Warkworth. Before NORTHUMBERLAND’S Castle. | |
| |
Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, LADY NORTHUMBERLAND, and LADY PERCY. | |
| North. I pray thee, loving wife, and gentle daughter, | |
| Give even way unto my rough affairs: | 4 |
| Put not you on the visage of the times, | |
| And be like them to Percy troublesome. | |
| Lady N. I have given over, I will speak no more: | |
| Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide. | 8 |
| North. Alas! sweet wife, my honour is at pawn; | |
| And, but my going, nothing can redeem it. | |
| Lady P. O! yet for God’s sake, go not to these wars. | |
| The time was, father, that you broke your word | 12 |
| When you were more endear’d to it than now; | |
| When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry, | |
| Threw many a northward look to see his father | |
| Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain. | 16 |
| Who then persuaded you to stay at home? | |
| There were two honours lost, yours and your son’s: | |
| For yours, the God of heaven brighten it! | |
| For his, it stuck upon him as the sun | 20 |
| In the grey vault of heaven; and by his light | |
| Did all the chivalry of England move | |
| To do brave acts: he was indeed the glass | |
| Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves: | 24 |
| He had no legs, that practis’d not his gait; | |
| And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish, | |
| Became the accents of the valiant; | |
| For those that could speak low and tardily, | 28 |
| Would turn their own perfection to abuse, | |
| To seem like him: so that, in speech, in gait, | |
| In diet, in affections of delight, | |
| In military rules, humours of blood, | 32 |
| He was the mark and glass, copy and book, | |
| That fashion’d others. And him, O wondrous him! | |
| O miracle of men! him did you leave,— | |
| Second to none, unseconded by you,— | 36 |
| To look upon the hideous god of war | |
| In disadvantage; to abide a field | |
| Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur’s name | |
| Did seem defensible: so you left him. | 40 |
| Never, O! never, do his ghost the wrong | |
| To hold your honour more precise and nice | |
| With others than with him: let them alone. | |
| The marshal and the archbishop are strong: | 44 |
| Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers, | |
| To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur’s neck, | |
| Have talk’d of Monmouth’s grave. | |
| North. Beshrew your heart, | 48 |
| Fair daughter! you do draw my spirits from me | |
| With new lamenting ancient oversights. | |
| But I must go and meet with danger there, | |
| Or it will seek me in another place, | 52 |
| And find me worse provided. | |
| Lady N. O! fly to Scotland, | |
| Till that the nobles and the armed commons | |
| Have of their puissance made a little taste. | 56 |
| Lady P. If they get ground and vantage of the king, | |
| Then join you with them, like a rib of steel, | |
| To make strength stronger; but, for all our loves, | |
| First let them try themselves. So did your son; | 60 |
| He was so suffer’d: so came I a widow; | |
| And never shall have length of life enough | |
| To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes, | |
| That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven, | 64 |
| For recordation to my noble husband. | |
| North. Come, come, go in with me. ’Tis with my mind | |
| As with the tide swell’d up unto its height, | |
| That makes a still-stand, running neither way: | 68 |
| Fain would I go to meet the archbishop, | |
| But many thousand reasons hold me back. | |
| I will resolve for Scotland: there am I, | |
| Till time and vantage crave my company. [Exeunt. | 72 |
