The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/09/01_03

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 5KB | 138 lines

York. A Room in the Archbishop's Palace.
 Enter the ARCHBISHOP, THOMAS MOWBRAY the Earl Marshal,
 LORD HASTINGS and LORD BARDOLPH.

Archbishop    Thus have you heard our cause and known our means;
    And, my most noble friends, I pray you all
    Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes.
    And first, Lord Marshal, what say you to it?

Mowbray    I well allow the occasion of our arms,
    But gladly would be better satisfied
    How in our means we should advance ourselves
    To look with forehead bold and big enough
    Upon the power and puissance of the king.

Hastings    Our present musters grow upon the file
    To five-and-twenty thousand men of choice,
    And our supplies live largely in the hope
    Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns
    With an incensd fire of injuries.

Lord Bardolph    The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus:
    Whether our present five-and-twenty thousand
    May hold up head without Northumberland.

Hastings    With him we may.

Lord Bardolph                        Yea, marry, there's the point.
    But if without him we be thought too feeble,
    My judgment is, we should not step too far
    Till we had his assistance by the hand;
    For in a theme so bloody-faced as this,
    Conjecture, expectation, and surmise
    Of aids incertain should not be admitted.

Archbishop    'Tis very true, Lord Bardolph, for indeed
    It was young Hotspur's cause at Shrewsbury.

Lord Bardolph    It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope,
    Eating the air and promise of supply,
    Flatt'ring himself in project of a power
    Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts;
    And so, with great imagination
    Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,
    And winking leaped into destruction.

Hastings    But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt
    To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.

Lord Bardolph    Yes, if this present quality of war,
    - Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot -
    Lives so in hope - As in an early spring
    We see th' appearing buds, which, to prove fruit,
    Hope gives not so much warrant as despair
    That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,
    We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
    And when we see the figure of the house,
    Then must we rate the cost of the erection,
    Which if we find outweighs ability,
    What do we then but draw anew the model
    In fewer offices, or at least desist
    To build at all. Much more in this great work -
    Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down
    And set another up - should we survey
    The plot of situation and the model,
    Consent upon a sure foundation,
    Question surveyors, know our own estate,
    How able such a work to undergo,
    To weigh against his opposite; or else
    We fortify in paper and in figures,
    Using the names of men instead of men,
    Like one that draws the model of a house
    Beyond his power to build it, who, half-through,
    Gives o'er, and leaves his part-created cost
    A naked subject to the weeping clouds,
    And waste for churlish winter's tyranny.

Hastings    Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth,
    Should be still-born, and that we now possessed
    The utmost man of expectation,
    I think we are a body strong enough,
    Even as we are, to equal with the king.

Lord Bardolph    What, is the king but five-and-twenty thousand?

Hastings    To us no more, nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph;
    For his divisions, as the times do brawl,
    Are in three heads: one power against the French,
    And one against Glendower, perforce a third
    Must take up us. So is the unfirm king
    In three divided, and his coffers sound
    With hollow poverty and emptiness.

Archbishop    That he should draw his several strengths together
    And come against us in full puissance
    Need not to be dreaded.

Hastings                            If he should do so,
    To French and Welsh he leaves his back unarmed,
    They baying at his heels: - never fear that.

Lord Bardolph    Who is it like should lead his forces hither?

Hastings    The Duke of Lancaster, and Westmoreland;
    Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth;
    But who is substituted 'gainst the French
    I have no certain notice.

Archbishop                                    Let us on,
    And publish the occasion of our arms.
    The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;
    Their overgreedy love hath surfeited.
    An habitation giddy and unsure
    Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
    O thou fond many, with what loud applause
    Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
    Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!
    And being now trimmed in thine own desires,
    Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him
    That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up.
    So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
    Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
    And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,
    And howl'st to find it. What trust is in these times?
    They that when Richard lived would have him die
    Are now become enamoured on his grave.
    Thou that threw'st dust upon his goodly head,
    When through proud London he came sighing on
    After th' admird heels of Bolingbroke,
    Cri'st now "O earth, yield us that king again,
    And take Thou this!" O thoughts of men accursed!
    Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.

Mowbray    Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?

Hastings    We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.
                                                    [Exeunt.