30 The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth EPILOGUE.
EPILOGUE.
First my fear; then my curtsy; last my speech. My fear is your displeasure; my
curtsy, 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 purpose,
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 cloyed 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 anything I know, Falstaff shall die
of a sweat, unless already he 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.