King Henry IV, Part 2 | Page 8

were not so terrible to the enemy as it is: I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition!
FALSTAFF.?Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?
CHIEF JUSTICE.?Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.
[Exeunt Chief-Justice and Servant.]
FALSTAFF.?If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no more separate age and covetousness than 'a can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!
PAGE.?Sir?
FALSTAFF.?What money is in my purse?
PAGE.?Seven groats and two pence.
FALSTAFF.?I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse:?borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair of my chin. About it: you know where to find me. [Exit Page.]?A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. 'Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will make use of any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity.
[Exit.]
SCENE III. York. The Archbishop's palace.
[Enter the Archbishop, the Lords Hastings, Mowbray, Bardolph.]
ARCHBISHOP.?Thus have you heard our cause and known our means;?And, my most noble friends, I pray you all,?Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes:?And first, lord marshal, what say you to it?
MOWBRAY.?I well allow the occasion of our arms;?But gladly would be better satisfied?How in our means we should advance ourselves?To look with forehead bold and big enough?Upon the power and puissance of the king.
HASTINGS.?Our present musters grow upon the file?To five and twenty thousand men of choice;?And our supplies live largely in the hope?Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns?With an incensed fire of injuries.
LORD BARDOLPH.?The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus:?Whether our present five and twenty thousand?May hold up head without Northumberland?
HASTINGS.?With him, we may.
LORD BARDOLPH.?Yea, marry, there 's the point:?But if without him we be thought too feeble,?My judgement is, we should not step too far?Till we had his assistance by the hand;?For in a theme so bloody-faced as this?Conjecture, expectation, and surmise?Of aids incertain should not be admitted.
ARCHBISHOP.?'Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed?It was young Hotspur's case at Shrewsbury.
LORD BARDOLPH.?It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope,?Eating the air on promise of supply,?Flattering himself in project of a power?Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts:?And so, with great imagination?Proper to madmen, led his powers to death?And winking leap'd into destruction.
HASTINGS.?But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt?To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.
LORD BARDOLPH.?Yes, if this present quality of war,?Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot?Lives so in hope as in an early spring?We see the appearing buds; which to prove fruit,?Hope gives not so much warrant as despair?That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,?We first survey the plot, then draw the model;?And when we see the figure of the house,?Then we must rate the cost of the erection;?Which if we find outweighs ability,?What do we then but draw anew the model?In fewer offices, or at least desist?To build at all? Much more, in this great work,?Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down?And set another up, should we survey?The plot of situation and the model,?Consent upon a sure foundation,?Question surveyors, know our own estate,?How able such a work to undergo,?To weigh against his opposite; or else?We fortify in paper and in figures,?Using the names of men instead of men;?Like one that draws the model of a house?Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,?Gives o'er and leaves his part-created cost?A naked subject to the weeping clouds?And waste for churlish winter's tyranny.
HASTINGS.?Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth,?Should be still-born, and that we now possess'd?The utmost man of expectation,?I think we are a body strong enough,?Even as we are, to equal with the king.
LORD BARDOLPH.?What, is the king but five and twenty thousand?
HASTINGS.?To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph.?For his divisions, as the times do brawl,?Are in three heads: one power against the French,?And one against Glendower; perforce a third?Must take up us: so is the unfirm king?In three divided; and his coffers sound?With hollow poverty and emptiness.
ARCHBISHOP.?That he should draw his several strengths together?And come against us in full puissance,?Need not be dreaded.
HASTINGS.?If he should do