Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did I with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly; let me go with you;
I'll do the service of a younger man
In all your business and necessities.

Orla. Ob! good old man, how well in thee

appears

The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times
Where none will sweat but for promotion;
And, having that, do choak their service up
Even with the having; it is not so with thee;
But, poor old man, thou prun'st a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.
But come thy ways, we'll go along together,
And ere we have thy youthful wages spent,
We'll light upon some settled low content.
Adam. Master, go on, and I will follow thee
To the last gasp with truth and loyalty;
From seventeen years till
almost fourscore,
Here lived 1, but now live here no more.
At seventeen years many their fortunes seek,
But at fourscore it is too late a week;
Yet fortune cannot recompence me better
Than to die well, and not my master's debtor.

Scroop..

now,

SHAKESPEARE.

CHA P. XIIE

1

Scroop and Richard.

Mong health and happiness betide my

ORE

Liege,

Than can my care-tun'd tongue deliver him!
K. Rich. Mine ear is open, and my heart pre

par'd:

The worst is wordly loss thou canst unfold.

Say, is my kingdom lost? Why, 'twas my care;
And what loss is it to be rid of care?
Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?
Greater he shall not be; if he serve God,
We'll serve him too, and be his fellow so.
Revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend;
They break their faith to God, as well as us.
Gry woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay;
The worst is death, and death will have his day.
Scroop. Glad am I that your Highness is so

arm'd

To bear the tidings of calamity.
Like an unseasonable stormy day,

Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolv'd to tears;
So high above his limits swells the rage

Of Bolingbroke, cov'ring your fearful land
With hard bright steel, and hearts more hard than

steel.

White beards have arm'd their thin and hairless.

scalps

Against thy Majesty ; boys, with women's voices,
Strive to speak big, and clasp their female joints.
In stiff unwieldy arms, against thy crown;
The very beadsmen learn to bend their bows.
Of double-fatal yew against thy state;
Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills.
Against thy seat both young and old rebel
And all goes worse than I have pow'r to tell.
K. Rich. Too well, too well, thou tell'st a tale
so ill.

Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? where is Bagot? What is become of Busby? where is Green?

-No matter where; of comfort no man speak. Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth! Let's chuse executors, and talk of wills; And yet not so for what can we bequeath, Save our deposed bodies to the ground? Our lands, our lives, and all, are Bolingbrok's,

And nothing can we call our own but death:
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For heav'n's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings;
How some have been depos'd; some stain in war
Some haunted by the ghost they dispossess'd;
Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd.- -For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a King
Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks:
Infusing him with self and vain conceit
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humour'd thus
Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores thro' his castle walls, and farewel King!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn rev'rence: trow away respect,
Tradition, form, aud ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while.
I live on bread like you, feel want like
Taste grief, need friends, like you subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a King?

you

SHAKESPEARE.

CHA P. XIV.

Hotspur and Glendower.

Glen.Str, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hots

pur;

For by that name, as oft as Lancaster

Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale! and with A rising sigh, he wisheth you in heav'n..

Hot. And you in hell, as often as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of.

Glen. I blame him not: at my nativity The front of heav'n was full of fiery shapes,

Of burning cressets; know that at my birth
The frame of the foundation of the earth
Shook like a coward.

Hot. So it would have done

At the same season if your mother's cat

Had kitten'd, though yourself had ne'er been born. Glen. I say, the earth did shake when I was born.

Hot. I say, the earth then was not of my mind, If you suppose, as fearing you it shook.

Glen. The heav'ns were all on fire, the earth did tremble.

Hot. O, then the earth shook to see the heav'ns on fire!

And not in fear of your nativity.

Diseased nature often times breaks forth
In strange eruptions; and the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colick pinch'd and vex'd,
By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb, which, for enlargement striy ing,

Shakes the olb beldame earth, and topples down High tow'rs and moss-grown steeples. At your birth,

Our grandam earth with this distemperature
In passion shook.

Glen. Cousin, of many men

I do not bear these crossings: give me leave
To tell you once again, that at my birth
The front of heav'n was full of fiery shapes;
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clam'rous in the frighted fields:
These signs have mark'd me extraordinary,
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
Where is he living, clipt in with the sea

That chides the banks of England, Wales, or
Scotland ↑

Who calls me pupil, or hath read to me?
And bring him out, that is but woman's son
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art,

Or hold me pace in deep experiments.

Hot. I think there is no man speaks better Welsh.

Glen. I can speak English, Lord, as well as you, For I was train'd up in the English court: Where, being young, I framed to the harp Many an English ditty lovely well. And gave the tongue a helpful ornament; A virtue that was never seen in you.

Hot. Marry, and I'm glad of it with all my heart;

I'd rather be a kitten, and cry mew;
Than one of these same metre ballad mongers!
I'd rather hear a brazen candlestick turn'd,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree,
And that would nothing set my teeth on edge
Nothing so much as mincing poetry;

'Tis like the fore'd gait of a shuffling nag.-
Glen. And I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hot. Why, so can I, or so can any man :
But will they come when you do call for them?
Glen. Why, I can teach thee to command the

devil.

Hot. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil,

By telling truth; Tell truth and shame the devil.--If thou hast pow'r to raise him, bring him hither, And I'll be sworn I've pow'r to shame him hence. Oh, while you live, Tell truth and shame the

devil

SHAKESPEARE.