TPTT The Second Part of Henry the Fourth: ACT IV
Introduction
INDUCTION
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
SCENE I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest.
SCENE II. Another part of the forest.
SCENE III. Another part of the forest.
SCENE IV. Westminster. The Jerusalem Chamber.
SCENE V. Another chamber.
ACT V
About the Play
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SCENE I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest.
Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY, LORD HASTINGS, 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.
HASTINGS
5     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.
Enter a Messenger
HASTINGS
20    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
25    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.
WESTMORELAND
100   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?
WESTMORELAND
170   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.
HASTINGS
190   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.
HASTINGS
220   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 OF YORK
225   '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
230   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.
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK
235   Before, and greet his grace: my lord, we come.
Exeunt
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