RUSSELL ’Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!
SIR JOHN God-a-mercy! ! So should I be sure to be heart-burnt.
Enter Hostess
How now, Dame Partlet the hen, have you enquired
yet who picked my pocket?
HOSTESS Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John? Do you think I keep thieves in my house ? I have searched, I have enquired; so has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant. The tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.
SIR JOHN Ye lie, Hostess: Russell was shaved and lost many a hair, and I’ll be sworn my pocket was picked. Go to, you are a woman, go. 60
HOSTESS Who, I? No, I defy thee! God’s light, I was never called so in mine own house before.
SIR JOHN Go to, I know you well enough.
HOSTESS No, Sir John, you do not know me, Sir John; I know you, Sir John. You owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it. I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.
SIR JOHN Dowlas, filthy dowlas. I have given them away to bakers’ wives; they have made bolters of them.
HOSTESS Now as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell. You owe money here besides, Sir John: for your diet, and by-drinkings, and money lent you, four-and-twenty pound.
SIR JOHN (pointing at Russell) He had his part of it. Let him pay.
HOSTESS He? Alas, he is poor; he hath nothing.
SIR JOHN How, poor? Look upon his face. What call you rich? Let them coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks, I’ll not pay a denier. What, will you make a younker of me ? Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn, but I shall have my pocket picked? I have lost a seal-ring of my grandfather’s worth forty mark.
HOSTESS O Jesu, (to Russell) I have heard the Prince tell him, I know not how oft, that that ring was copper.
SIR JOHN How ? The Prince is a jack, a sneak-up.
Enter Prince Harry and Harvey, marching; and Sir John Oldcastle meets them, playing upon his truncheon like a fife
How now, lad, is the wind in that door, i’faith? Must
we all march?
RUSSELL Yea, two and two, Newgate fashion.
HOSTESS My lord, I pray you hear me.
PRINCE HARRY
What sayst thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy
husband?
I love him well; he is an honest man.
HOSTESS Good my lord, hear me!!
SIR JOHN Prithee, let her alone, and list to me.
PRINCE HARRY What sayst thou, Jack?
SIR JOHN The other night I fell asleep here behind the arras, and had my pocket picked. This house is turned bawdy-house: they pick pockets.
PRINCE HARRY What didst thou lose, Jack? 100
SIR JOHN Wilt thou believe me, Hal, three or four bonds of forty pound apiece, and a seal-ring of my grandfather’s.
PRINCE HARRY A trifle, some eightpenny matter.
HOSTESS So I told him, my lord; and I said I heard your grace say so; and, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is, and said he would cudgel you. 108
PRINCE HARRY What? He did not !
HOSTESS There’s neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.
SIR JOHN There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune, nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and, for womanhood, Maid Marian may be the deputy’s wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing, go!
HOSTESS Say, what thing, what thing?
SIR JOHN What thing? Why, a thing to thank God on.
HOSTESS I am no thing to thank God on. I would thou shouldst know it, I am an honest man’s wife; and setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so.
SIR JOHN Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise.
HOSTESS Say, what beast, thou knave, thou?
sIR JOHN What beast? Why, an otter.
PRINCE HARRY An otter, Sir John? Why an otter?
SIR JOHN Why? She’s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her.
HOSTESS Thou art an unjust man in saying so. Thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave, thou.
PRINCE HARRY Thou sayst true, Hostess, and he slanders thee most grossly.
HOSTESS So he doth you, my lord, and said this other day you owed him a thousand pound.
PRINCE HARRY (to Sir John) Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?
SIR JOHN A thousand pound, Hal? A million! Thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love.
HOSTESS Nay, my lord, he called you ’jack’ and said he would cudgel you.
SIR JOHN Did I, Russell?
RUSSELL Indeed, Sir John, you said so.
SIR JOHN Yea, if he said my ring was copper.
PRINCE HARRY I say ’tis copper; darest thou be as good as thy word now?
SIR JOHN Why, Hal, thou knowest as thou art but man I dare, but as thou art prince, I fear thee as I fear the roaring of the lion’s whelp.
PRINCE HARRY And why not as the lion?
SIR JOHN The King himself is to be feared as the lion. Dost thou think I’ll fear thee as I fear thy father? Nay, an I do, I pray God my girdle break.
PRINCE HARRY O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! But sirrah, there’s no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in this bosom of thine; it is all filled up with guts and midriff. Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket? Why, thou whoreson impudent embossed rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket but tavern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy-houses, and one poor pennyworth of sugar-candy to make thee long-winded-if thy pocket were enriched with any other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet you will stand to it, you will not pocket up wrong. Art thou not ashamed?
SIR JOHN Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell, and what should poor Jack Oldcastle do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty. You confess, then, you picked my pocket.
PRINCE HARRY It appears so by the story.
SIR JOHN Hostess, I forgive thee. Go make ready breakfast. Love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests. Thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason; thou seest I am pacified still. Nay, prithee, be gone. Exit Hostess Now, Hal, to the news at court. For the robbery, lad, how is that answered?
PRINCE HARRY O, my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee. The money is paid back again.
SIR JOHN O, I do not like that paying back; ’tis a double labour. 181
PRINCE HARRY I am good friends with my father, and may do anything.
SIR JOHN Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou dost, and do it with unwashed hands too.
RUSSELL Do, my lord.
PRINCE HARRY I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.
SIR JOHN I would it had been of horse ! Where shall I find one that can steal well? O, for a fine thief of the age of two-and-twenty or thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels-they offend none but the virtuous. I laud them, I praise them.
PRINCE HARRY Russell.
RUSSELL My lord?
PRINCE HARRY (giving letters)
Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster,
To my brother John; this to my lord of Westmorland.
Exit Russell
Go, Harvey, to horse, to horse, for thou and I
Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner time.
Exit Harvey
Jack, meet me tomorrow in the Temple Hall
At two o’clock in the afternoon.
There shalt thou know thy charge, and there receive
Money and order for their furniture.