welcome, indeed, too. I ll drink to master Bardolph, and to all the cavalerces about London. Davy. I hope to see London once ere I die. Bard. An I might see you there, Davy, Shal. By the mass, you'll crack a quart together. Ha! will you not, master Bardolph ?

Bard. Yes, sir, in a pottle pot.

Shal. I thank thee: - The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that he will not out; he is true bred.

Bard. And I'll stick by him, sir.

Shal. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing: be merry. [Knocking heard.] Look who's at door there: Ho! who knocks? [Exit DAVY. Fal. Why, now you have done me right. [To SILENCE, who drinks a bumper. Sil. Do me right, [Singing. And dub me knight:

Pist. Puff?

Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base!
Sir John, I am thy Pistol, and thy friend,
And helter-skelter have I rode to thee;
And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,
And golden times, and happy news of price.
Fal. I pr'ythee now, deliver them like a man of
this world.

Pist. A foutra for the world, and worldings base! I speak of Africa, and golden joys.

Fal. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news? Let king Cophetua know the truth thereof.

Sil. And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John. [Sings. Pist. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons? And shall good news be baffled?

Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies' lap.

Shal, Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding.

Pist. Why then, lament, therefore,

Shal. Give me pardon, sir; — If, sir, you come with news from the court, I take it, there is but two ways; either to utter them, or to conceal them. I am, sir, under the king, in some authority. Pist. Under which king, Bezonian ? speak, or die. Shal. Under king Harry.

Pist.

Harry the fourth? or fifth?

Shal. Harry the fourth. Pist. A foutra for thine office!Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king; Harry the fifth's the man. I speak the truth: When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like The bragging Spaniard,

Bard. O joyful day !—I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.

Pist. What? I do bring good news?

Fal. Carry master Silence to bed.-Master Shallow, my lord Shallow, be what thou wilt, I am fortune's steward. Get on thy boots: we'll ride all night: - O, sweet Pistol : Away, Bardolph. [Exit BARD.] Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and, withal, devise something, to do thyself good. Boot, boot, master Shallow: I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses; the laws of England are at my commandment. Happy are they which have been my friends ; and woe to my lord chief justice!

Pist. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! Where is the life that late I led, say they; Why, here it is; Welcome these pleasant days.

SCENE IV. - London.

-

[Exeunt.

A Street.

Enter Beadles, dragging in Hostess QUICKLY, and DOLL TEAR-SHEET.

Host. No, thou arrant knave; I would I might die, that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint.

1 Bead. The constables have delivered her over to me and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her; there hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

Doll. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on ; I'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal; an the child I now go with, do miscarry, thou hadst better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paperfaced villain.

Host. O the Lord, that sir John were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

1 Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come,

I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead, that you and Pistol beat among you.

Doll. I'll tell thee what, thou thin man in a censer! I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you blue-bottle rogue! you filthy famished correctioner: if you be not swinged, I'll forswear half-kirtles.

1 Bead. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come. Host. O, that right should thus overcome might! Well; of sufferance comes ease.

Doll. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.

Host. Ay; come, you starved blood-hound,
Doll. Goodman death! goodman bones!
Host. Thou atomy thou!

Doll. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal! 1 Bead. Very well.

[Exeunt.

A publick Place near Westminster
Abbey.

Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.

1 Groom. More rushes, more rushes.

2 Groom. The trumpets have sounded twice,

First, my fear; then my court'sy: last, my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say, is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, (as it is very well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me,

will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, - -to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you; - but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

Sir THOMAS ERPINGHAM, GOWER, FLUEllen, MACMORRIS, JAMY, officers in King Henry's army.

BATES, COURT, WILLIAMS, soldiers in the same. NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, formerly servants to Falstaff, now soldiers in the same.

Boy, servant to them.

A Herald. Chorus.

CHARLES THE SIXTH, King of France.
LEWIS, the Dauphin.

DUKES OF BURGUNDY, ORLEANS, and BOURBON.
The CONSTABLE of France.

RAMBURES and GRANDPREE, French lords.

Governor of Harfleur.

MONTJOY, a French herald.

Ambassadors to the King of England.

ISABEL, Queen of France.

KATHARINE, daughter of Charles and Isabel.

ALICE, a lady attending on the Princess Katharine. QUICKLY, Pistol's wife, an hostess.

Enter Chorus.

O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention !
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and, at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and
fire,

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirit, that hath dar'd,
On this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth
So great an object: Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O, the very casques,
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest, in little place, a million;
446

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work :
Suppose, within the girdle of these walls
Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous, narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance :

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i'the receiving earth:
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our
kings,

Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times;
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass; For the which supply,
Admit me chorus to this history;

Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

SCENE 1.- London.

that self bill is

Which, in the eleventh year o' the last king's reign
Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,
But that the scambling and unquiet time
Did push it out of further question.

Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession :
For all the temporal lands, which men devout
By testament have given to the church,
Would they strip from us; being valued thus,
As much as would maintain, to the king's honour,
Full fifteen earls, and fifteen hundred knights;
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars, and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,
A hundred alms-houses, right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside,

A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the bill.
Ely. This would drink deep.
Cant.

'Twould drink the cup and all.
Ely. But what prevention ?
Cant. The king is full of grace, and fair regard.
Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.
Cant. The courses of his youth promis'd it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too: yea, at that very moment,
Consideration like an angel came,

And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him;
Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made:
Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady current, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness

So soor did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.

Ely.
We are blessed in the change.
Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire, the king were made a prelate :
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in musick :
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;
So that the art and practick part of life
Must be the mistress to this theorick:
Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it.
Since his addiction was to courses vain :
His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath, the nettle And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality : And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means, How things are perfected.

Ely.

But, my good lord,

How now for mitigation of this bill
Urg'd by the cominons? Doth his majesty
Incline to it, or no?

Cant.

He seems indifferent ;

Or, rather, swaying more upon our part,
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us:
For I have made an offer to his majesty. -
Upon our spiritual convocation.

And in regard of causes now in nand,
Which I have open'd to his grace at large,
As touching France, to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

Ely. How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord?
Cant. With good acceptance of his majesty ;
Save, that there was not time enough to hear
(As I perceiv'd, his grace would fain have done,)
The severals, and unhidden passages,

Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms;
And, generally, to the crown and seat of France,
Deriv'd from Edward, his great grandfather.

Ely. What was the impediment that broke this off?
Cant. The French ambassador, upon that instant,
Crav'd audience: and the hour, I think, is come,
To give him hearing: Is it four o'clock?
Ely.

It is.

Cant. Then go we in, to know his embassy; Which I could, with a ready guess, declare, Before the Frenchman speak a word of it. Ely. I'll wait upon you; and I long to hear it. [Exeunt. SCENE II. The same. A Room of State in the same.

Enter KING HENRY, GLOSTER, BEDFORD, Exeter, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and Attendants.

K. Hen. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?

Exe. Not here in presence.

K. Hen. Send for him, good uncle.

West. Shall we call in the ambassador, my liege? K. Hen. Not yet, my cousin; we would be resolv'd,

Before we hear him, of some things of weight,
That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.
Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and BISHOP
OF ELY.

Cant. God and his angels, guard your sacred throne,

And make you long become it!