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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?
War. We have, my liege.

K. Hen. Then you perceive, the body of our kingdom

How foul it is; what rank diseases grow,
And with what danger, near the heart of it.
War. It is but as a body yet distempered,
Which to his former strength may be restored
With good advice and little medicine.

My Lord Northumberland will soon be cooled.
K. Hen. O God, that one might read the book
of fate,

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,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue—
Would shut the book and sit him down and die.

It is not ten years gone,

Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,
Did feast together, and in two years after
Were they at wars. It is but eight years since
This Percy was the man nearest my soul;
Who like a brother toiled in my affairs,
And laid his love and life under my foot;

Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard,
Gave him defiance. But which of you was by—
[To WARWICK.] (You, cousin Nevil, as I may
remember)—

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,
And the division of our amity.

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;
And, by the necessary form of this,

King Richard might create a perfect guess
That great Northumberland, then false to him,
Would, of that seed, grow to a greater falseness
Which should not find a ground to root upon
Unless on you.

K. Hen. Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them like necessities ;-

And that same word even now cries out on us.
They say, the bishop and Northumberland

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
Shall bring this prize in very easily.

To comfort

you the more, I have received

A certain instance that Glendower is dead.
Your majesty hath been this fortnight ill,

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,
We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land.

[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?

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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

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