The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/09/04_01

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 11KB | 289 lines

A Forest in Yorkshire.
 Enter the ARCHBISHOP, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and OTHERS,
 within the Forest of Gaultree.

Archbishop    What is this forest called?

Hastings    'Tis Gaultree Forest, and't shall please your grace.

Archbishop    Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth
    To know the numbers of our enemies.

Hastings    We have sent forth already.

Archbishop                                        'Tis well done.
    My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
    I must acquaint you that I have received
    New-dated letters from Northumberland,
    Their cold intent, tenor, 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 retired, 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.

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

                             Enter MESSENGER.

Hastings                                        Now, what news?

Messenger    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.

Mowbray    The just proportion that we gave them out.
    Let us sway on and face them in the field.

                           Enter WESTMORELAND.

Archbishop    What well-appointed leader fronts us here?

Mowbray    I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.

Westmoreland    Health and fair greeting from our general
    The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.

Archbishop    Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace,
    What doth concern your coming.

Westmoreland                                    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 countenanced by boys and beggary;
    I say, if damned commotion so appeared
    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 maintained,
    Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touched,
    Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutored,
    Whose white investments figure innocence,
    The dove and very blessd 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 graves, your ink to blood,
    Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine
    To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

Archbishop    Wherefore do I this? So the question stands.
    Briefly, to this end: we are all diseased,
    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 a while like fearful war
    To diet rank minds sick of happiness,
    And purge th' obstructions which begin to stop
    Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly:
    I have in equal balance justly weighed
    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 enforced from our most quiet shore
    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 offered to the king,
    And might by no suit gain our audience.
    When we are wronged, 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,
    Hath 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.

Westmoreland    Whenever yet was your appeal denied?
    Wherein have you been galld by the king?
    What peer hath been suborned to grate on you,
    That you should seal this lawless bloody book
    Of forged rebellion with a seal divine,
    And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?

Archbishop    My brother general, the commonwealth,
    To brother born an household cruelty,
    I make my quarrel in particular.

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

Mowbray    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?

Westmoreland                        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 restored
    To all the Duke of Norfolk's signories,
    Your noble and right well-remembered father's?

Mowbray    What thing in honour had my father lost
    That need to be revived and breathed in me?
    The king that loved him, as the state stood then,
    Was force perforce compelled to banish him;
    And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,
    Being mounted and both rousd in their seats,
    Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,
    Their armd 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 stayed
    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.

Westmoreland    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 smiled?
    But if your father had been victor there,
    He ne'er had borne it out of Coventry;
    For all the country in a general voice
    Cried hate upon him, and all their prayers and love
    Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on
    And blessed and graced indeed more than the king.
    But this is mere digression from my purpose.
    Here come I from our princely general
    To know your griefs, to tell you from his grace
    That he will give you audience; and wherein
    It shall appear that your demands are just,
    You shall enjoy them, everything set off
    That might so much as think you enemies.

Mowbray    But he hath forced us to compel this offer,
    And it proceeds from policy, not love.

Westmoreland    Mowbray, you overween to take it so.
    This offer comes from mercy, not from fear;
    For lo, within a ken our army lies,
    Upon mine honour all too confident
    To give admittance to a thought of fear.
    Our battle is more full of names than yours,
    Our men more perfect in the use of arms,
    Our armour all as strong, our cause the best;
    Then reason will our hearts should be as good.
    Say you not then, our offer is compelled.

Mowbray    Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.

Westmoreland    That argues but the shame of your offence:
    A rotten case abides no handling.

Hastings    Hath the Prince John a full commission,
    In very ample virtue of his father,
    To hear and absolutely to determine
    Of what conditions we shall stand upon?

Westmoreland    That is intended in the general's name.
    I muse you make so slight a question.

Archbishop    Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule;
    For this contains our general grievances.
    Each several article herein redressed,
    All members of our cause, both here and hence,
    That are ensinewed to this action,
    Acquitted by a true substantial form
    And present execution of our wills,
    To us and to our purposes confined
    We come within our aweful banks again,
    And knit our powers to the arm of peace.

Westmoreland    This will I show the general. Please you, lords,
    In sight of both our battles we may meet,
    And either end in peace - which God so frame! -
    Or to the place of diff'rence call the swords
    Which must decide it.

Archbishop                            My lord, we will do so.
                                                    [Exit WESTMORELAND.

Mowbray    There is a thing within my bosom tells me
    That no conditions of our peace can stand.

Hastings    Fear you not that. If we can make our peace
    Upon such large terms, and so absolute,
    As our conditions shall consist upon,
    Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.

Mowbray    Yea, but our valuation shall be such
    That every slight and false-derivd cause,
    Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason,
    Shall to the king taste of this action;
    That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love,
    We shall be winnowed with so rough a wind
    That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff,
    And good from bad find no partition.

Archbishop    No, no, my lord; note this: the king is weary
    Of dainty and such picking grievances;
    For he hath found, to end one doubt by death
    Revives two greater in the heirs of life;
    And therefore will he wipe his tables clean,
    And keep no telltale to his memory
    That may repeat and history his loss
    To new remembrance. For full well he knows
    He cannot so precisely weed this land
    As his misdoubts present occasion.
    His foes are so enrooted with his friends
    That plucking to unfix an enemy
    He doth unfasten so and shake a friend.
    So that this land, like an offensive wife
    That hath enraged him on to offer strokes,
    As he is striking, holds his infant up,
    And hangs resolved correction in the arm
    That was upreared to execution.

Hastings    Besides, the king hath wasted all his rods
    On late offenders, that he now doth lack
    The very instruments of chastisement;
    So that his power, like to a fangless lion,
    May offer, but not hold.

Archbishop                                'Tis very true.
    And therefore be assured, my good Lord Marshal,
    If we do now make our atonement well,
    Our peace will, like a broken limb united,
    Grow stronger for the breaking.

Mowbray                                            Be it so.

                          Re-enter WESTMORELAND.

    Here is returned my Lord of Westmoreland.

Westmoreland    The prince is here at hand. Pleaseth your lordship,
    To meet his grace just distance 'tween our armies.

Mowbray    Your Grace of York, in God's name then set forward.

Archbishop    Before, and greet his grace. My lord, we come.
                                            [They march over the stage.