Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody? O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile, In loathsome beds; and leav'st the kingly couch,

1

A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his
brains

In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them

With deaf ning clamors in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest, and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie
down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Enter WARWICK and SURREY.

War. Many good morrows to your ma jesty!

K. Hen. Is it good morrow, lords?

War. 'Tis one o'clock, and past.

K. Hen. Why, then, good morrow to you all, my lords.

[you? Have you read o'er the letters that I sent War. We have, my liege.

K. Hen. Then you perceive, the body of our kingdom

How foul it is; what rank diseases grow, And with what danger, near the heart of it. War. It is but as a body yet distemper'd, Which to his former strength may be re stored,

With good advice and little medicine:

My lord Northumberland will soon be cool'd. K. Hen O heaven! that one might read the book of fate :

And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent
(Weary of solid firmness) melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean

Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock,

And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors ! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress
through,

What perils past, what crosses to ensue, Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.

'Tis not ten years gone [friends, Since Richard and Northumberland, great Did feast together, and, in two years after,

Were they at wars: it is but eight years since
This Percy was the man nearest my soul;
Who like a brother toil'd in my affairs,
And laid his love and life under my foot;
Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard,
Gave him defiance. But which of you was
by-

To WARWICK.] You, cousin Nevil, as I may

remember

When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears, Then check'd and rated by Northumber

land, [ecy? Did speak these words, now proved a proph Northumberland, thou ladder, by the which My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;Though then, heaven knows, I had no such intent,

But that necessity so bow'd the state,

That I and greatness were compell'd to kiss :

The time shall come, thus did he follow it, The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head,

Shall break into corruption :-so went on,
Foretelling this same time's condition,
And the division of our amity.

War. There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased: The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things

As yet not come to life; which in their seeds, And weak beginnings, lie intreasurèd.

Such things become the hatch and brood of time;

him,

And by the necessary form of this,
King Richard might create a perfect guess,
That great Northumberland, then false to
[ness;
Would, of that seed, grow to a greater false.
Which should not find a ground to root upon,
Unless on you.

K. Hen. Are these things then neces sities?

Then let us meet them like necessities:
And that same word even now cries out on us;
They say, the bishop and Northumberland
Are fifty thousand strong.

War
It cannot be, my lord ;
Rumor doth double, like the voice and echo,
The numbers of the fear'd. Please it your
grace

To go to bed; upon my life, my lord,

The powers that you already have sent forth
Shall bring this prize in very easily.

To comfort you the more, I have received
A certain instance that Glendower is dead.
Your majesty hath been this fortnight ill;
And these unseason'd hours, perforce, must
add

Unto your sickness.

K. Hen.

I will take your counsel; And, were these inward wars once out of

hand,

We would dear lords, unto the Holy Land.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II-Court before Justice Shallow's House in Gloucestershire.

Enter SHALLOW and SILENCE, meeting MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, Feeble, BULL-CALF, and Ser vants behind.

Shal. Come on, come on, come on; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by the rood. And how doth

my good cousin Silence?

Sil. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow. Shal. And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow; and your fairest daughter, and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?

Sil. Alas! a black ouzel, cousin Shallow. Shal. By yea and nay, sir, I dare say my cousin William is become a good scholar : he is at Oxford, still, is he not?

Sil. Indeed, sir; to my cost.

Shal. He must then to the inns of court shortly I was once of Clement's Inn; where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet. Sil. You were called lusty Shallow, then, cousin.

Shal. By the mass, I was called anything; and I would have done anything, indeed, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotswold man, — you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns of court again :