And tell the legions I can never win

A soul so easy as that Englishman's.
O, how hast thou with jealousy infected
The sweetness of affiance!

Show men dutiful?

Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet,
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purged judgement trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem:
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man. Their faults are open :
Arrest them to the answer of the law;

And God acquit them of their practices!

130

140

Exe. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard Earl of Cambridge:

I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord Scroop of Masham :

I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland.

150

Scroop. Our purposes God justly hath discover'd; And I repent my fault more than my death; Which I beseech your highness to forgive,

Although my body pay the price of it.

134. complement: = an outward appearance corresponding to

their minds.

Cam. For me, the gold of France did not seduce: Although I did admit it as a motive

The sooner to effect what I intended:
But God be thanked for prevention;
Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,
Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

Grey. Never did faithful subject more rejoice
At the discovery of most dangerous treason
Than I do at this hour joy o'er myself,
Prevented from a damned enterprise:

160

My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.
K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your

sentence.

You have conspir'd against our royal person.

Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd and from his coffers Received the golden earnest of our death;

171

Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,
His subjects to oppression and contempt
And his whole kingdom into desolation.
Touching our person seek we no revenge;
But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death:
The taste whereof, God of his mercy give
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence.

180

[Exeunt Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, guarded.

Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof
Shall be to you, as us, like glorious.

We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,

Since God so graciously hath brought to light 169. earnest a preliminary payment.

This dangerous treason lurking in our way
To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now
rub is smoothed on our way.

But
every
Then forth, dear countrymen let us deliver
Our puissance into the hand of God,
Putting it straight in expedition.

Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance:

190

No king of England, if not king of France.

SCENE III. London. Before a tavern.

[Exeunt.

Enter PISTOL, Hostess, NYM, BARDOLPH, and Boy. Host. Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines.

Pist. No; for my manly heart doth yearn.

Bardolph, be blithe: Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins : Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we must yearn therefore.

Bard. Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell!

8

Host. Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a' parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' th' tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a’ babbled of green fields. "How now, Sir John!" quoth I: "what, man! be o' good cheer." So a' cried out "God, God, God!" three or four times. Now I,

1. bring

=

go along with.

9. Arthur's: a vague recollection of Abraham's.

16. a' babbled of green fields.

original reading is " a table of green

This is an emendation; the fields."

to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God; I hop'd there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so up'ard and up'ard, and all was as cold as any stone. Nym. They say he cried out of sack.

Host. Ay, that a' did.

Bard. And of women.

Host. Nay, that a' did not.

30

Boy. Yes, that a' did; and said they were devils incarnate.

Host. A' could never abide carnation; 't was a colour he never lik'd.

Boy. A' said once, the Devil would have him about

women.

Host. A' did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic, and talk'd of the whore of Babylon.

39

Boy. Do you not remember, a' saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose, and a' said it was a black soul burning in hell-fire?

Bard. Well, the fuel is gone that maintain'd that fire that's all the riches I got in his service.

Nym. Shall we shog? the King will be gone from Southampton.

Pist. Come, let's away. My love, give me thy lips.

Look to my chattels and my movables:

Let senses rule; the word is "Pitch and Pay:"

38. rheumatic: this word, which is to be accented on the first syllable, is the quondam Mrs. Quickly's substitute for lunatic. W.

Trust none;

50

For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes,
And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck:
Therefore, Caveto be thy counsellor.

Go, clear thy crystals. Yoke-fellows in arms,
Let us to France; like horse-leeches, my boys,

To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!

Boy. And that's but unwholesome food, they say.
Pist. Touch her soft mouth, and march.
Bard. Farewell, hostess.

[Kissing her. Nym. I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but, adieu.

61

Pist. Let housewifery appear: keep close, I thee

command.

Host. Farewell; adieu.

SCENE IV. France. The KING's Palace.

[Exeunt.

Flourish. Enter the FRENCH KING, the DAUPHIN, the DUKES OF BERRI and BRETAGNE, the CONSTABLE, and others.

Fr. King. Thus comes the English with full power

upon us;

And more than carefully it us concerns

To answer royally in our defences.

Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Bretagne,
Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,
And you, Prince Dolphin, with all swift dispatch,
To line and new repair our towns of war
With men of courage and with means defendant;
For England his approaches makes as fierce
As waters to the sucking of a gulf.

10

10. gulf means here something like a maelstrom which sucks

in waters. Cf. IV, iii, 82.