King Henry IV, Part II

King Henry IV, Part II

ACT IV SCENE I	Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest.
	Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY, LORDHASTINGS, and others
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	What is this forest call'd?
HASTINGS	'Tis Gaultree Forest, an't shall please your grace.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth
	To know the numbers of our enemies.	5
HASTINGS	We have sent forth already.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	'Tis well done.
	My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
	I must acquaint you that I have received
	New-dated letters from Northumberland;	10
	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,	15
	To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers
	That your attempts may overlive the hazard
	And fearful melting of their opposite.
MOWBRAY	Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground
	And dash themselves to pieces.	20
	Enter a 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.	25
MOWBRAY	The just proportion that we gave them out
	Let us sway on and face them in the field.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	What well-appointed leader fronts us here?
	Enter WESTMORELAND
MOWBRAY	I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.
WESTMORELAND	Health and fair greeting from our general,	30
	The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	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	35
	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 damn'd commotion so appear'd,	40
	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,	45
	Whose see is by a civil peace maintained,
	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,	50
	Wherefore do you so ill translate ourself
	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	55
	To a trumpet and a point of war?
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	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,	60
	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	65
	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.	70
	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 enforced from our most quiet there	75
	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:	80
	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	85
	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,	90
	Concurring both in name and quality.
WESTMORELAND	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	95
	Of forged rebellion with a seal divine
	And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	My brother general, the commonwealth,
	To brother born an household cruelty,
	I make my quarrel in particular.	100
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	105
	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,	110
	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	115
	To all the Duke of Norfolk's signories,
	Your noble and right well remember'd 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,	120
	Was force perforce compell'd to banish him:
	And then that Harry 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,	125
	Their eyes of fire sparking 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,	130
	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.	135
	The Earl of Hereford was reputed then
	In England the most valiant gentlemen:
	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:	140
	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 bless'd and graced indeed, more than the king.
	But this is mere digression from my purpose.	145
	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, every thing set off	150
	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:	155
	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,	160
	Our armour all as strong, our cause the best;
	Then reason will our heart should be as good
	Say you not then our offer is compell'd.
MOWBRAY	Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.
WESTMORELAND	That argues but the shame of your offence:	165
	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?	170
WESTMORELAND	That is intended in the general's name:
	I muse you make so slight a question.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule,
	For this contains our general grievances:
	Each several article herein redress'd,	175
	All members of our cause, both here and hence,
	That are insinew'd to this action,
	Acquitted by a true substantial form
	And present execution of our wills
	To us and to our purposes confined,	180
	We come within our awful 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!	185
	Or to the place of difference call the swords
	Which must decide it.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	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.	190
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	195
	That every slight and false-derived 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 winnow'd with so rough a wind	200
	That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff
	And good from bad find no partition.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	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	205
	Revives two greater in the heirs of life,
	And therefore will he wipe his tables clean
	And keep no tell-tale to his memory
	That may repeat and history his loss
	To new remembrance; for full well he knows	210
	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:	215
	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 uprear'd to execution.	220
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.	225
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	'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.	230
MOWBRAY	Be it so.
	Here is return'd my Lord of Westmoreland.
	Re-enter 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.	235
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK	Before, and greet his grace: my lord, we come.
	Exeunt