SparkNotes: Complete Text of Henry IV Part 2: EPILOGUE.

	Shopping Cart Checkout

EPILOGUE.

Spoken by a Dancer.:

First my fear; then my courtesy; last my speech. My fear is, your

displeasure; my courtesy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your

pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for

what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I

should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the

urpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very

well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray

your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to

pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily

home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised

you I would be and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me

some and I will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you

infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to

use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of

your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction,

and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me: if the

gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the

gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloy'd with fat

meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it,

and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any

thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be

killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this

is not the man.

My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night:

and so kneel down before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

No Fear Vocabulary is a fun, easy guide to building a strong vocabulary quickly and using words effectively.
More...

Read the complete texts of Shakespeare's plays along with an easy to understand translation.
More...