ACT V
SCENE V. A public place near Westminster Abbey.
More rushes, more rushes.
The trumpets have sounded twice.
’Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the coronation. Dispatch, dispatch.
Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow. I will make the King do you grace. I will leer upon him as he comes by, and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.
God bless thy lungs, good knight!
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. But ’tis no matter, this poor show doth better. This doth infer the zeal I had to see him.
It doth so.
It shows my earnestness of affection—
It doth so.
My devotion—
It doth, it doth, it doth.
As it were, to ride day and night, and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me—
It is best, certain.
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.
’Tis semper idem, for obsque hoc nihil est; ’tis all in every part.
’Tis so, indeed.
I will deliver her.
There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.
God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal!
The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!
God save thee, my sweet boy!
My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.
Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak?
My King! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.
Yea, marry, Sir John, which I beseech you to let me have home with me.
That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.
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.
Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that you heard was but a colour.
A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.
Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be sent for soon at night.
My lord, my lord,—
Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.
And so they are.
The King hath call’d his parliament, my lord.
He hath.
First my fear; then my curtsy; last my speech. My fear is your displeasure; my curtsy, 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 is 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 meant 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 would 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 anything 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.