ignis fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me

And I will die a hundred thousand deaths,
Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.
K. Hen. A hundred thousand rebels die in this:-
Thou shalt have charge, and sovereign trust, herein.a thousand marks in links and torches, walking

Enter Blunt.

How now, good Blunt? thy looks are full of speed.
Blunt. So hath the business that I come to
speak of.

Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word,-
That Douglas, and the English rebels, met,
The eleventh of this month, at Shrewsbury :
A mighty and a fearful head they are,
If promises be kept on every hand,
As ever offer'd foul play in a state.

K. Hen. The earl of Westmoreland set forth
to-day;

With him my son, lord John of Lancaster;
For this advertisement2 is five days old: :--
On Wednesday next, Harry, you shall set
Forward; on Thursday, we ourselves will march:
Our meeting is Bridgnorth: and, Harry, you
Shall march through Glostershire; by which ac-

count,

with thee in the night, betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me, would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler's in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire, any time this two and thirty years; Heaven reward me for it!

Bard. 'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!

Fal. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-burned.

Enter Hostess.

How now, dame Partlet the hen?6 have you inquired yet, who pick'd my pocket?

Host. Why, sir John! what do you think, sir John? Do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have searched, I have inquired, so has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant: the tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.

Fal. You lie, hostess; Bardolph was shaved, and lost many a hair: and I'll be sworn, my pocket was picked: Go to, you are a woman, go.

Host. Who, I? I defy thee: I was never called

Our business valued, some twelve days hence Our general forces at Bridgnorth shall meet. Our hands are full of business: let's away;" Advantage feeds him fat,3 while men delay. [Exe.so in mine own house before. Fal. Go to, I know you well enough. SCENE III-Eastcheap. A room in the Boar's Host. No, sir John; you do not know me, sir Head Tavern. Enter Falstaff and Bardolph. John: I know you, sir John: you owe me me..sy, Fal. Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle?of it: I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back. Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; I am wither'd like an old apple-John. Well, I'll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a pepper-corn, a brewer's horse: the inside of a church! Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me.

Bard. Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long.

Fal. Dowlas, filthy dowlas: I have given them away to bakers' wives, and they have made bolters of them.

Host. Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell. You owe money here besides, sir John, for your diet, and by-drinkings, and money lent you, four and twenty pound. Fal. He had his part of it; let him

pay.

Host. He? alas, he is poor; he hath nothing. Fal. How poor? look upon his face; What call you rich? let them coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks; I'll not pay a denier. What, will you make a younker of me? shall I not take mine ease in mine inn, but I shall have my pocket picked? I have lost a seal-ring of my grandfather's, worth forty

Fal. Why, there is it :-come, sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I was as virtuously given, as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough: swore little; diced, not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house, not above once in a quarter-mark. of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three or four times; lived well, and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.

Bard. Why, you are so fat, sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass; out of all reasonable compass, sir John.

Fal. Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life: Thou art our admiral,5 thou bearest the lantern in the poop,-but 'tis in the nose of thee; thou art the knight of the burning lamp.

Bard. Why, sir John, my face does you no harm. Fal. No, I'll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death's head, or a memento mori: I never see thy face, but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be, By this fire: but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou ran'st up Gads-hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an

(1) Part. (2) Intelligence. (3) Feeds himself. (4) Have some flesh (5) Admiral's ship.

Host. O Jesu! I have heard the prince tell him, I know not how oft, that that ring was copper. Fal. How the prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup; and, if he were here, I would cudgel him like a dog, if he would say so.

Enter Prince Henry and Poins, marching. Falstaff meets the Prince, playing on his truncheon like a fife.

Fal. How now,
lad? is the wind in that door,
i'faith? must we all march?

Bard. Yea, two and two, Newgate-fashion.
Host. My lord, I pray you, hear me.

P. Hen. What sayest thou, mistress Quickly? How does thy husband? I love him well, he is an honest man.

Host. Good my lord, hear me.

Fal. Pr'ythee, let her alone, and list to me.
P. Hen. What sayest thou, Jack?

Fal. The other night I fell asleep here behind the arras, and had my pocket picked this house

(6) In the story-book of Reynard the Fox. (7) A term of contempt frequently used by Shakspeare.

is turned bawdy-house, they pick pockets.
P. Hen. What didst thou lose, Jack?
Fal. Wilt thou believe me, Hal? three or four
bonds of forty pound a-piece, and a seal-ring of my
grandfather's.

P. Hen. A trifle, some eight-penny matter. Host. So I told him, my lord; and I said, I heard your grace say so: And, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is; and said, he would cudgel you.

P. Hen. What! he did not?

Host. There's neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.

Fal. There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune; nor no more truth in thee, than in a drawn fox; and for womanhood, maid Marian may be the deputy's wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing, go.

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. O, 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

Bard. Do, my lord.

Host. Say, what thing? what thing? Fal. What thing? why, a thing to thank God on.doest, and do it with unwashed hands too. Host. I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou should'st know it; I am an honest man's wife: and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so.

Fal. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise.

Host. Say, what beast, thou knave thou?
Fal. What beast? why, an otter.

P. Hen. An otter, sir John? why an otter? Fal. Why? she's neither fish, nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her.

Host. Thou art an unjust man in saying so; thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave thou!

P. Hen. Thou sayest true, hostess; and he slanders thee most grossly.

Host. So he doth you, my lord; and said this other day, you ought him a thousand pound.

P Hen. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound? Fal. A thousand pound, Hal? a million: thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love. Host. Nay, my lord, he called you Jack, and said, he would cudgel you.

Fal. Did I, Bardolph?

Bard. Indeed, sir John, you said so.

Fal. Yea; if he said, my ring was copper.
P. Hen. I say, 'tis copper: Darest thou be as

good as thy word now?

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

Fal. I would, it had been of horse. Where shall 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 tear this letter to lord John of
Lancaster,

My brother John; this to my lord of Westmore-
land.-

Go, Poins, to horse, to horse; for thou, and I,
Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner-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 re-
ceive

Money, and order for their furniture.
The land is burning; Percy stands on high;
And either they, or we, must lower lie.

[Exeunt Prince, Poins, and Bardolph. Fal. Rare words! brave world!Hostess, my breakfast, come :

Fal. Why, Hal, thou knowest, as thou art but O, I could wish, this tavern were my drum. [Exit.

man,

I dare: but, as thou art prince, I fear thee,

as I fear the roaring of the lion's whelp.

P. Hen. And why not, as the lion?
Fal. The king himself is to be feared as the lion:
Dost thou think, I'll fear thee as I fear thy father?
nay, an I do, I pray God, my girdle break!

ACT IV.

SCENE I-The rebel camp, near Shrewsbury. P. Hen. O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! But, sirrah, there's no room for Enter Hotspur, Worcester, and Douglas. faith, truth, nor honesty, in this bosom of thine: it Hot. Well said, my noble Scot: If speaking truth, is filled up with guts, and midriff. Charge an In this fine age, were not thought flattery, honest woman with picking thy pocket! Why, thou Such attribution should the Douglas3 have, whoreson, impudent, embossed2 rascal, if there As not a soldier of this season's stamp were any thing in thy pocket but tavern-reckonings, Should go so general current through the world. memorandums of bawdy-houses, and one poor pen-By heaven, I cannot flatter; I defy ny-worth of sugar-candy, to make thee long- The tongues of soothers; but a braver place winded; if thy pocket were enriched with any In my heart's love, hath no man than yourself: other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet Nay, task me to the word: approve me, lord. you will stand to it; you will not pocket up wrong Doug. Thou art the king of honour: Art thou not ashamed? No man so potent breathes upon the ground, But I will beards him. Hot. Do so, and 'tis well :(3) This expression is applied by way of preeminence to the head of the Douglas family. (4) Disdain. (5) Meet him face to face.

Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should

(1) A man dressed like a woman, who attends morris-dancers.

(2) Swoln, puffy.

:|

Enter a Messenger, with letters.

Hot.

You strain too far.

What letters hast thou there?—I can but thank you.I, rather, of his absence make this use;—
Mess. These letters come from your father,-
Hot. Letters from him! why comes he not him-
self?

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?1
Under whose government come they along?

Mess. His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord.
Wor. I pr'y thee, 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.
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'd3
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;
Wheres now remains a sweet reversion:
We may boldly spend upon the hope of what
Is to come in:

A comfort of retirement 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.

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 term of fear.

Enter Sir Richard Vernon.

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

lord.

The earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong,
Is marching hitherwards; with him, prince John.
Hot. No harm: What more?

Ver.
And further, I have learn'd,-
The king himself in person is set forth,
Or hitherwards intended speedily,
With strong and mighty preparation.

Hot. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son
The nimble-footed mad-cap prince of Wales,
And his comrades, that dafl'd' the world aside,
And bid it pass?

Ver.
All furnish'd, all in arms,
All plum'd like estridges that wing the wind;
Bated like eagles having lately bath'd ;9
Glittering in golden coats, like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuissesio on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,-
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury,

And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
Hot. No more, no more; worse than the sun in
March,

This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come;
They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-ey'd maid of smoky war,
All hot, and bleeding, will we offer them:
The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit,
Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire,
To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh,

And yet not ours :-Come, let me take my horse,
Who is to bear me, like a thunderbolt,

Wor. But yet, I would your father had been Against the bosom of the prince of Wales:

here.

The quality and hair of our attempt
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 offering side
Must keep aloof from strict abitrement;

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 curtain,
That shows the ignorant a kind of fear
Before not dreamt of.

(1) Forces. (2) Languishing. (3) Informed.
(4) Line.
(5) Whereas.
(6) The complexion, the character.

Harry to Harry shall, bot horse to horse,
Meet, and ne'er part, till one drop down a corse.---
O, that Glendower were come!
Ver.

There is more news:

I learn'd in Worcester, as I rode along,
He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.
Doug. That's the worst tidings that I hear of yet.
Wor. Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound.
Hot. What may the king's whole battle reach
unto?
Ver. To thirty thousand.

Hot.
Forty let it be ;
My father and Glendower being both away,
The powers of us may serve so great a day.
Come, let us make a muster speedily:
Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.

(7) Threw off. (8) Dressed with ostrich feathers.
(9) Fresh as birds just washed. (10) Armour
(11) Bewitch, charm.

Doug. Talk not of dying; I am out of fear
Of death, or death's hand, for this one half year.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II-A public road near Coventry.
Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.

Fal. Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack: our soldiers shall march through; we'll to Sutton-Colfield to-night.

Bard. Will you give me money, captain?
Fal. Lay out, lay out.

Bard. This bottle makes an angel.

Fal. An if it do, take it for thy labour; and if

age.

theft hath already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack; whose fellows are these that come after? Fal. Mine, Hal, mine.

P. Hen. I did never see such pitiful rascals. Fal. Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit, as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

West. Ay, but, sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare; too beggarly.

Fal. Faith, for their poverty,-I know not where they had that and for their bareness,—I am sure, they never learned that of me.

P. Hen. No, I'll be sworn; unless you call three

Percy is already in the field.

Fal. What, is the king encamped?

West. He is, sir John; I fear, we shall stay too

long.

Fal. Well,

To the latter end of a fray, and the beginning of a feast,

Fits a dull fighter, and a keen guest.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III-The rebel camp near Shrewsbury.
Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Douglas, and Ver-

non.

Hot. We'll fight with him to-night.
Wor.

It may not be.
Doug. You give him then advantage.
Ver.
Not a whit.
Hot. Why say you so? looks he not for supply?
Ver. So do we.

Hot.
His is certain, ours is doubtful.
Wor. Good cousin, be advis'd; stir not to-night.
Ver. Do not, my lord.
Doug.

it make twenty, take them all, I'll answer the coin-fingers on the ribs, bare. But, sirrah, make haste; Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at the town's end. Bard. I will, captain: farewell. [Exit. Fal. If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a souced gurnet. I have misused the king's press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomen's sons inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as lief hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver,2 worse than a struck fowl, or a hurt wild-duck. I pressed me none but such toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pin's heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores: and such as, indeed, were never soldiers; but discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world, and a long peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced ancient :3 and such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think, that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me, I had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat-Nay, and the villains march wide beCome, come, it may not be. twixt the legs, as if they had gyves4 on: for, indeed, I wonder much, being men of such great leading, I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a That you foresee not what impediments shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-Drag back our expedition: Certain horse shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders, like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daintry.5 But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge.

Enter Prince Henry and Westmoreland. P. Hen. How now, blown Jack? how now, quilt? Fal. What, Hal? How now, mad wag? what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire?-My good lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy; I thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.

West. 'Faith, sir John, 'tis more than time that] I were there, and you too; but my powers are there already: The king, I can tell you, looks for us all; we must away all night.

Fal. Tut, never fear me; I am as vigilant as a

cat to steal cream.

You do not counsel well;
You speak it out of fear, and cold heart.
Ver. Do me no slander, Douglas: by my life
(And I dare well maintain it with my life,)
If well-respected honour bid me on,
I hold as little counsel with weak fear,
As you my lord, or any Scot that lives:-
Let it be seen to-morrow in the battle,
Which of us fears.
Doug.
Ver.

Yea, or to-night.

Hot. To-night, say I.
Ver.

Content.

Of my cousin Vernon's are not yet come up:
Your uncle Worcester's horse came but to-day;
And now their pride and mettle is asleep,
Their courage with hard labour tame and dull,
That not a horse is half the half himself.

Hot. So are the horses of the enemy
In general, journey-bated, and brought low;
The better part of ours is full of rest.

Wor. The number of the king exceedeth ours:
For God's sake, cousin, stay till all come in.

[The trumpet sounds a parley.

Enter Sir Walter Blunt.

But stand against us like an enemy.
Blunt. And God defend, but still I should
stand so,

So long as, out of limit, and true rule,
You stand against anointed majesty!

But, to my charge.-The king hath sent to know
The nature of your griefs; and whereupon
You conjure from the breast of civil peace
Such bold hostility, teaching this duteous land
Audacious cruelty: If that the king
Have any way your good deserts forgot,-
Which he confesseth to be manifold,-
He bids you name your griefs; and, with all speed,
You shall have your desires, with interest;
And pardon absolute for yourself, and these,
Herein misled by your suggestion.

Hot. The king is kind; and, well we know, the
king

Knows at what time to promise, when to pay.
My father, and my uncle, and myself,
Did give him that same royalty he wears:
And,-when he was not six and twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,—
My father gave him welcome to the shore:
And,-when he heard him swear, and vow to God,
He came but to be duke of Lancaster,
To sue his livery,2 and beg his peace;
With tears of innocency, and terms of zeal,-
My father, in kind heart and pity mov'd,
Swore him assistance, and perform'd it too.
Now, when the lords, and barons of the realm
Perceiv'd Northumberland did lean to him,
The more and less3 came in with cap and knee;
Met him in boroughs, cities, villages;
Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,
Laid gifts before him, proffer'd him their oaths,
Gave him their heirs; as pages follow'd him,
Even at the heels, in golden multitudes.
He presently,-

-as greatness knows itself,-
Steps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father, while his blood was poor,
Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurg;
And now, forsooth, takes on him to reform
Some certain edicts, and some strait decrees,
That lie too heavy on the commonwealth:
Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep
Over his country's wrongs; and, by this face,
This seeming brow of justice, did he win
The hearts of all that he did angle for.
Proceeded further; cut me off the heads
Of all the favourites, that the absent king
In deputation left behind him here,
When he was personal in the Irish war.
Blunt. Tut, I came not to hear this.
Hot.
Then, to the point.-
In short time after, he depos'd the king;
Soon after that, depriv'd him of his life;
And, in the neck of that, task'd the whole state:
To make that worse, suffer'd his kinsman, March,
(Who is, if every owner were well plac'd,
Indeed his king,) to be incag'd in Wales,
There without ransom to lie forfeited:

Disgrac'd me in my happy victories;

Too indirect for long continuance.

Blunt. Shall I return this answer to the king?
Hot. Not so, sir Walter; we'll withdraw awhile.
Go to the king; and let there be impawn'd
Some surety for a safe return again,
And in the morning early shall mine uncle
Bring him our purposes: and so farewell.
Blunt. I would you would accept of grace and
love.

Hot. And, may be, so we shall.
Blunt.

'Pray heaven, you do!

[Exeunt. SCENE IV-York. A rpom in the archbishop's house. Enter the Archbishop of York, and a Gentleman.

Arch. Hie, good sir Michael; bear this sealed
brief,4

With winged haste, to the lord mareshal;
This to my cousin Scroop; and all the rest
To whom they are directed: if you knew
How much they do import, you would make haste.
Gent. My good lord,

I guess their tenor.

Arch.

Like enough you do.
To-morrow, good sir Michael, is a day,

Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men
Must 'bide the touch: For, sir, at Shrewsbury,
As I am truly given to understand,

The king, with mighty and quick-raised power,
Meets with lord Harry and I fear, sir Michael,-
What with the sickness of Northumberland
(Whose power was in the first proportion,)
And what with Owen Glendower's absence, thence,
(Who with them was a rated sinew too,5
And comes not in, o'er-rul'd by prophecies,) —
I fear, the power of Percy is too weak
To wage an instant trial with the king.

Gent. Why, good my lord, you need not fear;
there's Douglas,

And Mortimer.

Arch.
No, Mortimer's not there.
Gent. But there is Mordake, Vernon, lord Harry

Percy,

And there's my lord of Worcester; and a head
Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen.

Arch. And so there is: but yet the king hath

drawn

The special head of all the land together;-
The prince of Wales, lord John of Lancaster,
The noble Westmoreland, and warlike Blunt;
And many more cor-rivals, and dear men
Of estimation and command in arms.

Gent. Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well
oppos'd.

Arch. I hope no less, yet needful 'tis to fear;
And, to prevent the worst, sir Michael, speed:
For, if lord Percy thrive not, ere the king
Dismiss his power, he means to visit us,-
And 'tis but wisdorn to make strong against him;
For he hath heard of our confederacy,—
Therefore, make haste: I must go write again
To other friends; and so farewell, sir Michael.
[Exe. severally.

ACT V.

SCENE 1.-The king's camp near Shrewsbury.
Enter King Henry, Prince Henry, Prince John
of Lancaster, Sir Walter Blunt, and Sir John
Falstaff.

K. Hen. How bloodily the sun begins to peer

(5) A strength on which we reckoned.