Enter WARWICK and SURREY War. Many good-morrows to your majesty! K. Hen. Is it good-morrow, lords? War. 'Tis one o'clock, and past. K. Hen. Why then, good-morrow to you all, my lords. Have you read o'er the letters that I sent you? K. Hen. Then you perceive, the body of our kingdom How foul it is; what rank diseases grow, My Lord Northumberland will soon be cooled. And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea; and, other times, to see The beachy girdle of the ocean Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock, And changes fill the cup of alteration With divers liquors! O, if this were seen, The happiest youth-viewing his progress through, It is not ten years gone, Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends, Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard, When Richard, with his eyes brimful of tears, Then checked and rated by Northumberland, Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy? 'Northumberland, thou ladder, by the which My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;'Though then, God knows, I had no such intent, But that necessity so bowed the state That I and greatness were compelled to kiss. 'The time shall come,' thus did he follow it, 'The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, Shall break into corruption ;'-so went on, Foretelling this same time's condition, War. There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy With a near aim of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds And weak beginnings lie intreasuréd. Such things become the hatch and brood of time; King Richard might create a perfect guess K. Hen. Are these things then necessities? And that same word even now cries out on us. Are fifty thousand strong, War It cannot be, my lord; Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, The numbers of the feared.-Please it your grace. To go to bed; upon my life, my lord, The powers that you already have sent forth To comfort you the more, I have received A certain instance that Glendower is dead. And these unseasoned hours, perforce, must add Unto your sickness. K. Hen. I will take your counsel: And were these inward wars once out of hand, [Exeunt. SCENE II.-Court before Justice SHALLOW'S House in Glostershire Enter SHALLOW and SILENCE meeting MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, BULL-CALF, and Servants, behind Shal. Come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by the rood. And how doth my good cousin Silence? Sil. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow. Shal. And how doth my cousin, your bed-fellow? and your fairest daughter, and mine, my goddaughter Ellen ? Sil. Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow. Shal. By yea and nay, sir, I dare say, my cousin William is become a good scholar. He is at Oxford still, is he not? Sil. Indeed, sir; to my cost. Shal. He must then to the inns o' court shortly. I was once of Clement's Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet. Sil. You were called 'lusty Shallow' then, cousin. Shal. By the mass, I was called anything; and I would have done anything indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotsol' man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns o' court again: and, I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were, and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Sil. This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers? Shal. The same Sir John, the very same. I saw him break Skogan's head at the court gate, when 'a was a crack, not thus high: and the very same day |