stand to it; you will not pocket up wrong; Art thou not ashamed?

Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do, in the days of villany? Thou seest, I have more flesh than another man; and therefore more frailty.You confess then, you picked my pocket?

P. Hen. It appears so by the story.

Fal. Hostess, I forgive thee: Go, make ready breakfast; love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests: thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason: thou seest, I am pacified. Still? Nay, pr'ythee, be gone. [Exit Hostess.] Now, Hal, to the news at court: for the robbery, lad, How is that answered?

P. Hen. 0, my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee: The money is paid back again. Fal. O, I do not like that paying back, 'tis a double labour.

P. Hen. I am good friends with my father, and may do any thing.

Fal. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it with unwashed hands too.

Bard. Dó, my lord.

P. Hen. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.

Fal. I would, it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can steal well? O for a fine thief, of the age of two and twenty, or thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous; I laud them, I praise them.

P. Hen. Bardolph-

Bard. My lord.

P. Hen. Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster, my brother John;-this to my lord of Westmoreland.-Go, Poins, to horse, to horse; for thou, and I, have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinger time.--Jack, meet me to-morrow i'the Temple

hall at two o'clock i'the afternoon: there shalt thou know thy charge; and there receive money, and order for their furniture13.

The land is burning; Percy stands on high;
And either they, or we, must lower lie.

[Exeunt Prince, POINS, and BARDOLPH. Fál. Rare words! brave world!--Hostess, my breakfast; come:

O, I could wish, this tavern were my drum! [Exit.

ACT IV.

SCENE I. The rebel Camp near Shrewsbury.
Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, and DOUGLAS.
Hot. Well said, my noble Scot: If speaking truth,
In this fine age, were not thought flattery,
Such attribution should the Douglas1 have,
As not a soldier of this season's stamp
Should go
so general current through the world.
By heaven, I cannot flatter; I defy

The tongues of soothers; but a braver place
In my heart's love, hath no man than yourself:
Nay, task me to the word; approve me, lord.
Doug. Thou art the king of honour:

No man so potent breathes upon the ground,
But I will beard3 him.

Hot,

Do so, and 'tis well;

13 I have followed Mr. Douce's suggestion in printing thus much of this speech in prose. No correct ear will ever receive it as blank verse, notwithstanding the efforts by omission, &c. to Pert it into metre.

1 This expression is frequent in Holinshed, and is applied by way of preeminence to the head of the Douglas family.

2 Disdain..

To beard is to oppose face to face, in a daring and hostile

Enter a Messenger, with Letters.

What letters hast thou there?-I can but thank you.
Mess. These letters come from your father,-
Hot. Letters from him! why comes he not himself?
Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he's grievous sick?
Hot. 'Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick,
In such a justling time? Who leads his power?
Under whose government come they along?

Mess. His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord5. Wor. I pr'ythee, tell me, doth he keep his bed? Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth; And at the time of my departure thence,

He was much fear'd by his physicians.

Wor. I would, the state of time had first been whole,

Ere he by sickness had been visited;

His health was never better worth than now. Hot. Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect

The very life-blood of our enterprise;

'Tis catching hither, even to our camp.
He writes me here,-that inward sickness-
And that his friends by deputation could not
So soon be drawn; nor did he think it meet,
To lay so dangerous and dear a trust

On any soul remov'd, but on his own.

manner, to threaten even to his beard. Thus in Marlowe's King Edward II:

-saffer uncontrol'd

to beard me in my land.

These barons thus to b

Again, in Macbeth :

-met them dareful beard to beard.'

4 Epaminondas being told, on the evening before the battle of Leuctra, that an officer of distinction had died in his tent, exclaimed, 'Good gods! how could any body find time to die in such a conjuncture,-Xenophon Hellenic. 1. vi.

5 The folio reads 'not I his mind.' The quarto, 1598, 'not I my mind. The emendation is Capell's.

6 That is, on any less near to himself, or whose interest is remote. Thus in Hamlet:

It wafts you to a more removed ground.'

And in As You Like It-in so removed a dwelling.'

Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,
That with our small conjunction, we should on,
To see how fortune is dispos'd to us:
For, as he writes, there is no quailing now;
Because the king is certainly possess d8
Of all our purposes. What say you to it?

Wor. Your father's sickness is a maim to us.
Hot. A perilous gash, a very limb lopp'd off:
And yet, in faith, 'tis not; his present want
Seems more than we shall find it:-Were it good,
To set the exact wealth of all our states
All at one cast? to set so rich a main
On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?
It were not good; for therein should we read
The very bottom and the soul of hope:
The very list, the very utmost bound

Of all our fortunes.

Doug.

'Faith, and so we should; Where now remains a sweet reversion; 1 dolf We may boldly spend upon the hope of what Is to come in: inghiticolturage d A comfort of retirement10 lives in this. Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, If that the devil and mischance look big Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

Wor. But yet, I would your father had been here, The quality and hair11 of our attempt

Quailing is fainting, slackening, flagging; or failing in vigour or resolution; going back. Cotgrave renders it by alachissement. So in the Third Part of King Henry VI. Act ii. Sc. 3.

"This may plant courage in their quailing breasts."

8 Informed.

9 Where, for whereas. As in Pericles, Act i. Sc. 1:'Where now you are both a father and a son.'

10 i. e. a support to which we may have recourse.'

11 Hair was anciently used metaphorically for the colour, complexion, or nature of a thing. Pelo (in Italian) is used for the colour of a horse, also for the countenance of a man: and poil, in French, has the same significations, esser d'un pelo, estre d'un poil. To b be of the same hair, quality, or condition. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher's Nice Valour :

A lady of my hair cannot want pitying.'

Brooks no division: It will be thought
By some, that know not why he is away,
That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike

Of our proceedings, kept the earl from hence;
And think, how such an apprehension

May turn the tide of fearful faction,
And breed a kind of question in our cause:
For, well you know, we of the offering12 side
Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement;
And stop all sight-holes, every loop, from whence
The eye of reason may pry in upon us:

This absence of your father's draws a curtain13,
That shows the ignorant a kind of fear
Before not dreamt of.

Hot.

You strain too far.
I, rather, of his absence make this use;-
It lends a lustre, and more great opinion,
A larger dare to our great enterprise,

Than if the earl were here: for men must think,
If we, without his help, can make a head,
To push against the kingdom; with his help,
We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.-

Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole, Doug. As heart can think: there is not such a word Spoke of in Scotland, as this term14 of fear.

11

Enter SIR RICHARD VERNON.

Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul. Ver. Pray God, my news be worth a welcome, lord.

And in the old comedy of The Family of Love:-'They say I am of the right haire, and indeed they may stand to't.' So in the Interlude of Tom Tyler and his Wife:

But I bridled a colt of a contrary haire.'

12 The offering side is the assailing side. Baret renders At tentare pudicitiam puellae, to assaile a maydens chastitie: to offer. 13 To draw a curtain had anciently the same meaning as to undraw one at present. Thus in the Second Part of King Henry VI. quarto, 1600-Then the curtaines being drawne, Duke Humphrey is discovered in his bed.

14 The folio reads 'dream of fear.'