scutched huswives 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 a Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him; and I'll be sworn a' ne'er 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 a Gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an 350 eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court: and now has he land and beefs. Well, I'll 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. time shape, and there an end.

cally, and Ray's statement, that ' over-switch'd huswife' meant strumpet,' makes the reading 'overswitched' (adopted by Grant White) plausible.

342. Fancies... Good-nights, common titles of little poems.

343. this Vice's dagger, this 'lath' of a man. The Vice in the Moralities wore a dagger of lath.' Falstaff has similarly called the prince a 'standing tuck'; cf. 1 Hen. IV. ii. 4. 274.

Let [Exit.

ACT IV.

SCENE I. Yorkshire.

Gaultree Forest.

Enter the ARChbishop of York, Mowbray,
HASTINGS, and others.

Arch. What is this forest call'd?

Hast. 'Tis Gaultree Forest, an 't shall please your grace.

Arch. Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth

To know the numbers of our enemies.

'Tis well done.

Hast. We have sent forth already.
Arch.
My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have received
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 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.

Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground

And dash themselves to pieces.

1. Gaultree Forest. A large forest still existing in Shakespeare's time, to the north of the city of York.

ΤΟ

II. hold sortance with, 'sort with,' be in keeping with.

16. opposite, opponent.

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?

Enter WESTMORELAND.

Mowb. I think it is my Lord of 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?

20

Then, my lord, 30

West.
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 damn'd commotion so appear'd,
In his true, native and most proper shape,

24. sway on. 'Sway on ' expresses the steady, powerful movement onwards of a compact mass.

30. 'What does your coming import?'

33. routs bands, gangs.

34. bloody, violent, headstrong.

34. guarded, adorned, trimmed. For 'rags Q Ff have 'rage.' The correction is due to Walker.

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 graves, 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 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 awhile like fearful war,
To diet rank minds sick of happiness

42. civil, orderly, lawabiding; that which is characteristic of a well-governed state.

50. Turning your books to graves. 'Graves' has been doubted and altered without ground. As books result from the exercise of the graceful 'speech of peace,' so 'graves'

40

50

60

from the exercise of the boister-
ous tongue of war; turning,
'translating yourselves from.'
52. point of war, war-signal,
trumpet-blast.
55-79. And
omitted in Q.

wrong;

60. I take not on me as, I do not assume the part of.

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 enforced from our most quiet there
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,
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.

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 forged rebellion with a seal divine.

69. griefs, grievances.

71. our most quiet there, our perfect acquiescence in its course. The idea is that of smoothly running waters suddenly diverted by the inrush of a turbulent torrent. 'There is somewhat

70

80

90

weak, but Warburton's change to 'sphere,' which has been largely adopted, introduces into the midst of this image of a watercourse a totally alien image from the courses of the

stars.