 | Rudyard Kipling's Verse |  |
Act II
Argument.
Prince Henry, Poins, Fluellen, Nym, and
Sir John Falstaff (Bardolph having escaped) are charged,
on Dogberry's evidence, before the Lord Chief Justice
at Westminster, with exceeding the speed-limit and leaving
Where's our red rear-lamp? Where's Bardolph?
Poins.
Shining over Southwark if he be not puffed out by now. He ran when the watch came. The Chief Justice looks sourly. Is any appointed to speak for us, Hal?
Prince.
Thy notorious innocence, my known virtue, and if these fail, Sir John's big belly. I have fed my father's exchequer here twice since Easter.
Ch. Justice.
Intemperate, rash, and ill-advisèd men—
Yoke-fellows at unsavoury enterprise—
Harry, and you, Sir John, stand forth for sentence!
Fluellen.
Put—put there is no indictments discharged upon us yet. To pronounce sentences, look you, pefore the indictments is discharged is ropperies and oppressions.
Nym.
Ay, that's the humour of it. When they cry Budget we must cry mum.
Falstaff.
Cram the Welsh flannel down his own throat, or we are imprisoned after the fine. I know the Chief Justice is sick of me.
Shallow
(to Ch. Justice).
My lord, my lord, if you suffer yon fat knight to talk, he'll cozen the teeth out of your lordship's head, while his serving-man steals the steeped crust you'd mumble to. I lent him a thousand pounds, my lord.
Falstaff.
I deny it not. For the which I promised thee advancement. And art thou not now visibly next the Chief Justice himself?
Shallow.
Not on my merits, Sir John. I sit here simple of courtesy as visiting-justice. I'd do as much for my lord if he came to Gloucestershire, 'faith!
Shallow! Shallow! I say I gave thee occasion and opportunity to rise. Promotion is in thy hands.
(To Ch. Justice)Have a care, my lord! He fingers his dagger already.
Shallow.
My dagger? My ink-horn, la! I'll sit further off. I told you how he'd talk, my lord. But I'll sit further off. My dagger, 'faith!
Ch. Justice.
Sir John! Sir John! The licence of inveterate humour overstretched rends like an outworn garment— with like shame to the enduer. Answer me roundly, what defence make you to the charge you have run through Chepe at ten leagues the hour?
Falstaff.
Roundly, my lord, my shape—my evident shape.
Ch. Justice.
But 'tis so charged, and will be so witnessed.
Dogberry.
Yes, and by one that hath a stopped watch and everything forsworn about him. Write it down fifteen leagues, my lord.
Prince
(to Ch. Justice).
We knights of the road have ever been fair quarry for your knights of the post to bind to, but this passes endurance. We left our car, my lord, extinct and combust in the kennel, while we sought an engineer to hoist her. In which stay she would have continued, but for the prying vulgar who found on her some handle to their curiosity, which, doubtless, they turned. For in such a car as this—
Ch. Justice.
The enfranchised 'prentices of London quash
Our harmless babes and necessary wives
At morning to the sound of Sabbath bells
Through panicked Huntingdon.
Portia.
Slides young Desire athwart the mountain-tops,
Drinking the airs that part him from his dear
'Twixt Berwick and Glamorgan.
In such a car as this,
The lecherous Israelite to Brighthelmstone
Convoys his Jessica.
Portia.
In such a car as this,
The lean chirurgeon burns the midnight oil
Impetuous over England. Where his lamp
Strikes pale the hedgerow, all the affrighted fays,
Their misty revels in the dew divulged,
Flee to the coney's burrow, or divide
His antre with the squirrel—whom that ministrant
Marks not, his eyes being bent to thrid the dark,
Indifferent beneath the morning star,
To the poor cot that summoned him, and the life—
Some hour-old, mother-naked life, scarce held
By the drowsy midwife but it yarks and squeaks
Batlike, and batlike, would to the void again.
This he forbids, and yet not he, whose art,
His car unaiding, else had ne'er o'erleaped
The largess of a county in an hour.
Shallow.
Neat, faith, la! For how a brace of twins now, the far side Cotsall, of a snowy night, my lord?
Falstaff.
A pregnant wit. Which of thy misdeeds, Hal, hath raised this angel to help us? I'll ask Doll.
Prince.
Peace, dunghill, peace! She was never of Doll's company.
Portia.
Extreme and urgent need, hath visited you,
Or, in the unprobeable decree of Time,
May visit and masterfully constrain, think well
Ere your abhorrence of new enginery
Seal up the avenues of mercy here!
Ch. Justice.
(Albeit it was called Northumberland)
With hellish engines drawn across the street
In an opposed and desperate barrier
Unto the lieges' progress.
It was a passing humour of the car—
Gusty incontinence which, overlooked,
As unregard oft cows pretension,
May well not chance again.
Ch. Justice.
But if it chance?
Portia.
Memory and record of miracle
Vouchsafed, like this your prayed-for mercy, once,
And, in default of quail, rain from her gate
Heaven's sweetest choristers—then it may fall,
But not till then!
Fluellen.
Put—put—look you, she is telling the old shentlemans to wait till the sky shall rain larks! It is open contempts of Courts!
Nym.
Ay, there's humours in them all. But I think the old man's humour is sweeter.
Ch. Justice.
Not gratitude, but livelier insolence,
And through my softened verdict after years
Grow bold to break the law? How if our England—
Loverly, temperate, the midmost close of peace—
Dissolve in smoke and oils along the green,
Till sickened memory conceive no minute
Unharried, unpollutable, unhooted?
If I loose these, what do I loose on England?
Portia.
The hour we dread o'ertops us while we wonder,
Not asking sufferance, but imposing change,
Most multitudinously. Hark, it sings i' the wind!
Ariel
(invisible) sings:
In a sunbeam's path I lie!
There I crouch while crowds do cry,
After somersaults muddily!
Where I lie, where I lie, shall I live now
Under the bonnet that bangs on my brow?
(to Prince).
The Chief Justice is mazed by the fairies. He hath great motions towards virtue. He'll let us go.
Ch. Justice.
And more our horses who, poor winkered fools,
Hearing their dooms outstrip them, cast aside
And pole the all-shattered house-fronts.
We ourselves,
Of purpose to repair to Westminster,
Infirmity and age consenting, signalled
From her hot lair an horseless chariot
Which, in the recorded twelfth part of an hour,
Bore our inviolate ermines half a league.
It is, and woe it is, the chill refuge,
The lean, unenvied privilege of Age,
To meet new changes with old courtesy,
Not as averting change but sparing souls
Worn weak, and bodies extenuate with the years
That heed nor never heeded! Set them free.
What has been was, and what will be, must be!
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