NORTHUMBERLAND

I knew of this before, but to speak truth, This present grief had wipte it from my mind, Go in with me and counsel every man, The aptest way for safety and revenge, Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed, Never so few, and never yet more needs. exeunt. I pray thee loving wife and gentle daughter, Give even way unto my rough affairs, Put not you on the visage of the times, And be Like them to Percy troublesome. Alas sweet wife, my honour is at pawn, And but my going, nothing can redeem it. Beshrew your heart, 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 and other place, And find me worse provided. Come, come go in with me, 'tis with my mind, As with the tide, swelled up unto his height, That makes a still stand, running neither way, 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. What news Lord Bardolf? every minute now Should be the father of some Stratagem, The times are wild, contention Like a horse, Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loof, And bears down all before him. Good, and God will. How is this derived? Saw you the field? came you from Shrewsbury? Here comes my servant Travers who I sent On tuesday last to listen after news. Now Tram ers, what good tidings comes with you Would again, Said he, young Harry Percies spur was cold, Of Hotspur, Cold-spur, that rebellion Had met ill luck? Why should that gentleman that road by Travers, Give then such instances of lose? Yea this men brow, Like to a title leaf, Foretells the nature of a tragic volume, So looks the strand, whereon the imperious flood, Hath left a witnest usurpation. Say Mourton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury? How does my son and brother? Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek, Is apter then thy tongue to tell thy errand, Even such a man, so faint, so spirritlesse, So dull, so dead in look, so woe begun, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him, half his Troy was burned: But Priam found the fire, ere he, his tongue, And I, my Percies death ere thou reportest it. This thou wouldst say, Your son did thus and thus, Your brother thus: so fought the noble Dow+glas, Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds, But in the end, to stop my ear indeed, Thou hast a sighs to blow away this praise, Ending with brother, son, and all are dead. Why he is dead? See what a ready tongue Suspicion hath! He that but fears the thing he would not know, Hath by instinct, knowledge from others eyes, That what he feared is chanced: yet speak Mourton, Tell thou and Earl, his divination lies, And I will take it as a sweet disgrace, And make thee rich for doing me such wrong. Yet for all this, say not that Percy's dead, I see a strange confession in thine eye, Thou shakst thy head, and holdest it fear or sin, To speak a truth: if he be slain, The tongne offends not that reports his death, And he does sin that does belie the dead, Not he which says the dead is not alive, Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office, and his tongue Sounds ever after as a ullen bell, Remembered tolling a departing friend. For this I shall have time enough to mourn In poison there is physic, and these news, Having been well, that would have made me sick: Being sick, have (in some measure) made me well: And as the wretch whose fever-weakened joints, Like strengthless hinges buckle der life, Impatient of his fit, breaks Like fire Out of his keepers arms; even so my limbs, Weakened with grief being owe enraged with grief, Are thrice themselves: hence therefore thou nice crutch, A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel Must glove this hand and hence thou sickly continued e, Thou art a guard too wanton for the head, Which princes, flesh with conquest, aim to hit: Now bind my brows iron, and approach The raggedst hour and Spite dare bring, To frown upon the Northumberland, Let heaven kiss earth, now let not Nature's hand Keep the wild flood con ind, let Order die, And let this world no longer be a stage, To feed contention in a lingering act: But let one spirit of the first born Cain Reign in all bosoms, that each heart being set On bloody courses, the rude scene may end, And darkness be the burier of the dead.