When capital crimes, chewed, swallowed, and digested, Appear before us?-We'll yet enlarge that man, Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey,-in their dear

care

And tender preservation of our person,

Would have him punished. And now to our French

causes.

Who are the late1 commissioners ?

Cam. I one, my lord;

Your highness bade me ask for it to-day.
Scroop. So did you me, my liege.

Grey. And me, my royal sovereign.

K. Hen. Then, Richard, earl of Cambridge, there is yours;

There yours, lord Scroop of Masham ;—and, sir knight,
Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours.-

Read them; and know, I know your worthiness:—
My lord of Westmoreland,—and uncle Exeter,-
We will aboard to-night.-Why, how now, gentlemen?
What see you in those papers, that you lose

So much complexion ?-Look ye, how they change!
Their cheeks are paper.-Why, what read you there,
That hath so cowarded and chased your blood
Out of appearance?

Cam.

I do confess my fault; And do submit me to your highness' mercy. Grey. Scroop. To which we all appeal.

K. Hen. The mercy, that was quick in us but late, By your own counsel is suppressed and killed. You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy; For your own reasons turn into your bosoms, As dogs upon their masters, worrying them.— See you, my princes, and my noble peers,

These English monsters!-My lord of Cambridge here,

You know how apt our love was to accord
To furnish him with all appertinents

Belonging to his honor; and this man

1 i. e. those lately appointed.

Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired,
And sworn unto the practices of France,
To kill us here in Hampton; to the which,
This knight-no less for bounty bound to us
Than Cambridge is-hath likewise sworn-But O!
What shall I say to thee, lord Scroop; thou cruel,
Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature!
Thou, that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,
That almost mightst have coined me into gold,
Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use?
May it be possible, that foreign hire

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil,
That might annoy my finger? 'Tis so strange,
That, though the truth of it stands off as gross
As black from white, my eye will scarcely see it.
Treason and murder ever kept together,
As two yoke-devils swore to either's purpose,
Working so grossly1 in a natural cause,
That admiration did not whoop at them; 2
But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in
Wonder, to wait on treason, and on murder:
And whatsoever cunning fiend it was,
That wrought upon thee so preposterously,
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence;
And other devils, that suggest by treasons,
Do botch and bungle up damnation

With patches, colors, and with forms being fetched
From glistering semblances of piety;

But he, that tempered thee, bade thee stand up,
Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,
Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.

If that same demon, that hath gulled thee thus,
Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
He might return to vasty Tartar 3 back,

And tell the legions-I can never win

1 i. e. plainly, evidently.

2 "Did not whoop at them;" that they excited no exclamation of surprise.

3 i. e. Tartarus, the fabled place of future punishment.

A soul so easy as that Englishman's.

O, how hast thou with jealousy infected

The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?

Why, so didst thou.

Why, so didst thou.
Why, so didst thou.
Why, so didst thou.

Seem they grave and learned
Come they of noble family?
Seem they religious?
Or are they spare in diet;
Free from gross passion, or of mirth, or anger;
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood;
Garnished and decked in modest complement;1
Not working with the eye, without the ear,
And, but in purged judgment, trusting neither?
Such, and so finely bolted,2 didst thou seem:
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man, and best endued,
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.-Their faults are open;
Arrest them to the answer of the law;-
And God acquit them of their practices!

Exe. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard earl of Cambridge.

I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry lord Scroop of Masham.

I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight of Northumberland.

Scroop. Our purposes God justly hath discovered; And I repent my fault more than my death; Which I beseech your highness to forgive, Although my body pay the price of it.

Cam. For me, the gold of France did not seduce;3

1 "Complement" has here the same meaning as in Love's Labor's Lost, Act i. Sc. 1. Bullokar defines it, "Court ship [i. e. courtiership], fulness, perfection, fine behavior." The gradual change of this word, to its meaning of ceremonious words, may be traced in Blount's Glossography.

2 Bolted is the same as sifted, and has, consequently, the meaning of refined.

diverse write

3 "For me, the gold of France did not seduce." that Richard earle of Cambridge did not conspire with the lord Scroope, &c. for the murthering of king Henrie, to please the French king withall, but onlie to the intent to exalt the crowne to his brother-in-law Edmund earle of Marche, as heir to Lionel duke of Clarence, who being for diverse

Although I did admit it as a motive,
The sooner to effect what I intended:
But God be thanked for prevention;
Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,1
Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

Grey. Never did faithful subject more rejoice
At the discovery of most dangerous treason,
Than I do at this hour joy o'er myself,
Prevented from a damned enterprise :

My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your

sentence.

You have conspired against our royal person,

Joined with an enemy proclaimed, and from his coffers
Received the golden earnest of our death;

Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,
His subjects to oppression and contempt,
And his whole kingdom into desolation.
Touching our person, seek we no revenge;
But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you three sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor, miserable wretches, to your death:
The taste whereof, God, of his mercy, give you
Patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences!-Bear them hence.

[Exeunt conspirators, guarded.
Now, lords, for France: the enterprise whereof
Shall be to you, as us, like glorious.
We doubt not of a fair and lucky war;
Since God so graciously hath brought to light
This dangerous treason, lurking in our way,

secret impediments not able to have issue, the earl of Cambridge was sure that the crowne should come to him by his wife, and to his children of her begotten. And therefore (as was thought) he rather confessed himselfe for neede of money to be corrupted by the French king, lest the earl of Marche should have tasted of the same cuppe that he had drunken, and what should have come to his own children he much doubted," &c.— Holinshed.

1 i. e. "at which prevention, in suffering, I will heartily rejoice."

To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now,
But every rub is smoothed on our way.
Then, forth, dear countrymen; let us deliver
Our puissance into the hand of God,
Putting it straight in expedition.

Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance;
No king of England, if not king of France.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III. London. Mrs. Quickly's House in

Eastcheap.

Enter PISTOL, MRS. QUICKLY, NYM, BARDOLPH, and

Boy.

Quick. Pr'ythee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring1 thee to Staines.

Pist. No; for my manly heart doth yearn.Bardolph, be blithe-Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins. Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we must yearn therefore.

Bard. 'Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or hell!

Quick. Nay, sure, he's not in hell; he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been any christom2 child; 'a parted even just between twelve and one, e'en at turning o' the tide; for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. How now, sir John? quoth I;

3

1 i. e. let me accompany thee.

2 i. e. chrisom child; which was one that died within one month of birth, because during that time they wore the chrisom cloth, a white cloth put upon a child newly christened, wherewith women used to shroud the child if dying within the month; otherwise it was brought to church at the day of purification.

3 "And 'a babbled of green fields." The first folio reads, " For his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a Table of green fields." Theobald gave the present reading of the text, which, though entirely conjectural, is better than any thing which has been offered in the numerous notes on this passage.

Green pastime