Shal. Come, Sir John, which four will you have?
Fal. Do you choose for me.

Shal. Marry then,--Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble, and Shadow.

Fal. Mouldy and Bullealf:-for you, Mouldy, stay at home till you are past service: and for your part, Bullcalf, -grow till you come unto it: I will none of you.

Shal. Sir John, Sir John, do not yourself wrong: they are your likeliest men, and I would have you served with the best.

Fal. Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here's Wart;-you see what a ragged appearance it is: he shall charge you and discharge you, with the motion of a pewterer's hammer; come off, and on, swifter than he that gibbets-on the brewer's bucket. And this same half-faced fellow, Shadow,-give me this man: he presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. And, for a retreat, how swiftly will this Feeble, the woman's tailor, run off! O, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones.-Put me a caliver into Wart's hand, Bardolph.

Bard. Hold, Wart, traverse; thus, thus, thus.

Fal. Come, manage me your caliver. So: very well: go to:-very good:-exceeding good.--O, give me always a little, lean, old, chapped, bald shot. -Well said, i' faith, Wart; thou'rt a good scab: hold, there's a tester for thee.

Shal. He is not his craft's-master, he doth not do it right. I remember at Mile-end Green, when I lay at Clement's-inn,-I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show,

there was a little quiver fellow, and he would manage you his piece thus; and he would about and about, and come you in and come you in: rah, tah, tah, would he say; bounce would he say; and away again would he go, and again would he come:-I shall never see such a fellow.

Fal. These fellows will do well, Master Shallow.-God keep you, Master Silence: I will not use many words with you.-Fare you well, gentlemen both: I thank you: I must a dozen mile to-night.--Bardolph, give the soldiers coats.

Shal. Sir John, heaven bless you, and prosper your affairs, and send us peace! as you return, visit my house; let our old acquaintance be renewed: peradventure I will with you to the court.

Fal. 'Fore God, I would you would, Master Shallow.

Shal. Go to; I have spoke at a word. Fare you well. [Exeunt SHAL. and SIL.

Fal. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. On, Bardolph; lead the men away. [Exeunt BARDOLPH, Recruits, &c.] As I return, I will fetch off these justices: I do see the bottom of Justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull-Street; and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk's tribute. I do remember him at Clement's-inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: when he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: he was so forlorn that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible: he was the very genius of famine; yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him mandrake he came ever in the rear-ward of the fashion; and sung those tunes to the overscutched huswifes that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies or his good-nights. And now is this Vice's dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly of John of Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him; and I'll be sworn he never saw him but once in the Tilt-yard; and then he burst his head for crowding among the marshal's men. I saw it, and told John of Gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court :-and now has he land and beeves. Well, I will be acquainted with him if I return; and it shall go hard but I will make him a philosopher's two stones to me: if the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason, in the law of nature, but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there an end. [Exit.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.-A Forest in Yorkshire.

Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and others.

Arch. What is this forest call'd?

Hast. 'Tis Gualtree Forest, an't shall please your grace. Arch. Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth To know the numbers of our enemies.

Hast. We have sent forth already.
Arch.
'Tis well done.
My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have receiv'd
New-dated letters from Northumberland;
Their cold intent, tenour, and substance, thus:—
Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
As might hold sortance with his quality,
The which he could not levy; whereupon
He is retir'd, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland; and concludes in hearty prayers
That your attempts may overlive the hazard
And fearful meeting of their opposite.

Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground, And dash themselves to pieces.

Hast.

Enter a Messenger.

Now, what news?

Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,

In goodly form comes on the enemy;

And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number
Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.

Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them out.

Let us sway on, and face them in the field.

Arch. What well-appointed leader fronts us here?
Mowb. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

West. Health and fair greeting from our general
The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.
Arch. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace,
What doth concern your coming.

West.
Then, my lord,
Unto your grace do I in chief address

The substance of my speech. If that rebellion
Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,
And countenanc'd by boys and beggary,-

I

say, if damn'd commotion so appear'd,

In his true, native, and most proper shape,
You, reverend father, and these noble lords,
Had not been here, to dress the ugly form
Of base and bloody insurrection

With your fair honours. You, lord archbishop,-
Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd;

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd;

---

Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd;
Whose white investments figure innocence,
The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself
Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,
Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war;
Turning your books to greaves, your ink to blood,
Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

Arch. Wherefore do I this?-so the question stands.
Briefly to this end:-
:-we are all diseas'd;
And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it: of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I, as an enemy to peace,
Troop in the throngs of military men;
But, rather, show awhile like fearful war,
To diet rank minds sick of happiness,

And purge the obstructions which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.

I have in equal balance justly weigh'd

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,

And find our griefs heavier than our offences.

We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforc'd from our most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion;

And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which long ere this we offer'd to the king,
And might by no suit gain our audience:
When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person

Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
The dangers of the days but newly gone,-
Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet-appearing blood,—and the examples
Of every minute's instance,-present now,–
Have put us in these ill-beseeming arms;
Not to break peace, or any branch of it,
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

West. When ever yet was your appeal denied;
Wherein have you been galled by the king;

What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you;-
That you should seal this lawless bloody book
Of forg'd rebellion with a seal divine,
And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?

Arch. My brother general, the commonwealth,
To brother born an household cruelty,

I make my quarrel in particular.

West. There is no need of any such redress; Or if there were, it not belongs to you.

Mowb. Why not to him in part, and to us all
That feel the bruises of the days before,

And suffer the condition of these times
To lay a heavy and unequal hand
Upon our honours?

West.
O, my good Lord Mowbray,
Construe the times to their necessities,
And you shall say indeed, it is the time,
And not the king, that doth you injuries.
Yet, for your part, it not appears to me,
Either from the king or in the present time,
That you should have an inch of any ground
To build a grief on: were you not restor❜d
To all the Duke of Norfolk's signiories,
Your noble and right-well-remember'd father's?
Mowb. What thing, in honour, had my father lost,
That need to be reviv'd and breath'd in me?
The king, that lov'd him, as the state stood then,
Was, force perforce, compell'd to banish him,
And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,-
Being mounted and both roused in their seats,
Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,
Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,
Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,
And the loud trumpet blowing them together,-
Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay'd
My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,

O, when the king did throw his warder down,

His own life hung upon the staff he threw;

Then threw he down himself, and all their lives

That by indictment and by dint of sword

Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.

West. You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.

The Earl of Hereford was reputed then

In England the most valiant gentleman:

Who knows on whom fortune would then have smil'd?
But if your father had been victor there,