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead! |
| Silence | We shall all follow, cousin. |
| Shadow | Certain, ’tis certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair? |
| Silence | By my troth, I was not there. |
| Shallow | Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living yet? |
| Silence | Dead, sir. |
| Shallow | Jesu, Jesu, dead! a’ drew a good bow; and dead! a’ shot a fine shoot: John a Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. Dead! a’ would have clapped i’ the clout at twelve score; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man’s heart good to see. How a score of ewes now? |
| Silence | Thereafter as they be: a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds. |
| Shallow | And is old Double dead? |
| Silence | Here come |
