King Henry IV, Part 2 | Page 5

have in some measure made me well:?And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints,?Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,?Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire?Out of his keeper's arms, even so my limbs,?Weaken'd with grief, being now enraged with grief,?Are thrice themselves. Hence, therefore, thou nice crutch!?A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel?Must glove this hand: and hence, thou sickly quoif!?Thou art a guard too wanton for the head?Which princes, flesh'd with conquest, aim to hit.?Now bind my brows with iron; and approach?The ragged'st hour that time and spite dare bring?To frown upon the enraged Northumberland!?Let heaven kiss earth! now let not Nature's hand?Keep the wild flood confined! let order die!?And let this world no longer be a stage?To feed contention in a lingering act;?But let one spirit of the first-born Cain?Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set?On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,?And darkness be the burier of the dead!
TRAVERS.?This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord.
LORD BARDOLPH.?Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.
MORTON.?The lives of all your loving complices?Lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er?To stormy passion, must perforce decay.?You cast the event of war, my noble lord,?And summ'd the account of chance, before you said?"Let us make head." It was your presurmise,?That, in the dole of blows, your son might drop:?You knew he walk'd o'er perils, on an edge,?More likely to fall in than to get o'er;?You were advised his flesh was capable?Of wounds and scars and that his forward spirit?Would lift him where most trade of danger ranged:?Yet did you say "Go forth;" and none of this,?Though strongly apprehended, could restrain?The stiff-borne action: what hath then befallen,?Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth,?More than that being which was like to be?
LORD BARDOLPH.?We all that are engaged to this loss?Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas?That if we wrought out life 'twas ten to one;?And yet we ventured, for the gain proposed?Choked the respect of likely peril fear'd;?And since we are o'erset, venture again.?Come, we will put forth, body and goods.
MORTON.?'Tis more than time: and, my most noble lord,?I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth:?The gentle Archbishop of York is up?With well-appointed powers: he is a man?Who with a double surety binds his followers.?My lord your son had only but the corpse,?But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;?For that same word, rebellion, did divide?The action of their bodies from their souls;?And they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd,?As men drink potions, that their weapons only?Seem'd on our side; but, for their spirits and souls,?This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,?As fish are in a pond. But now the bishop?Turns insurrection to religion:?Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts,?He 's follow'd both with body and with mind;?And doth enlarge his rising with the blood?Of fair King Richard, scraped from Pomfret stones;?Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;?Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,?Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;?And more and less do flock to follow him.
NORTHUMBERLAND.?I knew of this before; but, to speak truth,?This present grief had wiped it from my mind.?Go in with me; and counsel every man?The aptest way for safety and revenge:?Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed:?Never so few, and never yet more need.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II. London. A street.
[Enter Falstaff, with his Page bearing his sword and buckler.]
FALSTAFF.?Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?
PAGE.?He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but, for the party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than he knew for.
FALSTAFF.?Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of?this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one.?If the prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgement. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now: but I will inset you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel,--the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say his face is a face-royal: God may finish it when he will, 'tis not a hair amiss yet: he may keep