I rather of his absence make this use:-
It leads a lustre and more great opinion,
A larger dare, to our great enterprise,

Than if the earl were here: for men must think,
If we without his help can make a head
To push against the kingdom, with his help
We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.-
Yet all goes well; yet all our joints are whole.
Doug. As heart can think. There is not such
a word

Spoke of in Scotland as this term of fear.

Enter SIR RICHARD VERNON.

Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome by my soul. Ver. Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.

The Earl of Westmorland, seven thousand strong, Is marching hitherwards: with him Prince John. Hot. No harm. What more?

Ver.

All furnished, all in arms:

All plumed like estridges that wing the wind;
Bated like eagles having lately bathed;
Glittering in golden coats, like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
As gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly armed,
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat

As if an angel had dropped down from the clouds
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
Hot. No more, no more: worse than the sun
in March

This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come:
They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war,

I learned in Worcester, as I rode along,
He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.
Doug. That's the worst tidings that I hear
of yet.

Wor. Ay, by my faith that bears a frosty sound. Hot. What may the King's whole battle reach unto?

Ver. To thirty thousand.

SCENE II.-A public Road near Coventry.

Enter FALSTAFF and BARdolph. Fal. Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry: fill me a bottle of sack. Our soldiers shall march through we'll to Sutton-Colfield to-night. Bard. Will you give me money, captain ? Fal. Lay out, lay out.

Bard. This bottle makes an angel.

Fal. An if it do, take it for thy labour; and if it make twenty, take them all: I'll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at the town's end.

Bard. I will, captain: farewell.

[Exit.

Fal. If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the King's press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundredand-fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders; yeomen's sons: inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the bans; such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lief hear the devil as a drum: such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl, or a hurt wild duck. pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins'-heads; and they have bought out their services: and now

I

my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores: and such as, indeed, were never soldiers, but discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old, faced ancient. And such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred-and-fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them; that's flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on: for, indeed, I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves: and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's, or the red-nose innkeeper of Da'entry. But that's all one: they'll find linen enough on every hedge.

Enter PRINCE HENRY and WESTMORLAND. P. Hen. How now, blown Jack; how now quilt?

Fal. What, Hal! How now, mad wag: what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire?--My good lord of Westmorland, I cry you mercy: I thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.

West. 'Faith, Sir John, 't is more than time that I were there, and you too: but my powers are

Fal. Mine, Hal, mine.

P. Hen. I did never see such pitiful rascals.

Fal. Tut, tut: good enough to toss: food for powder: they'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

West. Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare; too beggarly.

Fal. 'Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they had that and for their bareness, I am sure they never learned that of me.

P. Hen. No, I'll be sworn, unless you call three fingers on the ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste: Percy is already in the field.

Fal. What, is the King encamped? West. He is, Sir John: I fear we shall stay too long.

Fal. Well,

To the latter end of a fray, and the beginning of a feast,

Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest. [Exeunt.

SCENE III.-The Rebel Camp near Shrewsbury.

Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, DOUGLAS, and
VERNON.

Hot. We'll fight with him to-night.
Wor. It may not be.

Dong. You give him then advantage.

Ver.

Not a whit.

Hot.
His is certain; ours is doubtful.
Wor. Good cousin, be advised: stir not to-night.
V'er. Do not, my lord.

Doug.
You speak it out of fear and cold heart.
Ver. Do me no slander, Douglas: by my life
(And I dare well maintain it with my life),
If well-respected honour bid me on,
I hold as little counsel with weak fear

You do not counsel well:

As you, my lord, or any Scot that this day lives.
Let it be seen to-morrow in the battle
Which of us fears.

Doug. Yea, or to-night.
Ver. Content.

Hot. To-night, say I.

Ver. Come, come, it may not be. I wonder much,

Being inen of such great leading as you are,
That you foresee not what impediments
Drag back our expedition. Certain horse
Of my cousin Vernon's are not yet come up:
Your uncle Worcester's horse came but to-day;
And now their pride and mettle is asleep,
Their courage with hard labour tame and dull,
That not a horse is half the half of himself,
Hot. So are the horses of the enemy
In general, journey-bated and brought low:
The better part of ours is full of rest.

Wor. The number of the King exceedeth ours: For God's sake, cousin, stay till all come in. [The trumpet sounds a parley.

Enter SIR WALTER BLUNT. Blunt.I come with gracious offers from the King, If you vouchsafe me hearing and respect. Hot. Welcome, Sir Walter Blunt and 'would to God

You were of our determination.

Some of us love you well: and even those some Envy your great deservings and good name, Because you are not of our quality,

But stand against us like an enemy.

Blunt. And God defend but still I should

stand so,

So long as, out of limit and true rule,
You stand against anointed majesty.
But to my charge:-The King hath sent to know

Herein misled by your suggestion.

Hot. The King is kind; and well we know, the

King

Knows at what time to promise, when to pay.
My father, and my uncle, and myself,
Did give him that same royalty he wears:
And, when he was not six-and-twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,
My father gave him welcome to the shore:
And, when he heard him swear and vow to God
He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,
To sue his livery, and beg his peace
With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,
My father, in kind heart and pity moved,
Swore him assistance, and performed it too.
Now, when the lords and barons of the realm
Perceived Northumberland did lean to him,
The more and less came in with cap and knee:
Met him in boroughs, cities, villages;
Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes;
Laid gifts before him, proffered him their oaths;
Gave him their heirs; as pages followed him,
Even at the heels, in golden multitudes.
He presently, as greatness knows itself,
Steps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father, while his blood was poor,
Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurg:
And now, forsooth, takes on him to reform
Some certain edicts, and some strait decrees,
That lie too heavy on the commonwealth:
Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep
Over his country's wrongs: and by this face,
This seeming brow of justice, did he win
The hearts of all that he did angle for.
Proceeded further: cut me off the heads
Of all the favourites that the absent King
In deputation left behind him here,
When he was personal in the Irish war.
Blunt. Tut; I came not to hear this.
Hot. Then to the point:
In short time after he deposed the King;
Soon after that deprived him of his life;
And, in the neck of that, tasked the whole state:
To make that worse, suffered his kinsman March
(Who is, if every owner were well placed,
Indeed his king) to be engaged in Wales,
There without ransom to lie forfeited:

Disgraced me in my happy victories;
Sought to entrap me by intelligence;
Rated my uncle from the council-board,
In rage dismissed my father from the court;
Broke oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong;
And, in conclusion, drove us to seek out
This head of safety: and withal, to pry
Into his title; the which we find
Too indirect for long continuance.

Blunt. Shall I return this answer to the King? Hot. Not so, Sir Walter: we'll withdraw awhile.

Go to the King: and let there be impawned
Some surety for a safe return again,
And in the morning early shall mine uncle
Bring him our purposes: and so farewell.
Blunt. I would you would accept of grace and
love.

Hot. And 't may be, so we shall.
Blunt. 'Pray heaven you do!

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.-York. A Room in the ARCHBISHOP'S House.

Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK and a Gentleman.

Arch. Hie, good Sir Michael: bear this sealed brief

With wingéd haste to the lord mareschal:
This to my cousin Scroop: and all the rest
To whom they are directed. If you knew
How much they do import, you would make haste.
Gent. My good lord, I guess their tenor.
Arch. Like enough you do.
To-morrow, good Sir Michael, is a day
Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men

Must bide the touch: for, sir, at Shrewsbury,
As I am truly given to understand,
The King, with mighty and quick-raised power,
Meets with Lord Harry: and I fear, Sir Michael,
What with the sickness of Northumberland
(Whose power was in the first proportion),
And what with Owen Glendower's absence thence
(Who with them was a rated sinew too,
And comes not in, o'erruled by prophecies),

I fear the power of Percy is too weak

To wage an instant trial with the King. Gent. Why, my good lord, you need not fear: there's Douglas

And there's my lord of Worcester, and a head Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen.

Arch. And so there is: but yet the King hath drawn

The special head of all the land together:
The Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster,
The noble Westmorland, and warlike Blunt;
And many more corrivals, and dear men
Of estimation and command in arms.
Gent. Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well
opposed.

Arch. I hope no less; yet needful 't is to fear:
And to prevent the worst, Sir Michael, speed.
For if Lord Percy thrive not, ere the King
Dismiss his power he means to visit us;
For he hath heard of our confederacy,
And 't is but wisdom to make strong against

him:

Therefore make haste. I must go write again To other friends: and so farewell, Sir Michael.

[Exeunt severally.