four o'clock, early at Gads-hill! 25 there are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses: I have visards for you all; you have horses for yourselves: Gadshill lies to-night in Rochester: I have bespoke supper to-morrow night in Eastcheap we may do it as secure as sleep. If you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns; if you will not, tarry at home and be hang'd.

Fal. Hear ye, Yedward; 26 if I tarry at home and go not, I'll hang you for going.

Pointz. You will, chops?

Fal. Hal, wilt thou make one?

Prince. Who, I rob? I a thief? not I, by my faith.

Fal. There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou camest not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.27

Prince. Well, then, once in my days I'll be a madcap.
Fal. Why, that's well said.

Prince. Well, come what will, I'll tarry at home.

Fal. By the Lord, I'll be a traitor, then, when thou art king.

Prince. I care not.

Pointz. Sir John, I pr'ythee, leave the Prince and me alone: I will lay him down such reasons for this adventure, that he shall go.

Fal. Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion, and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move,

25 Gads-hill was a wooded place on the road from London to Rochester, much noted as a resort of highwaymen.

26 Yedward was a familiar corruption of Edward.

27 Falstaff is quibbling on the word royal. The real or royal was of the value of ten shillings.

and what he hears may be believed, that the true Prince may, for recreation-sake, prove a false thief; for the poor abuses of the time want countenance. Farewell you shall find me in Eastcheap.

:

Prince. Farewell, thou latter Spring! farewell, All-hallown Summer! 28 [Exit FALSTAFF. Pointz. Now, my good sweet honey-lord, ride with us to-morrow: I have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone. Falstaff, Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill, shall rob those men that we have already waylaid: yourself and I will not be there; and when they have the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head from my shoulders.

Prince. But how shall we part with them in setting forth?

Pointz. Why, we will set forth before or after them, and appoint them a place of meeting, wherein it is at our pleasure to fail; and then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves; which they shall have no sooner achieved but we'll set upon them.

Prince. Ay, but 'tis like that they will know us by our horses, by our habits, and by every other appointment,29 to be ourselves.

Pointz. Tut! our horses they shall not see, - I'll tie them in the wood; our visards we will change, after we leave them; and, sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce,30 to immask our noted outward garments.

28 All-hallown, or All hallows, is All Saints' Day, the first of November. Nothing could more happily express the character of Falstaff as sowing wild oats in his old age, or as carrying on the May and June of life to the verge of Winter.

29 Appointment for equipment or outfit. See page 55, note 8.

30 This passage shows that sirrah was sometimes used merely in a play

Prince. But I doubt 31 they will be too hard for us.

Pointz. Well, for two of them, I know them to be as truebred cowards as ever turn'd back; and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I'll forswear arms. The virtue of this jest will be, the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet at supper: how thirty, at least, he fought with; what wards,32 what blows, what extremities he endured; and in the reproof 33 of this lies the jest.

Prince. Well, I'll go with thee: provide us all things necessary, and meet me to-night in Eastcheap; there I'll sup. Farewell.

Pointz. Farewell, my lord.

Prince. I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked 34 humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother-up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
And vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work;

But, when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come,

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

[Exit.

ful, familiar way, without implying any lack of respect. For the nonce signified for the occasion, for the once.

31 Doubt in the sense of fear or suspect; a frequent usage.

32 Wards is guards; that is, modes or postures of defence.

33 Reproof for refutation or disproof. To refute, to refell, to disallow, are

old meanings of to refute. See Much Ado, page 65, note 14.

34 Unyoked is untamed; like wild steers not broken into work.

So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promiséd,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes; 35
And, like bright metal on a sullen 36 ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to 37 make offence a skill;
Redeeming time, when men think least I will.

[Exit.

SCENE III.- The Same. A Room in the Palace.

Enter King HENRY, NORTHUMBERLAND, WORCESTER, HOTSPUR, Sir WALTER BLUNT, and others.

King. My blood hath been too cold and temperate, Unapt to stir at these indignities,

As you have found me; for, accordingly,

You tread upon my patience: but be sure

I will from henceforth rather be myself,

Mighty and to be fear'd, than my condition; 1

35 Hopes for expectations; no uncommon use of the word even now. 36 Sullen in its old sense of dark or black. See Richard II., page 161, note 6.

Here Johnson

37 In such cases, the old poets often omit as after so.notes as follows: "This speech is very artfully introduced, to keep the Prince from appearing vile in the opinion of the audience: it prepares them for his future reformation; and, what is yet more valuable, exhibits a natural picture of a great mind offering excuses to itself, and palliating those follies which it can neither justify nor forsake."

1 The King means that he will rather be what his office requires than what his natural disposition prompts him to be. The use of condition for temper or disposition was exceedingly common.

Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down,
And therefore lost that title of respect

Which the proud soul ne'er pays but to the proud.

Wor. Our House, my sovereign liege, little deserves
The scourge of greatness to be used on it;

And that same greatness too which our own hands
Have holp to make so portly.2

North.

My good lord,—

King. Worcester, get thee gone; for I do see
Danger and disobedience in thine eye :

O, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,
And majesty might never yet endure

The moody frontier3 of a servant brow.

You have good leave to leave us when we need

Your use and counsel, we shall send for you. [Exit WORCES. -[To NORTH.] You were about to speak.

North.

Yea, my good lord.

Those prisoners in your Highness' name demanded,

Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,

Were, as he says, not with such strength denied

As is deliver'd to your Majesty :
Either envy, therefore, or misprision4

Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.

Hot. My liege, I did deny no prisoners. But, I remember, when the fight was done,

2 Holp and holpen are the old preterites of the verb to help. - Portly here has the sense of stately or imposing. So in The Merchant, iii. 2: “The magnificoes of greatest port."

3 Frontier seems to be here used very much in the sense of confronting or outfacing. The image is of a threatening or defiant fortress.

4 Envy is doubtless used here for malice, the sense it more commonly bears in Shakespeare. — Misprision is misprising or prising amiss; mistaking.