Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 91 (всего у книги 250 страниц)

1.2 Enter Harry Prince of Wales and Sir John Oldcastle SIR JOHN Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE HARRY Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

SIR JOHN Indeed you come near me now, Hal, for we that take purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not ‘By Phoebus, he, that wand’ring knight so fair’. And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art a king, as God save thy grace—‘majesty’ I should say, for grace thou wilt have none—

PRINCE HARRY What, none?

SIR JOHN No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter.

PRINCE HARRY Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.

SIR JOHN Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty. Let us be ‘Diana’s foresters’, ‘gentlemen of the shade’, ‘minions of the moon’, and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

PRINCE HARRY Thou sayst well, and it holds well too, for the fortune of us that are the moon’s men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed as the sea is by the moon. As for proof now: a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night, and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearing ‘lay by!’, and spent with crying ‘bring in!’; now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder, and by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.

SIR JOHN By the Lord, thou sayst true, lad; and is not my Hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?

PRINCE HARRY As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle; and is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

SIR JOHN How now, how now, mad wag? What, in thy quips and thy quiddities? What a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?

PRINCE HARRY Why, what a pox have I to do with my Hostess of the tavern?

SIR JOHN Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft.

PRINCE HARRY Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?

SIR JOHN No, I’ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.

PRINCE HARRY Yea, and elsewhere so far as my coin would stretch; and where it would not, I have used my credit.

SIR JOHN Yea, and so used it that were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent—but I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king, and resolution thus fubbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father Antic the law? Do not thou when thou art king hang a thief.

PRINCE HARRY No, thou shalt.

SIR JOHN Shall I? O, rare! By the Lord, I’ll be a brave judge!

PRINCE HARRY Thou judgest false already. I mean thou shalt have the hanging of the thieves, and so become a rare hangman.

SIR JOHN Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour as well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.

PRINCE HARRY For obtaining of suits?

SIR JOHN Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean wardrobe. ’Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat, or a lugged bear.

PRINCE HARRY Or an old lion, or a lover’s lute.

SIR JOHN Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.

PRINCE HARRY What sayst thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moor-ditch?

SIR JOHN Thou hast the most unsavoury similes, and art indeed the most comparative, rascalliest sweet young Prince. But Hal, I prithee trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of the Council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir, but I marked him not; and yet he talked very wisely, but I regarded him not; and yet he talked wisely, and in the street too.

PRINCE HARRY Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it.

SIR JOHN O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over. By the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain. I’ll be damned for never a king’s son in Christendom.

PRINCE HARRY Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?

SIR JOHN Zounds, where thou wilt, lad! I’ll make one; an I do not, call me villain and baffle me.

PRINCE HARRY I see a good amendment of life in thee, from praying to purse-taking.

SIR JOHN Why, Hal, ‘tis my vocation, Hal. ’Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.

Enter Poins

Poins! Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a match. O, if men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him? This is the most omnipotent villain that ever cried ‘Stand!’ to a true man.

PRINCE HARRY Good morrow, Ned. no

POINS Good morrow, sweet Hal. (To Sir John) What says Monsieur Remorse? What says Sir John, sack-and-sugar Jack? How agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last, for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon’s leg?

PRINCE HARRY Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have his bargain, for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs: he will give the devil his due.

POINS (to Sir John) Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with the devil.

PRINCE HARRY Else he had been damned for cozening the devil.

POINS But my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning by four o’clock early, at Gads Hill, there are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I have visors for you all; you have horses for yourselves. Gadshill lies tonight in Rochester. I have bespoke supper tomorrow night in Eastcheap. We may do it as secure as sleep. If you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns; if you will not, tarry at home and be hanged.

SIR JOHN Hear ye, Edward, if I tarry at home and go not, I’ll hang you for going.

POINS You will, chops?

SIR JOHN Hal, wilt thou make one?

PRINCE HARRY Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith.

SIR JOHN There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou earnest not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.

PRINCE HARRY Well then, once in my days I’ll be a madcap.

SIR JOHN Why, that’s well said.

PRINCE HARRY Well, come what will, I’ll tarry at home.

SIR JOHN By the Lord, I’ll be a traitor then, when thou art king.

PRINCE HARRY I care not.

POINS Sir John, I prithee leave the Prince and me alone. I will lay him down such reasons for this adventure that he shall go.

SIR JOHN Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move and what he hears may be believed, that the true prince may, for recreation’ sake, prove a false thief; for the poor abuses of the time want countenance. Farewell. You shall find me in Eastcheap.

PRINCE HARRY Farewell, the latter spring; farewell, Allhallown summer. Exit Sir John

POINS Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us tomorrow. I have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone. Oldcastle, Harvey, Russell, and Gadshill shall rob those men that we have already waylaid—yourself and I will not be there—and when they have the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head off from my shoulders.

PRINCE HARRY But how shall we part with them in setting forth?

POINS Why, we will set forth before or after them and appoint them a place of meeting, wherein it is at our pleasure to fail. And then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves, which they shall have no sooner achieved but we’ll set upon them.

PRINCE HARRY Ay, but ’tis like that they will know us by our horses, by our habits, and by every other appointment, to be ourselves.

POINS Tut, our horses they shall not see—I’ll tie them in the wood; our visors we will change after we leave them; and, sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our noted outward garments.

PRINCE HARRY But I doubt they will be too hard for us.

POINS Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I’ll forswear arms. The virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet at supper: how thirty at least he fought with, what wards, what blows, what extremities he endured; and in the reproof of this lives the jest.

PRINCE HARRY Well, I’ll go with thee. Provide us all things necessary, and meet me tomorrow night in Eastcheap; there I’ll sup. Farewell.

POINS Farewell, my lord. Exit

PRINCE HARRY I know you all, and will a while uphold The unyoked humour of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That when he please again to be himself, Being wanted he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wished-for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. So when this loose behaviour I throw off And pay the debt I never promised, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes; And like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glitt‘ring o’er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I’ll so offend to make offence a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will. Exit

1.3 Enter the King, the Earls of Northumberland and Worcester, Hotspur, Sir Walter Blunt, with other ⌈lords⌉

KING HENRY (to Hotspur, Northumberland, and Worcester) My blood hath been too cold and temperate, Unapt to stir at these indignities, And you have found me, for accordingly You tread upon my patience; but be sure I will from henceforth rather be myself, Mighty and to be feared, than my condition, Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, And therefore lost that title of respect Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.

WORCESTER Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves The scourge of greatness to be used on it, And that same greatness too, which our own hands Have holp to make so portly.

NORTHUMBERLAND (to the King) My lord—

KING HENRY

Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see

Danger and disobedience in thine eye.

O sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,

And majesty might never yet endure

The moody frontier of a servant brow.

You have good leave to leave us. When we need

Your use and counsel we shall send for you.

Exit Worcester

You were about to speak.

NORTHUMBERLAND Yea, my good lord.

Those prisoners in your highness’ name demanded,

Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,

Were, as he says, not with such strength denied

As was delivered to your majesty,

Who either through envy or misprision

Was guilty of this fault, and not my son.

HOTSPUR (to the King)

My liege, I did deny no prisoners;

But I remember, when the fight was done,

When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,

Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,

Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,

Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin, new-reaped,

Showed like a stubble-land at harvest-home.

He was perfumed like a milliner,

And ‘twixt his finger and his thumb he held

A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He gave his nose and took’t away again—

Who therewith angry, when it next came there

Took it in snuff—and still he smiled and talked;

And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,

He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly

To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse

Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms

He questioned me; amongst the rest demanded

My prisoners in your majesty’s behalf.

I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold—

To be so pestered with a popinjay!—

Out of my grief and my impatience

Answered neglectingly, I know not what—

He should, or should not—for he made me mad

To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,

And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman

Of guns, and drums, and wounds, God save the mark!

And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth

Was parmacity for an inward bruise,

And that it was great pity, so it was,

This villainous saltpetre should be digged

Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed

So cowardly, and but for these vile guns

He would himself have been a soldier.

This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,

Made me to answer indirectly, as I said,

And I beseech you, let not his report

Come current for an accusation

Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

BLUNT (to the King)

The circumstance considered, good my lord,

Whate’er Lord Harry Percy then had said

To such a person, and in such a place,

At such a time, with all the rest retold,

May reasonably die, and never rise

To do him wrong or any way impeach

What then he said, so he unsay it now.

KING HENRY

Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,

But with proviso and exception

That we at our own charge shall ransom straight

His brother-in-law the foolish Mortimer,

Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betrayed

The lives of those that he did lead to fight

Against that great magician, damned Glyndŵr—

Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March

Hath lately married. Shall our coffers, then,

Be emptied to redeem a traitor home?

Shall we buy treason, and indent with fears

When they have lost and forfeited themselves?

No, on the barren mountains let him starve;

For I shall never hold that man my friend

Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost

To ransom home revolted Mortimer—

HOTSPUR Revolted Mortimer?

He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,

But by the chance of war. To prove that true

Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,

Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took

When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank,

In single opposition, hand to hand,

He did confound the best part of an hour

In changing hardiment with great Glyndwr.

Three times they breathed, and three times did they

drink,

Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood,

Who, then affrighted with their bloody looks,

Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,

And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,

Bloodstainèd with these valiant combatants.

Never did bare and rotten policy

Colour her working with such deadly wounds,

Nor never could the noble Mortimer

Receive so many, and all willingly.

Then let not him be slandered with revolt.

KING HENRY

Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him.

He never did encounter with Glyndŵr. I tell thee,

He durst as well have met the devil alone

As Owain Glyndŵr for an enemy.

Art thou not ashamed? But, sirrah, henceforth

Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer.

Send me your prisoners with the speediest means,

Or you shall hear in such a kind from me

As will displease you.—My lord Northumberland,

We license your departure with your son.

(To Hotspur) Send us your prisoners, or you’ll hear of it.

Exeunt all but Hotspur and Northumberland

HOTSPUR

An if the devil come and roar for them

I will not send them. I will after straight

And tell him so, for I will ease my heart,

Although it be with hazard of my head.

NORTHUMBERLAND

What, drunk with choler? Stay and pause awhile.

Enter the Earl of Worcester

Here comes your uncle.

HOTSPUR Speak of Mortimer?

Zounds, I will speak of him, and let my soul

Want mercy if I do not join with him.

In his behalf I’ll empty all these veins,

And shed my dear blood drop by drop in the dust,

But I will lift the downfall Mortimer

As high in the air as this unthankful King,

As this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke.

NORTHUMBERLAND (to Worcester)

Brother, the King hath made your nephew mad.

WORCESTER

Who struck this heat up after I was gone?

HOTSPUR

He will forsooth have all my prisoners;

And when I urged the ransom once again

Of my wife’s brother, then his cheek looked pale,

And on my face he turned an eye of death,

Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

WORCESTER

I cannot blame him: was not he proclaimed

By Richard, that dead is, the next of blood?

NORTHUMBERLAND

He was; I heard the proclamation.

And then it was when the unhappy King,

Whose wrongs in us God pardon, did set forth

Upon his Irish expedition,

From whence he, intercepted, did return

To be deposed, and shortly murdered.

WORCESTER

And for whose death we in the world’s wide mouth

Live scandalized and foully spoken of.

HOTSPUR

But soft, I pray you; did King Richard then

Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer

Heir to the crown?

NORTHUMBERLAND He did; myself did hear it.

HOTSPUR

Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin King

That wished him on the barren mountains starve.

But shall it be that you that set the crown

Upon the head of this forgetful man,

And for his sake wear the detested blot

Of murderous subornation, shall it be

That you a world of curses undergo,

Being the agents or base second means,

The cords, the ladder, or the hangman, rather?

O, pardon me that I descend so low

To show the line and the predicament

Wherein you range under this subtle King!

Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,

Or fill up chronicles in time to come,

That men of your nobility and power

Did gage them both in an unjust behalf,

As both of you, God pardon it, have done:

To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,

And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke?

And shall it in more shame be further spoken

That you are fooled, discarded, and shook off

By him for whom these shames ye underwent?

No; yet time serves wherein you may redeem

Your banished honours, and restore yourselves

Into the good thoughts of the world again,

Revenge the jeering and disdained contempt

Of this proud King, who studies day and night

To answer all the debt he owes to you

Even with the bloody payment of your deaths.

Therefore, I say—

WORCESTER Peace, cousin, say no more.

And now I will unclasp a secret book,

And to your quick-conceiving discontents

I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous,

As full of peril and adventurous spirit

As to o’erwalk a current roaring loud

On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

HOTSPUR

If he fall in, good night, or sink or swim.

Send danger from the east unto the west,

So honour cross it from the north to south;

And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs

To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

NORTHUMBERLAND (to Worcester)

Imagination of some great exploit

Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.

⌈HOTSPUR⌉

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,

And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,

So he that doth redeem her thence might wear,

Without corrival, all her dignities.

But out upon this half-faced fellowship!

WORCESTER (to Northumberland)

He apprehends a world of figures here,

But not the form of what he should attend.

(To Hotspur) Good cousin, give me audience for a while,

And list to me.

HOTSPUR

I cry you mercy.

WORCESTER Those same noble Scots

That are your prisoners—

HOTSPUR I’ll keep them all.

By God, he shall not have a Scot of them;

No, if a scot would save his soul he shall not.

I’ll keep them, by this hand.

WORCESTER You start away,

And lend no ear unto my purposes.

Those prisoners you shall keep.

HOTSPUR Nay, I will; that’s flat.

He said he would not ransom Mortimer,

Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer;

But I will find him when he lies asleep,

And in his ear I’ll hollo ‘Mortimerl’

Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak

Nothing but ‘Mortimer’, and give it him

To keep his anger still in motion.

WORCESTER Hear you, cousin, a word.

HOTSPUR

All studies here I solemnly defy,

Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke.

And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales—

But that I think his father loves him not

And would be glad he met with some mischance—

I would have him poisoned with a pot of ale.

WORCESTER

Farewell, kinsman. I’ll talk to you

When you are better tempered to attend.

NORTHUMBERLAND (to Hotspur)

Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool

Art thou to break into this woman’s mood,

Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own I

HOTSPUR

Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods,

Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear

Of this vile politician Bolingbroke.

In Richard’s time—what d‘ye call the place?

A plague upon’t, it is in Gloucestershire.

‘Twas where the madcap Duke his uncle kept—

His uncle York—where I first bowed my knee

Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke.

’Sblood, when you and he came back from

Ravenspurgh.

NORTHUMBERLAND

At Berkeley castle.

HOTSPUR You say true.

Why, what a candy deal of courtesy

This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!

‘Look when his infant fortune came to age’,

And ‘gentle Harry Percy’, and ‘kind cousin’.

O, the devil take such cozeners!—God forgive me.

Good uncle, tell your tale; I have done.

WORCESTER

Nay, if you have not, to’t again.

We’ll stay your leisure.

HOTSPUR I have done, i’faith.

WORCESTER

Then once more to your Scottish prisoners.

Deliver them up without their ransom straight;

And make the Douglas’ son your only mean

For powers in Scotland, which, for divers reasons

Which I shall send you written, be assured

Will easily be granted. (To Northumberland) You, my

lord,

Your son in Scotland being thus employed,

Shall secretly into the bosom creep

Of that same noble prelate well-beloved,

The Archbishop.

HOTSPUR Of York, is’t not?

WORCESTER True, who bears hard

His brother’s death at Bristol, the Lord Scrope.

I speak not this in estimation,

As what I think might be, but what I know

Is ruminated, plotted, and set down,

And only stays but to behold the face

Of that occasion that shall bring it on.

HOTSPUR

I smell it; upon my life, it will do well!

NORTHUMBERLAND

Before the game is afoot thou still lett’st slip.

HOTSPUR

Why, it cannot choose but be a noble plot—

And then the power of Scotland and of York

To join with Mortimer, ha?

WORCESTER And so they shall.

HOTSPUR

In faith, it is exceedingly well aimed.

WORCESTER

And ’tis no little reason bids us speed

To save our heads by raising of a head;

For, bear ourselves as even as we can,

The King will always think him in our debt,

And think we think ourselves unsatisfied

Till he hath found a time to pay us home.

And see already how he doth begin

To make us strangers to his looks of love.

HOTSPUR

He does, he does. We’ll be revenged on him.

WORCESTER

Cousin, farewell. No further go in this

Than I by letters shall direct your course.

When time is ripe, which will be suddenly,

I’ll steal to Glyndŵr and Lord Mortimer,

Where you and Douglas and our powers at once,

As I will fashion it, shall happily meet,

To bear our fortunes in our own strong arms,

Which now we hold at much uncertainty.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Farewell, good brother. We shall thrive, I trust.

HOTSPUR (to Worcester)

Uncle, adieu. O, let the hours be short

Till fields and blows and groans applaud our sport!

Exeunt ⌈Worcester at one door, Northumberland and Hotspur at another door⌉