welcome, indeed, too. I Il drink to master Bardolph, and to all the cavalerces about London. Davy. I hope to see London once ere I die. Bard. An I might see you there, Davy,

Shal. By the mass, you'll crack a quart together. Ha! will you not, master Bardolph ?

Bard. Yes, sir, in a pottle pot.

Shal. I thank thee: - The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that he will not out; he is true bred.

Bard. And I'll stick by him, sir.

Shal. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing: be merry. [Knocking heard.] Look who's at door there: Ho! who knocks? [Exit DAVY.

Fal. Why, now you have done me right.
[To SILENCE, who drinks a bumper.
[Singing.

Shal, Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding.

Pist. Why then, lament, therefore,

Shal. Give me pardon, sir; — If, sir, you come with news from the court, I take it, there is but two ways; either to utter them, or to conceal them. I am, sir, under the king, in some authority.

Pist. Under which king, Bezonian ? speak, or die.
Shal. Under king Harry.
Pist.

Harry the fourth? or fifth?
Shal. Harry the fourth.
Pist.
A foutra for thine office!
Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king;
Harry the fifth's the man. I speak the truth:
When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like
The bragging Spaniard,

Fal. What s the old king dead? Pist. As nail in door: the things I speak, are just. Fal. Away, Bardolph; saddle my horse.-Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine. - Pistol, I will double-charge thee with dignities.

Bard. O joyful day!—I would not take a knighthood for my fortune. Pist. What?

do bring good news?

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Fal. Carry master Silence to bed.-Master Shallow, my lord Shallow, be what thou wilt, I am fortune's steward. Get on thy boots: we'll ride all night: O, sweet Pistol : — Away, Bardolph. [Exit BARD.] Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and, withal, devise something, to do thyself good. Boot, boot, master Shallow: I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses; the laws of England are at my commandment. Happy are they which have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief justice!

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Pist. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! Where is the life that late I led, say they; Why, here it is; Welcome these pleasant days. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. - London. A Street.

Enter Beadles, dragging in Hostess QUICKLY, and DOLL TEAR-SHEET.

Host. No, thou arrant knave; I would I might die, that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint.

1 Bead. The constables have delivered her over to me and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her; there hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

Doll. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal; an the child I now go with, do miscarry, thou hadst better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paperfaced villain.

Host. O the Lord, that sir John were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

1 Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead, that you and Pistol beat among you.

Doll. I'll tell thee what, thou thin man in a censer! I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you blue-bottle rogue! you filthy famished correctioner if you be not swinged, I'll forswear half-kirtles.

1 Groom. It will be two o'clock ere they come from the coronation: Despatch, despatch.

[Exeunt Grooms. Enter FA STAFF, SHALLOW, PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and the Page.

Fal. Stand here by me, master Robert Shallow; I will make the king do you grace: I will leer upon him, as 'a comes by; and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.

Pist. God bless thy lungs, good knight.

Fal. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me. -O, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. [To SHALLOW.] But 'tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

Shal. It is most certain.

Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him thinking of nothing else; putting all affairs else in oblivion; as if there were nothing else to be done, but to see him.

Pist. 'Tis semper idem, for absque hoc nihil est : 'Tis all in every part.

Shal. 'Tis so, indeed.

Pist. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts
Is in base durance, and contagious prison;
Haul'd thither

For thee thrice wider than for other men : —
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ;
Presume not, that I am the thing I was:
For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death, ·
As I have done the rest of my misleaders, -
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life, I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil :
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strength, and quali-

How ill white hairs become a fool, and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;
But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know, the grave doth gape

Shal. I cannot perceive how; unless you give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.

Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard, was but a colour.

Shal. A colour, I fear, that you will die in, sir

John.

Re-enter PRINCE JOHN, the CHIEF JUSTICE, Officers, &c.

First, my fear; then my court'sy: last, my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say, of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture.-Be it known to you, (as it is very well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me,

will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, — to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you; - but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, and BISHOP OF ELY.

Cant. My lord, I'll tell you, · urg'd, Which, in the eleventh year o' the last king's reign Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd, But that the scambling and unquiet time Did push it out of further question.

Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us, We lose the better half of our possession: For all the temporal lands, which men devout By testament have given to the church, Would they strip from us; being valued thus, As much as would maintain, to the king's honour, Full fifteen earls, and fifteen hundred knights; Six thousand and two hundred good esquires; And, to relief of lazars, and weak age,

Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,

A hundred alms-houses, right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside,

that self bill is

A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the bill. Ely. This would drink deep.

Cant.
'Twould drink the cup and all.
Ely. But what prevention?
Cant. The king is full of grace, and fair regard.
Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.
Cant. The courses of his youth promis'd it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too: yea, at that very moment,
Consideration like an angel came,

And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him;
Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made:
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady current, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soor did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.

Ely.

We are blessed in the change. Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire, the king were made a prelate : Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study: List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle render'd you in musick : Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;
So that the art and practick part of life
Must be the mistress to this theorick:
Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it.
Since his addiction was to courses vain :

dis companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow; His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports; And never noted in him any study,

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath, the nettle And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality : And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means, How things are perfected.

Ely.

But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill Urg'd by the cominons? Doth his majesty Incline to it, or no?

Cant.

He seems indifferent ;
Or, rather, swaying more upon our part,
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us:
For I have made an offer to his majesty.
Upon our spiritual convocation.
And in regard of causes now in nand,
Which I have open'd to his grace at large,

As touching France, to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

Ely. How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord?
Cant. With good acceptance of his majesty ;
Save, that there was not time enough to hear
(As I perceiv'd, his grace would fain have done,)
The severals, and unhidden passages,

Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms;
And, generally, to the crown and seat of France,
Deriv'd from Edward, his great grandfather.

Ely. What was the impediment that broke this off? Cant. The French ambassador, upon that instant, Crav'd audience: and the hour, I think, is come, To give him hearing: Is it four o'clock?

It is.

Ely.

Cant. Then go we in, to know his embassy; Which I could, with a ready guess, declare, Before the Frenchman speak a word of it. Ely. I'll wait upon you; and I long to hear it. [Exeunt. SCENE II. - The same. A Room of State in

the same.

Enter KING HENRY, GLOSTER, BEDFORD, Exeter, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and Attendants.

K. Hen. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?

Ere. Not here in presence.

K. Hen. Send for him, good uncle. West. Shall we call in the ambassador, my liege? K. Hen. Not yet, my cousin; we would be resolv'd, Before we hear him, of some things of weight. That task our thoughts, concerning us and France. Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and BISHOP OF ELY.

Cant. God and his angels, guard your sacred throne,

And make you long become it!