The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 170
HOTSPUR
O Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth.
I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me.
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my
flesh.
But thoughts, the slaves of life, and life, time’s fool,
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust,
And food for—He dies
PRINCE HARRY
For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart.
Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound,
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead
Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.
If thou wert sensible of courtesy,
I should not make so dear a show of zeal;
But let my favours hide thy mangled face,
He covers Hotspur’s face
And even in thy behalf I’ll thank myself
For doing these fair rites of tenderness.
Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven.
Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,
But not remembered in thy epitaph.
He spieth Sir John on the ground
What, old acquaintance! Could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life ? Poor Jack, farewell.
I could have better spared a better man.
O, I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer today,
Though many dearer in this bloody fray.
Embowelled will I see thee by and by.
Till then, in blood by noble Percy lie. Exit
Sir John riseth up
SIR JOHN Embowelled? If thou embowel me today, I’ll give you leave to powder me, and eat me too, tomorrow. ’Sblood, ’twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me, scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life. Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should counterfeit too, and rise ? By my faith, I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I’ll make him sure; yea, and I’ll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore, sirrah, (stabbing Hotspur) with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.
He takes up Hotspur on his back.
Enter Prince Harry and Lord John of Lancaster
PRINCE HARRY
Come, brother John. Full bravely hast thou fleshed
Thy maiden sword.
JOHN OF LANCASTER But soft; whom have we here? Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?
PRINCE HARRY I did; I saw him dead, Breathless and bleeding on the ground. (To Sir John) Art thou alive? Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight? I prithee speak; we will not trust our eyes Without our ears. Thou art not what thou seem’st.
SIR JOHN No, that’s certain: I am not a double man. But if I be not Jack Oldcastle, then am I a jack. There is Percy. If your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.
PRINCE HARRY
Why, Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead.
SIR JOHN Didst thou ? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath, and so was he; but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I’ll take’t on my death I gave him this wound in the thigh. If the man were alive and would deny it, zounds, I would make him eat a piece of my sword.
JOHN OF LANCASTER
This is the strangest tale that e’er I heard.
PRINCE HARRY
This is the strangest fellow, brother John.
(To Sir John) Come, bring your luggage nobly on your
back.
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.
A retreat is sounded
The trumpet sounds retreat; the day is our.
Come, brother, let us to the highest of the field
To see what friends are living, who are dead.
Exeunt the Prince and Lancaster
SIR JOHN I’ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him. If I do grow great, I’ll grow less; for I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.
Exit, bearing Hotspur’s body
5.5 The trumpets sound. Enter King Henry, Prince Harry, Lord John of Lancaster, the Earl of Westmorland, with the Earl of Worcester and Sir Richard Vernon, prisoners, ⌈and soldier⌉
KING HENRY
Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.
Ill-spirited Worcester, did not we send grace,
Pardon, and terms of love to all of you ?
And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary,
Misuse the tenor of thy kinsman’s trust?
Three knights upon our party slain today,
A noble earl, and many a creature else,
Had been alive this hour
If like a Christian thou hadst truly borne
Betwixt our armies true intelligence.
WORCESTER
What I have done my safety urged me to,
And I embrace this fortune patiently,
Since not to be avoided it falls on me.
KING HENRY
Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too.
Other offenders we will pause upon.
Exeunt Worcester and Vernon, guarded
How goes the field?
PRINCE HARRY
The noble Scot Lord Douglas, when he saw
The fortune of the day quite turned from him,
The noble Percy slain, and all his men
Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest;
And falling from a hill he was so bruised
That the pursuers took him. At my tent
The Douglas is, and I beseech your grace
I may dispose of him.
KING HENRY With all my heart.
PRINCE HARRY
Then, brother John of Lancaster,
To you this honourable bounty shall belong.
Go to the Douglas, and deliver him
Up to his pleasure ransomless and free.
His valours shown upon our crests today
Have taught us how to cherish such high deeds
Even in the bosom of our adversaries.
JOHN OF LANCASTER
I thank your grace for this high courtesy,
Which I shall give away immediately.
KING HENRY
Then this remains, that we divide our power.
You, son John, and my cousin Westmorland,
Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed
To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scrope,
Who, as we hear, are busily in arms.
Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales,
To fight with Glyndwr and the Earl of March.
Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,
Meeting the check of such another day;
And since this business so fair is done,
Let us not leave till all our own be won.
Exeunt [the King, the Prince, and their power at one door, Lancaster, Wes
tmorland, and their power at another door]
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
A LEGEND dating from 1702 claims that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor in fourteen days and by command of Queen Elizabeth; in 1709 she was said to have wished particularly to see Falstaff in love. Whether or not this is true, a passage towards the end of the play alluding directly to the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, Britain’s highest order of chivalry, encourages the belief that the play has a direct connection with a specific occasion. In 1597 George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s company, was installed at Windsor as a Knight of the Garter. The Queen was not present at the installation but had attended the Garter Feast at the Palace of Westminster on St George’s Day (23 April). Shakespeare’s play was probably performed in association with this occasion, and may have been written especially for it. It was first printed, in a corrupt text, in 1602; a better text appears in the 1623 Folio.
Some of the characters—Sir John Falstaff, Mistress Quickly, Pistol, Nim, Justice Shallow—appear also in I and 2 Henry IV and Henry V, but in spite of a reference to ’the wild Prince and Poins’ at 3.2.66-7, this is essentially an Elizabethan comedy, the only one that Shakespeare set firmly in England. The play is full of details that would have been familiar to Elizabethan Londoners, and the language is colloquial and up to date. The plot, however, is made up of conventional situations whose ancestry is literary rather than realistic. There are many analogues to Shakespeare’s basic plot situations in medieval and other tales, some in books that he probably or certainly knew. The central story, of Sir John’s unsuccessful attempts to seduce Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, and of Master Ford’s unfounded jealousy, is in the tradition of the Italian novella, and may have been suggested by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s II Pecorone (1558). Alongside it Shakespeare places the comical but finally romantic love story of Anne Page, wooed by the foolish but rich Abraham Slender and the irascible French Doctor Caius, but won by the young and handsome Fenton. The play contains a higher proportion of prose to verse than any other play by Shakespeare, and the action is often broadly comic; but it ends, after the midnight scene in Windsor Forest during which Sir John is frightened out of his lechery, in forgiveness and love.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is known to have been acted for James I on 4 November 1604, and for Charles I in 1638. It was revived soon after the theatres reopened, in 1660; at first it was not particularly popular, but since 1720 it has consistently pleased audiences. Many artists have illustrated it, and it forms the basis for a number of operas, including Otto Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) and Giuseppe Verdi’s comic masterpiece, Falstaff (1893).
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
The Merry Wives of Windsor
1.1 Enter Justice Shallow, Master Slender, and Sir Hugh Evans
SHALLOW Sir Hugh, persuade me not. I will make a Star Chamber matter of it. If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esquire.
SLENDER In the county of Gloucester, Justice of Peace and Coram.
SHALLOW Ay, cousin Slender, and Custalorum.
SLENDER Ay, and Ratolorum too; and a gentleman born, Master Parson, who writes himself ‘Armigero’ in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation: ‘Armigero’.
SHALLOW Ay, that I do, and have done any time these three hundred years.
SLENDER All his successors gone before him hath done’t, and all his ancestors that come after him may. They may give the dozen white luces in their coat.
SHALLOW It is an old coat.
EVANS The dozen white louses do become an old coad well. It agrees well passant: it is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.
SHALLOW The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old cod.
SLENDER I may quarter, coz.
SHALLOW You may, by marrying.
EVANS It is marring indeed if he quarter it.
SHALLOW Not a whit.
EVANS Yes, py’r Lady. If he has a quarter of your coat, there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures. But that is all one. If Sir John Falstaff have committed disparagements unto you, I am of the Church, and will be glad to do my benevolence to make atonements and compromises between you.
SHALLOW The Council shall hear it; it is a riot.
EVANS It is not meet the Council hear a riot. There is no fear of Got in a riot. The Council, look you, shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot. Take your ’visaments in that.
SHALLOW Ha! O’ my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it.
EVANS It is petter that friends is the sword and end it. And there is also another device in my prain, which peradventure prings goot discretions with it. There is Anne Page which is daughter to Master George Page, which is pretty virginity.
SLENDER Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman?
EVANS It is that fery person for all the ‘orld, as just as you will desire. And seven hundred pounds of moneys, and gold and silver, is her grandsire upon his death’s-bed—Got deliver to a joyful resurrections—give, when she is able to overtake seventeen years old. It were a goot motion if we leave our pribbles and prabbles, and desire a marriage between Master Abraham and Mistress Anne Page.
SLENDER Did her grandsire leave her seven hundred pound?
EVANS Ay, and her father is make her a petter penny. ⌈SHALLOW⌉I know the young gentlewoman. She has good gifts.
EVANS Seven hundred pounds and possibilities is goot gifts.
SHALLOW Well, let us see honest Master Page. Is Falstaff there?
EVANS Shall I tell you a lie? I do despise a liar as I do despise one that is false, or as I despise one that is not true. The knight Sir John is there, and I beseech you be ruled by your well-willers. I will peat the door for Master Page.
He knocks on the door
What ho! Got pless your house here I
PAGE ⌈within⌉ Who’s there?
EVANS Here is Got’s plessing and your friend, and Justice Shallow, and here young Master Slender, that peradventures shall tell you another tale if matters grow to your likings.
⌈Enter Master Page⌉
PAGE I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for my venison, Master Shallow.
SHALLOW Master Page, I am glad to see you. Much good do it your good heart! Iwished your venison better; it was ill killed.—How doth good Mistress Page?—And I thank you always with my heart, la, with my heart.
PAGE Sir, I thank you.
SHALLOW Sir, I thank you. By yea and no, I do.
PAGE I am glad to see you, good Master Slender.
SLENDER How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotswold.
PAGE It could not be judged, sir.
SLENDER You’ll not confess, you’ll not confess.
SHALLOW That he will not. ‘Tis your fault, ’tis your fault.
(To Page) ’Tis a good dog.
PAGE A cur, sir.
SHALLOW Sir, he’s a good dog and a fair dog. Can there be more said? He is good and fair. Is Sir John Falstaff here?
PAGE Sir, he is within; and I would I could do a good office between you.
EVANS It is spoke as a Christians ought to speak.
SHALLOW He hath wronged me, Master Page.
PAGE Sir, he doth in some sort confess it.
SHALLOW If it be confessed, it is not redressed. Is not that so, Master Page? He hath wronged me; indeed he hath; at a word, he hath. Believe me, Robert Shallow, Esquire, saith he is wronged.
Enter Sir John Falstaff, Bardolph, Nim, and Pistol
PAGE Here comes Sir John.
SIR JOHN Now, Master Shallow, you’ll complain of me to the King?
SHALLOW Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge.
SIR JOHN But not kissed your keeper’s daughter?
SHALLOW Tut, a pin. This shall be answered.
SIR JOHN I will answer it straight: I h
ave done all this.
That is now answered.
SHALLOW The Council shall know this.
SIR JOHN ’Twere better for you if it were known in counsel.
You’ll be laughed at.
EVANS Pauca verba, Sir John, good worts.
SIR JOHN Good worts? Good cabbage!—Slender, I broke your head. What matter have you against me?
SLENDER Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you, and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nim, and Pistol.
BARDOLPH You Banbury cheese!
SLENDER Ay, it is no matter.
PISTOL How now, Mephistopheles?
SLENDER Ay, it is no matter.
NIM Slice, I say pauca, pauca. Slice, that’s my humour.
SLENDER (to Shallow) Where’s Simple, my man? Can you tell, cousin?
EVANS Peace, I pray you. Now let us understand. There is three umpires in this matter, as I understand: that is, Master Page, fidelicet Master Page; and there is myself, fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly and finally, mine Host of the Garter.
PAGE We three to hear it, and end it between them.
EVANS Fery goot. I will make a prief of it in my notebook, and we will afterwards ’ork upon the cause with as great discreetly as we can.
SIR JOHN Pistol.
PISTOL He hears with ears.
EVANS The tevil and his tam! What phrase is this? ‘He hears with ear’! Why, it is affectations.
SIR JOHN Pistol, did you pick Master Slender’s purse?
SLENDER Ay, by these gloves did he—or I would I might never come in mine own great chamber again else—of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovel-boards that cost me two shilling and twopence apiece of Ed Miller. By these gloves.
SIR JOHN Is this true, Pistol?
EVANS No, it is false, if it is a pickpurse.
PISTOL
Ha, thou mountain-foreigner Sir John and master
mine,
I combat challenge of this latten bilbo.—