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

3

2

5

6

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.

Hast. We have sent forth already.
Arch.

'Tis well done.

My friends, and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have received
New-dated letters from Northumberland;
Their cold intent, tenor, and substance, thus:
Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
As might hold sortance1 with his quality,
The which he could not levy; whereupon
He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland; and concludes in hearty prayers,

That your attempts may overlive the hazard,

And fearful meeting of their opposite.

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

3

The substance of my speech. If that rebellion
Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
Led on by bloody 2 youth, guarded with rage,
And countenanced by boys, and beggary ;
I say, if damned commotion so appeared
In his true, native, and most proper shape,-
You, reverend father, and these noble lords
Had not been here, to dress the ugly form

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 see is by a civil peace maintained;

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touched;
Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutored;
Whose white investments1 figure innocence,
The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,-
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself,
Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,
Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war?
Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
Your pens to lances; and your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet, and a point of war?

2

Arch. Wherefore do I this?-so the question stands.

Briefly to this end.—We are all diseased;
And, with our surfeiting, and wanton hours,
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it; of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I as an enemy to peace,
Troop in the throngs of military men;
But, rather, show a while like fearful war,
To diet rank minds, sick of happiness;

And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.

I have in equal balance justly weighed

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforced from our most quiet sphere 3

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,
And might by no suit gain our audience.

When we are wronged, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person 1

2

1

Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
The dangers of the days but newly gone,
(Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet-appearing blood,) and the examples
Of every minute's instance, (present now,)
Have put us in these ill-beseeming arms;
Not to break peace, or any branch of it;
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

West. When ever yet was your appeal denied?
Wherein have you been galled by the king?
What peer hath been suborned to grate on you?
That you should seal this lawless, bloody book
Of forged rebellion with a seal divine,
And consecrate commotion's bitter edge? 3

Arch. My brother general, the commonwealth,

To brother born a household cruelty,

I make my quarrel in particular.4

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.