See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!
    He that but fears the thing he would not know
    Hath by instinct knowledge from others’ eyes
    That what he feared is chanced. Yet speak, Morton—
    Tell thou thy earl his divination lies,
    And I will take it as a sweet disgrace
    And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.

MORTON   You are too great to be by me gainsaid:
    Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

NORTHUMBERLAND   Yet, for all this, say not that Percy’s dead.
    I see a strange confession in thine eye:
    Thou shak’st thy head and hold’st it fear or sin
    To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so:
    The tongue offends not that reports his death.
    And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,
    Not he which says the dead is not alive.
    Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
    Hath but a losing office, and his tongue
    Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
    Rememb’red knolling a departing friend.

LORD BARDOLPH   I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.

MORTON   I am sorry I should force you to believe
    That which I would to heaven I had not seen.
    But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,
    Rend’ring faint quittance, wearied and out-breathed,
    To Henry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down
    The never-daunted Percy to the earth,
    From whence with life he never more sprung up.
    In few, his death, whose spirit lent a fire
    Even to the dullest peasant in his camp,
    Being bruited once, took fire and heat away
    From the best tempered courage in his troops,
    For from his mettle was his party steeled;
    Which once in him abated, all the rest
    Turned on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.
    And as the thing that’s heavy in itself,
    Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed,
    So did our men, heavy in Hotspur’s loss,
    Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear
    That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim
    Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,
    Fly from the field. Then was the noble Worcester
    Too soon ta’en prisoner. And that furious Scot,
    The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword
    Had three times slain th’appearance of the king,
    ’Gan vail his stomach and did grace the shame Of those that turned their backs, and in his flight,
    Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all
    Is that the king hath won, and hath sent out
    A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,
    Under the conduct of young Lancaster
    And Westmorland. This is the news at full.

NORTHUMBERLAND   For this I shall have time enough to mourn.
    In poison there is physic, and this news,
    Having been well, that would have made me sick,
    Being sick, have in some measure made me well.
    And as the wretch, whose fever-weakened joints,
    Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,
    Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire
    Out of his keeper’s arms, even so my limbs,
    Weakened with grief, being now enraged with grief,
    Are thrice themselves. Hence, therefore, thou

Throws down his crutch

    nice crutch!

    A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel

    Must glove this hand. And hence, thou sickly coif!

Throws down his nightcap

    Thou art a guard too wanton for the head
    Which princes, fleshed with conquest, aim to hit.
    Now bind my brows with iron, and approach
    The ragged’st hour that time and spite dare bring
    To frown upon th’enraged Northumberland!
    Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature’s hand
    Keep the wild flood confined! Let order die!
    And let the world no longer be a stage
    To feed contention in a ling’ring act,
    But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
    Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
    On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
    And darkness be the burier of the dead!

LORD BARDOLPH   Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.

MORTON   The lives of all your loving complices
    Lean on your health, the which, if you give o’er
    To stormy passion, must perforce decay.
    You cast th’event of war, my noble lord,
    And summed the account of chance, before you said
    ‘Let us make head.’ It was your presurmise
    That in the dole of blows, your son might drop.
    You knew he walked o’er perils on an edge,
    More likely to fall in than to get o’er:
    You were advised his flesh was capable Of wounds and scars and that his forward spirit
    Would lift him where most trade of danger ranged:
    Yet did you say ‘Go forth’, and none of this,
    Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
    The stiff-borne action. What hath then befallen,
    Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth,
    More than that being which was like to be?

LORD BARDOLPH   We all that are engagèd to this loss
    Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas
    That if we wrought our life was ten to one.
    And yet we ventured, for the gain proposed
    Choked the respect of likely peril feared.
    And since we are o’erset, venture again.
    Come, we will all put forth, body and goods.

MORTON   ’Tis more than time. And, my most noble lord,
    I hear for certain, and do speak the truth:
    The gentle Archbishop of York is up
    With well-appointed powers. He is a man
    Who with a double surety binds his followers.
    My lord your son had only but the corpse,
    But shadows and the shows of men, to fight,
    For that same word, rebellion, did divide
    The action of their bodies from their souls,
    And they did fight with queasiness, constrained,
    As men drink potions, that their weapons only
    Seemed on our side. But, for their spirits and souls,
    This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,
    As fish are in a pond. But now the bishop
    Turns insurrection to religion.
    Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts,
    He’s followed both with body and with mind,
    And doth enlarge his rising with the blood
    Of fair King Richard, scraped from Pomfret stones:
    Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause:
    Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,
    Gasping for life under great Bullingbrook:
    And more and less do flock to follow him.

NORTHUMBERLAND   I knew of this before. But, to speak truth,
    This present grief had wiped it from my mind.
    Go in with me, and counsel every man
    The aptest way for safety and revenge.
    Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed.
    Never so few, nor never yet more need.

Exeunt

Act 1 Scene [2]

running scene 2

Location: in London, but unspecified, probably a street

Enter Falstaff and Page

FALSTAFF   Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?

PAGE   He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy
     water, but, for the party that owed it, he might have more
    diseases than he knew for.

FALSTAFF   Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain
     of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent
     anything that tends to laughter, more than I invent or is
     invented on me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause
     that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow
     that hath o’erwhelmed all her litter but one. If the prince put
     thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off,
     why then I have no judgement. Thou whoreson mandrake,
     thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels.
     I was never manned with an agate till now: but I will set you
     neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you
     back again to your master, for a jewel—the juvenal, the
     prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. I will
     sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he
     shall get one on his cheek, yet he will not stick to say his face
     is a face-royal. Heaven may finish it when he will, it is not a
     hair amiss yet. He may keep it still at a face-royal, for a barber
     shall never earn sixpence out of it; and yet he will be crowing
     as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He
     may keep his own grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can
     assure him. What said Master Dombledon about the satin for
     my short cloak and slops?

PAGE   He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance
     than Bardolph: he would not take his bond and yours. He
     liked not the security.

FALSTAFF   Let him be damned, like the glutton! May his tongue
     be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel! A rascally yea-forsooth
     knave, to bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon
     security! The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing
     but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles. And if a
     man is through with them in honest taking up, then they
     must stand upon security. I had as lief they would put
     ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security.