house; let our old acquaintance be renewed; peradventure, I will with you to the court. well. Fal. I would you would, master Shallow. Shal. Go to; I have spoke, at a word. Fare you [Exeunt SHALLOW and SILENCE. Fal. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. On, Bardolph; lead the men away. [Exeunt BARDOLPH, Recruits, &c.] As I return, I will fetch off these justices; I do see the bottom of justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he had done about Turnbull-street!1 and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk's tribute. I do remember him at Clement's Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring; when he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife; he was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible; he was the very Genius of famine; [yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him mandrake.] He came ever in the rear-ward of the fashion; [and sung those tunes to the overscutched huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies, or his good-nights.'] And now is this Vice's dagger' become a squire; and talks as familiarly of John of Gaunt, as if he had been sworn brother to him; and I'll be sworn he never saw him but once in the Tilt-yard; and then he burst his head, for crowding among the marshal's men. I saw 1 Turnbull-street, or Turnball-street, is a corruption of Turnmill-street, near Clerkenwell; anciently the resort of bullies, rogues, and other dissolute persons. 2 Steevens has adopted Rowe's alteration of this word invincible to invisible. The word may be metaphorically used for not to be mastered or taken in. 3 i. e. whipped, carted. A scutcher was a whip, according to Cotgrave. 4 Titles of little poems. The sentences in brackets are not in the folio of 1623. 5 For some account of the Vice and his dagger of lath, the reader may see Twelfth Night, Act iv. Sc. 2. 6 Burst, brast and broken, were formerly synonymous; as may be seen under the words break and broken in Baret. it, and told John of Gaunt, he beat his own name; for you might have trussed him, and all his apparel, into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court: and now has he land and beeves. Well; I will be acquainted with him, if I return; and it shall go hard, but I will make him a philosopher's two stones to me: If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason, in the law of nature, but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and [Exit. there an end. ACT IV. SCENE I. A Forest in Yorkshire. Enter the Archbishop of York, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and others. Arch. What is this forest called? Hast. 'Tis Gualtree forest, an't shall please your grace. Arch. Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth, To know the numbers of our enemies. 'Tis well done. Hast. We have sent forth already. That your attempts may overlive the hazard, Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground, And dash themselves to pieces. Hast. Enter a Messenger. Now, what news? Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, In goodly form, comes on the enemy; And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number Upon, or near, the rate of thirty thousand. Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them out. Let us sway1 on, and face them in the field. Enter WESTMORELAND. Arch. What well-appointed leader fronts us here? Mowb. I think it is my lord of Westmoreland. West. Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince lord John and duke of Lancaster. Arch. Say on, my lord of Westmoreland, in peace; What doth concern your coming? West. Then, my lord, Unto your grace do I in chief address The substance of my speech. If that rebellion I say, if damned commotion so appeared In his true, native, and most proper shape,- 1 To sway was sometimes used for a rushing, hasty movement. 2 Baret distinguishes between bloody, full of blood, sanguineous, and bloody, desirous of blood, sanguinarius. In this speech Shakspeare uses the word in both senses. 3 Guarded is a metaphor taken from dress; to guard being to ornament with guards or facings. Of base and bloody insurrection With your fair honors. You, lord archbishop,- Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touched; peace, Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war? Arch. Wherefore do I this?-so the question stands. Briefly to this end.-We are all diseased; And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop Our very I have in equal balance justly weighed What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, 1 "Formerly all bishops wore white, even when they travelled."-Hody's History of Convocations, p. 141. This white investment was the episcopal rochet. 2 Warburton very plausibly reads glaives; Steevens proposed greaves. It should be remarked that greaves, or leg-armor, is sometimes spelled graves. 3 The old copies read, "from our most quiet there." Warburton made the alteration. By the rough torrent of occasion; And have the summary of all our griefs, When time shall serve, to show in articles; Which, long ere this, we offered to the king, When we are wronged, and would unfold our griefs, Even by those men that most have done us wrong. West. When ever yet was your appeal denied? I make my quarrel in particular.1 West. There is no need of any such redress, Or, if there were, it not belongs to you. Mowb. Why not to him, in part; and to us all, That feel the bruises of the days before; And suffer the condition of these times 1 In Holinshed, the archbishop says, "Where he and his companie were in armes, it was for feare of the king, to whom he could have no free accesse, by reason of such a multitude of flatterers as were about him." 2 "Examples which every minute instances or supplies;" which even the present minute presses on their notice. 3 This line is omitted in the folio. 4 The second line of this obscure speech is omitted in the folio. Something appears to be wanting to render it intelligible, Johnson proposes to substitute the word quarrel for brother in the first line, and suggests the following paraphrase: "My general cause of discontent is public mismanagement; my particular cause a domestic injury done to my natural brother," who had been beheaded by the king's order. |