 | Rudyard Kipling's Verse |  |
Act III
Argument.
A room in the Boar's Head Tavern set for a banquet to celebrate the discharge of the motorists from the King's Justice. Enter Prince Henry with Portia and several others. Also Falstaff drunk.
“When that I had and a little tinny car—
With a heigh-ho, the wind and the screen—”
Empty the radiator!
Hostess.
Sir John, there's one without says he's your twin-brother.
Falstaff.
I'll be the wise child. Have him in!
(Enter Hamlet drunk.)Ha! 'Begot a night's ride the cooler side o' the blanket! But if I be knight, he's Blood-Royal.
(To Prince Henry)Here's thy meat, Hal. I stay by our commons.
Prince.
Lions know lions, tho' they pride apart,
And Princes Princes. (To Hamlet)
For these, my companions
Rejoicingly from Justice, your pardon, Brother,
And, if it so far please, your title.
Hamlet.
Prince. Hamlet of Denmark. Your pardon too. 'Tis the Rhenish ... But conceive, sirrah, how it comes about 'neath the unjust stars, that by a few ink-spirts and frail pretences of the plays, a bald-pated ostler to Pegasus conjures life into such as we. In which continuance, mark you, we live and inextinguishably shake spheres: he having left the globe—how long? But I'll go find my double.
Prince
Rumour wrongs not the Danes. They drink too deep.
He is full proof. (To Hamlet)
Welcome, distracted Sir.
We have a foolish feast in hand, whereat,
Wine and our near escapes making familiar,
You shall be richer by a score of brothers
Before the score is paid. Seek and make merry.
(To Nym)
When the fate gentleman stumbles, lay him against
the arras, head highest. There's a crown waiting.
For him—not me. That's an old humour.
Prince
(to Portia).
Lovely lady,
To whom we go in bondage, first, of beauty,
And next of golden advocacy, snatching
Us from deservèd Bridewells,—name thy fee.
Portia.
I here confess I never owned a car;
Never, in all my life, have driven car;
And, touching any uses of a car,
From airiest hearsays were my pleadings drawn.
Therefore, I ask no guerdon but a car,
To experience on the heels of phantasy.
Prince.
A car? A car?
Portia.
I said even so—one car.
Hamlet
(to Falstaff).
Women have dread affections, for their spirit,
Out-plumbing ours, their easier sympathies
Frame both the passion and the appurtenance;
Else they go mad.
Falstaff.
True! Doll's a she-kite of the same feather.
But moulting—moulting!
Prince
(to Portia).
Nay, entertain conjecture of a time
When, horses fed to hounds, the thrice-stuffed streets
Ring, reek and rumble with opprobrious wains
Inveterately unheedful. Straw between
Their bulks the rash and pillioned amorists
Whose so mis-timed embracements on the wood
Sling hose and cap to inquest.
Beatrice.
Signor Prince, spare thyself a dry mouth and
Nym.
That's the new humour. To over-run the law and the lieges and say “I am a maid!”
Benedick.
To have at a man sideways out of a blind lane, and if he give natural vent on some broken head, arm, or running-board, her husband or lover must challenge him as though he were Claudio.
Beatrice.
That, Signor Benedick, shall never be. For when I drive you shall stay at home.
Shylock.
Whose virtue is—for every pound of flesh,
Or drop of blood, on such mistakings drawn,
Or push of market-bestial—being signed
(And some poor ducats paid) assures the holder
'Gainst every act and charge of law or leech.
Portia.
Shylock and I. He pays upon such bonds,
As, in mine office, I can well avouch;
Having prepared the like for Jessica
Whose paths are wayward. Let them see it, Jew.
(Shylock shows the company a Third Party Risks Policy. Hamlet and Falstaff talk apart'
Falstaff
(to Hamlet).
Unconfined truth! Cowards natural, both of us, with each some huddled deliverance of jest or philosophy to piece out the skirts of 'voided occasion. 'You drive?
Hamlet.
For action to be taken on the instant? I'd liever . . .! But, oh, God—I have no choice, being what I am and informed of myself past endurance.
Falstaff.
I have some same cause. How, now, of drink and lechery to drown self-knowledge?
Hamlet.
'Serves me not. There's a mad woman whom I drowned floats in my every cup, like borage. But I am not brave.
Falstaff.
Women in liquor! Double damnation and half satisfaction. Think you, Ham, that he who made us twins knew his work?
Hamlet.
I set no limit, being born of that soul—
One spark in all its hells. Flesh, canst thou tremble?
Falstaff.
I am too young to 'scape the cold fit o' mornings.
Hamlet.
Unlawful, and what darkness, whereto ours
Is the sun's targe, had he adventured down
(Holding the poised brain ice) till he arraigned
A murderess, a Moor, a mad King—me!
For ensample of all uttermosts of woe
Man bears or shall be designate to suffer
Inly or of the Gods!
Falstaff.
True enough. But the sack's here, and I have 'scaped Justice an hour. What a plague does the Jew with his papers?
Prince
(taking Insurance Policy from Shylock).
Behind the bond, are all my doubts resolved.
My fears? (To Portia)
Fair lady, warn me of thy comings
When that car rolls its fifty roystering steeds
Which is our instant, grateful, deadly gift!
Sir A. Aguecheek.
There's simply no back-alley left in
Prince.
Put cars away, and revel comrades all!
Feste.
When all about the joiners thrive—
And coffins quick as man can saw;—
When learning lady-owners drive,
And beaks sit brooding on the Law;
When roasting cabs hiss on the grass,
Then lightly brays the headlong ass:—
“Where to? To Hell!” Oh, word of fear,
Unpleasing to the charioteer!
... After the transparent reference to “the unjust stars,” the word “ink-spirts” leaps to the eye of the initiated as the simplest anagram of “scripsit” (the “k” being used, of course, for the desiderated “c,” and the apparently superfluous “n,” for the initial of Nicholas, Bacon's father). “Frail pretences” (taking the first three letters of the first, and the last four of the second, word) reveals, beyond negation, the same “Frances” who wrote to his King (Mar. 25, 1631) that he might be “frail and partake, etc.” The “bald-pated ostler” who “conjures life into, etc.,” is even more palpable and needs not the additional “continuance” which follows. Nor does this exhaust the category. Miss Nessa Droenbergh acutely explains Hamlet's opening remark to Prince Henry as a well-bred man's apology for phenomena due to liquor-excess— briefly a hiccough. But we must remember that Bacon, where possible, always “doubles his clues,” on the principle of the British railroads' “distant” and “home” signals. Thus after “Your pardon too,” comes “'Tis the Rhenish,” a German wine long traded into Britain and the Baltic, and later known as “hoc(k).” So we have, all but en clair, the author of “Shakespeare's” plays proclaiming, “Hoc scripsit Frances Bacon.” (Francis Bacon wrote this.) What more, in the name of sanity, is needed to convince anyone who is not delivered over to the “man of Stratford” complex? —From Professor O. P. Callowitz's William the World-Impostor.
The text is corrupt. It is impossible to imagine a street paved with wood. But mis-timed embracements might well be “untoward.” —Johnson.
At this epoch the London 'prentices wore cloth caps, and their female companions stockings, which had then been largely discovered by the vulgar. —Theobald.
Running aboard—in the sense of vessels falling “foul” of each other at sea. (Conjectural.) —Johnson.
An allusion to the old distich:—
Give Courage.’
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