Shallow
Where’s Shadow?
Shadow
Here, sir.
Falstaff
Shadow, whose son art thou?
Shadow
My mother’s son, sir.
Falstaff
Thy mother’s son! like enough, and thy father’s shadow: so the son of the female is the shadow of the male: it is often so, indeed; but much of the father’s substance!
Shallow
Do you like him, Sir John?
Falstaff
Shadow will serve for summer; prick him, for we have a number of shadows to fill up the muster-book.
Shallow
Thomas Wart!
Falstaff
Where’s he?
Wart
Here, sir.
Falstaff
Is thy name Wart?
Wart
Yea, sir.
Falstaff
Thou art a very ragged wart.
Shallow
Shall I prick him down, Sir John?
Falstaff
It were superfluous; for his apparel is built upon his back and the whole frame stands upon pins: prick him no more.
Shallow
Ha, ha, ha! you can do it, sir; you can do it: I commend you well. Francis Feeble!
Feeble
Here, sir.
Falstaff
What trade art thou, Feeble?
Feeble
A woman’s tailor, sir.
Shallow
Shall I prick him, sir?
Falstaff
You may: but if he had been a man’s tailor, he’ld ha’ pricked you. Wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy’s battle as thou hast done in a woman’s petticoat?
Feeble
I will do my good will, sir; you can have no more.
Falstaff
Well said, good woman’s tailor! well said, courageous Feeble! thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove or most magnanimous mouse. Prick the woman’s tailor: well, Master Shallow; deep, Master Shallow.
Feeble
I would Wart might have gone, sir.
Falstaff
I would thou wert a man’s tailor, that thou mightst mend him and make him fit to go. I cannot put him to a private soldier that is the leader of so many thousands: let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.
Feeble
It shall suffice, sir.
Falstaff
I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble. Who is next?
Shallow
Peter Bullcalf o’ the green!
Falstaff
Yea, marry, let’s see Bullcalf.
Bullcalf
Here, sir.
Falstaff
’Fore God, a likely fellow! Come, prick me Bullcalf till he roar again.
Bullcalf
O Lord! good my lord captain,—
Falstaff
What, dost thou roar before thou art pricked?
Bullcalf
O Lord, sir! I am a diseased man.
Falstaff
What disease hast thou?
Bullcalf
A whoreson cold, sir, a cough, sir, which I caught with ringing in the king’s affairs upon his coronation-day, sir.
Falstaff
Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown; we wilt have away thy cold; and I will take such order that my friends shall ring for thee. Is here all?
Shallow
Here is two more called than your number, you must have but four here, sir: and so, I pray you, go in with me to dinner.
Falstaff
Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tarry dinner. I am glad to see you, by my troth, Master Shallow.
Shallow
O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in Saint George’s field?
Falstaff
No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more of that.
Shallow
Ha! ’twas a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive?
Falstaff
She lives, Master Shallow.
Shallow
She never could away with me.
Falstaff
Never, never; she would always say she could not abide Master Shallow.
Shallow
By the mass, I could anger her to the heart. She was then a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?
Falstaff
Old, old, Master Shallow.
Shallow
Nay, she must be old; she cannot choose but be old; certain she’s old; and had Robin Nightwork by old Nightwork before I came to Clement’s Inn.
Silence
That’s fifty-five year ago.
Shallow
Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?
Falstaff
We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
Shallow
That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith,
Sir John, we have: our watch-word was ‘Hem boys!’
Come, let’s to dinner; come, let’s to dinner:
Jesus, the days that we have seen! Come, come.
Exeunt Falstaff and Justices
Bullcalf
Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my friend; and here’s four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very truth, sir, I had as lief be hanged, sir, as go: and yet, for mine own part, sir, I do not care; but rather, because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, sir, I did not care, for mine own part, so much.
Bardolph
Go to; stand aside.
Mouldy
And, good master corporal captain, for my old dame’s sake, stand my friend: she has nobody to do any thing about her when I am gone; and she is old, and cannot help herself: You shall have forty, sir.
Bardolph
Go to; stand aside.
Feeble
By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once: we owe God a death: I’ll ne’er bear a base mind: an’t be my destiny, so; an’t be not, so: no man is too good to serve’s prince; and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.
Bardolph
Well said; thou’rt a good fellow.
Feeble
Faith, I’ll bear no base mind.
Re-enter Falstaff and the Justices
Falstaff
Come, sir, which men shall I have?
Shallow
Four of which you please.
Bardolph
Sir, a word with you: I have three pound to free
Mouldy and Bullcalf.
Falstaff
Go to; well.
Shallow
Come, Sir John, which four will you have?
Falstaff
Do you choose for me.
Shallow
Marry, then, Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble and Shadow.
Falstaff
Mouldy and Bullcalf: for you, Mouldy, stay at home till you are past service: and for your part, Bullcalf, grow till you come unto it: I will none of you.
Shallow
Sir John, Sir John, do not yourself wrong: they are your likeliest men, and I would have you served with the best.
Falstaff
Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thewes, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here’s Wart; you see what a ragged appearance it is; a’ shall charge you and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer’s hammer, come off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer’s bucket. And this same half-faced fellow, Shadow; give me this man: he presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. And for a retreat; how swiftly will this Feeble the woman’s tailor run off! O, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones. Put me a caliver into Wart’s hand, Bardolph.
Bardolph
Hold, Wart, traverse; thus, thus, thus.
Falstaff
<
br /> Come, manage me your caliver. So: very well: go to: very good, exceeding good. O, give me always a little, lean, old, chapt, bald shot. Well said, i’ faith, Wart; thou’rt a good scab: hold, there’s a tester for thee.
Shallow
He is not his craft’s master; he doth not do it right. I remember at Mile-end Green, when I lay at Clement’s Inn — I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur’s show,— there was a little quiver fellow, and a’ would manage you his piece thus; and a’ would about and about, and come you in and come you in: ‘rah, tah, tah,’ would a’ say; ‘bounce’ would a’ say; and away again would a’ go, and again would a’ come: I shall ne’er see such a fellow.
Falstaff
These fellows will do well, Master Shallow. God keep you, Master Silence: I will not use many words with you. Fare you well, gentlemen both: I thank you: I must a dozen mile to-night. Bardolph, give the soldiers coats.
Shallow
Sir John, the Lord bless you! God prosper your affairs! God send us peace! At your return visit our house; let our old acquaintance be renewed; peradventure I will with ye to the court.
Falstaff
’Fore God, I would you would, Master Shallow.
Shallow
Go to; I have spoke at a word. God keep you.
Falstaff
Fare you well, gentle gentlemen.
Exeunt Justices
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. Lord, Lord, 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: when a’ was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: a’ was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible: a’ was the very genius of famine; yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him mandrake: a’ came ever in the rearward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the overscutched huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and swear they were his fancies or his good-nights. And now is this Vice’s dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly of John a Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him; and I’ll be sworn a’ ne’er saw him but once in the Tilt-yard; and then he burst his head for crowding among the marshal’s men. I saw it, and told John a Gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court: and now has he land and beefs. Well, I’ll be acquainted with him, if I return; and it shall go hard but I will make him a philosopher’s two stones 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
ACT IV
SCENE I. YORKSHIRE. GAULTREE FOREST.
Enter the Archbishop Of York, Mowbray, Lord Hastings, and others
Archbishop Of York
What is this forest call’d?
Hastings
’Tis Gaultree Forest, an’t shall please your grace.
Archbishop Of York
Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth
To know the numbers of our enemies.
Hastings
We have sent forth already.
Archbishop Of York
’Tis well done.
My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have received
New-dated letters from Northumberland;
Their cold intent, tenor 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 retired, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers
That your attempts may overlive the hazard
And fearful melting of their opposite.
Mowbray
Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground
And dash themselves to pieces.
Enter a Messenger
Hastings
Now, what news?
Messenger
West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,
In goodly form comes on the enemy;
And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number
Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.
Mowbray
The just proportion that we gave them out
Let us sway on and face them in the field.
Archbishop Of York
What well-appointed leader fronts us here?
Enter Westmoreland
Mowbray
I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.
Westmoreland
Health and fair greeting from our general,
The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.
Archbishop Of York
Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace:
What doth concern your coming?
Westmoreland
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 rags,
And countenanced by boys and beggary,
I say, if damn’d 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 maintained,
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 ourself
Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace,
Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war;
Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
Your pens to lances and your tongue divine
To a trumpet and a point of war?
Archbishop Of York
Wherefore do I this? so the question stands.
Briefly to this end: we are all diseased,
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 awhile 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 enforced from our most quiet there
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
<
br /> 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,
Hath 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.
Westmoreland
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,
That you should seal this lawless bloody book
Of forged rebellion with a seal divine
And consecrate commotion’s bitter edge?
Archbishop Of York
My brother general, the commonwealth,
To brother born an household cruelty,
I make my quarrel in particular.
Westmoreland
There is no need of any such redress;
Or if there were, it not belongs to you.
Mowbray
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?
Westmoreland
O, my good Lord Mowbray,
Construe the times to their necessities,
And you shall say indeed, 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 restored
To all the Duke of Norfolk’s signories,
Your noble and right well remember’d father’s?
Mowbray
What thing, in honour, had my father lost,
That need to be revived and breathed in me?
The king that loved him, as the state stood then,
Was force perforce compell’d to banish him:
And then that 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 sparking through sights of steel
And the loud trumpet blowing them together,
Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay’d
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;
Then threw he down himself and all their lives
Complete Plays, The Page 181