Henry IV Part 1

A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, If that the devil and mischance look big Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

A thousand of his people butchered, Upon whose dead corpse’ there was such misuse, Such beastly shameless transformation, By those Welshwomen done as may not be Without much shame retold or spoken of.

All plum’d like estridges, that with the wind Bated like eagles having lately bath’d, Glittering in golden coats like images, As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.

And I am glad of it with all my heart. I had rather be a kitten and cry mew Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.

And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

And being fed by us you us’d us so As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo’s bird, Useth the sparrow; did oppress our nest, Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk

And dress’d myself in such humility That I did pluck allegiance from men’s hearts, Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths, Even in the presence of the crowned King.

And for whose death we in the world’s wide mouth Live scandaliz’d and foully spoken of.

And further, I have learn’d, The King himself in person is set forth, Or hitherwards intended speedily, With strong and mighty preparation.

And here the smug and silver Trent shall run In a new channel fair and evenly. It shall not wind with such a deep indent, To rob me of so rich a bottom here.

And if we live, we live to tread on kings, If die, brave death, when princes die with us! Now for our consciences, the arms are fair When the intent of bearing them is just.

And in conclusion drove us to seek out This head of safety, and withal to pry Into his title, the which we find Too indirect for long continuance.

And like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

And never yet did insurrection want Such water-colors to impaint his cause, Nor moody beggars, starving for a time Of pell-mell havoc and confusion.

And shall it in more shame be further spoken, That you are fool’d, discarded, and shook off By him for whom these shames ye underwent?

And when he heard him swear and vow to God He came but to be Duke of Lancaster, To sue his livery and beg his peace, With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,

As heart can think. There is not such a word Spoke of in Scotland as this term of fear.

As is the difference betwixt day and night The hour before the heavenly-harness’d team Begins his golden progress in the east.

But come yourself with speed to us again, For more is to be said and to be done Than out of anger can be uttered.

but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintain’d that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years, God reward me for it!

But to say I know more harm in him than in myself, were to say more than I know.

By God, I cannot flatter, I do defy The tongues of soothers, but a braver place In my heart’s love hath no man than yourself. Nay, task me to my word, approve me, lord.

By God, thou hast deceiv’d me, Lancaster, I did not think thee lord of such a spirit. Before, I lov’d thee as a brother, John, But now I do respect thee as my soul.

Come let me taste my horse, Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales. Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse, Meet and ne’er part till one drop down a corse.

Cousin, farewell! No further go in this Than I by letters shall direct your course.

Dost thou hear, Hal? Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit. Thou art essentially made, without seeming so.

Eight yards of uneven ground is threescore and ten miles afoot with me, and the stony-hearted villains know it well enough. A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another!

For mine own part, I could be well content To entertain the lag end of my life With quiet hours; for I protest I have not sought the day of this dislike.

for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also.

Forty let it be! My father and Glendower being both away, The powers of us may serve so great a day. Come let us take a muster speedily. Doomsday is near, die all, die merrily.

GLEND. Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command The devil. HOT. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil By telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil.

Give him as much as will make him a royal man, and send him back again to my mother.

He bids you name your griefs, and with all speed You shall have your desires with interest And pardon absolute for yourself and these Herein misled by your suggestion.

How bloodily the sun begins to peer Above yon bulky hill! The day looks pale At his distemp’rature.

I am content that he shall take the odds Of his great name and estimation, And will, to save the blood on either side, Try fortune with him in a single fight.

I am now of all humors that have show’d themselves humors since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve a’ clock at midnight.

I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn’d, Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree, And that would set my teeth nothing an edge, Nothing so much as mincing poetry.

I know not whether God will have it so For some displeasing service I have done, That in his secret doom, out of my blood He’ll breed revengement and a scourge for me;

I know you all, and will a while uphold The unyok’d humor of your idleness, Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world,

I saw him hold Lord Percy at the point, With lustier maintenance than I did look for Of such an ungrown warrior. PRINCE. O, this boy Lends mettle to us all!

I understand thy looks. That pretty Welsh Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens I am too perfect in, and but for shame, In such a parley should I answer thee.

I will from henceforth rather be myself, Mighty and to be fear’d, than my condition, Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, And therefore lost that title of respect Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.

I would the state of time had first been whole Ere he by sickness had been visited, His health was never better worth than now.

If not, the end of life cancels all bands, And I will die a hundred thousand deaths Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.

If thou were sensible of courtesy, I should not make so dear a show of zeal; But let my favors hide thy mangled face, And even in thy behalf I’ll thank myself For doing these fair rites of tenderness.

If well-respected honor bid me on, I hold as little counsel with weak fear As you, my lord, or any Scot that this day lives.

It was myself, my brother, and his son, That brought you home, and boldly did outdare The dangers of the time.

I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak Nothing but “Mortimer,” and give it him To keep his anger still in motion.

I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous, As full of peril and adventerous spirit As to o’erwalk a current roaring loud On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

I’ll so offend, to make offense a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will.

Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul that thou soldest him on Good Friday last, for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon’s leg?

Look how we can, or sad or merrily, Interpretation will misquote our looks, And we shall feed like oxen at a stall, The better cherish’d, still the nearer death.

Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night’s body be call’d thieves of the day’s beauty.

Never did base and rotten policy Color her working with such deadly wounds, Nor never could the noble Mortimer Receive so many, and all willingly.

No, on the barren mountains let him starve; For I shall never hold that man my friend Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost To ransom home revolted Mortimer.

Not an inch further. But hark you, Kate, Whither I go, thither shall you go too; Today will I set forth, tomorrow you. Will this content you, Kate?

O, I should have a heavy miss of thee If I were much in love with vanity! Death hath not strook so fat a deer today, Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.

O, pardon me that I descend so low To show the line and the predicament Wherein you range under this subtle king!

Our business valued, some twelve days hence Our general forces at Bridgenorth shall meet. Our hands are full of business, let’s away, Advantage feeds him fat while men delay.

Owen, Owen, the same; and his son-in-law Mortimer, and old Northumberland, and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs a’ horseback up a hill perpendicular—

Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots.

Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, Meeting the check of such another day, And since this business so fair is done, Let us not leave till all our own be won.

Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

Send danger from the east unto the west, So honor cross it from the north to south, And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

Shall it for shame be spoken in these days, Or fill up chronicles in time to come, That men of your nobility and power Did gage them both in an unjust behalf

Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, March all one way and be no more oppos’d Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies.

Sit, cousin Percy, sit, good cousin Hotspur, For by that name as oft as Lancaster Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale, and with A rising sigh he wisheth you in heaven.

So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant And breathe short-winded accents of new broils To be commenc’d in stronds afar remote.

Some of us love you well, and even those some Envy your great deservings and good name, Because you are not of our quality, But stand against us like an enemy.

Sound all the lofty instruments of war, And by that music let us all embrace, For, heaven to earth, some of us never shall A second time do such a courtesy.

That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman! His industry is up stairs and down stairs, his eloquence the parcel of a reckoning.

That, being daily swallowed by men’s eyes, They surfeited with honey and began To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much.

The King will always think him in our debt, And think we think ourselves unsatisfied, Till he hath found a time to pay us home. And see already how he doth begin To make us strangers to his looks of love.

The hope and expectation of thy time Is ruin’d, and the soul of every man Prophetically do forethink thy fall.

The moon shines fair, you may away by night. I’ll haste the writer, and withal Break with your wives of your departure hence.

The skipping King, he ambled up and down, With shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits, Soon kindled and soon burnt, carded his state, Mingled his royalty with cap’ring fools,

The southren wind Doth play the trumpet to his purposes, And by his hollow whistling in the leaves Foretells a tempest and a blust’ring day.

The thieves have bound the true men. Now could thou and I rob the thieves and go merrily to London, it would be argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest forever.

Then should you be nothing but musical, for you are altogether govern’d by humors. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh.

There did he pause, but let me tell the world, If he outlive the envy of this day, England did never owe so sweet a hope, So much misconstrued in his wantonness.

There shalt thou know thy charge, and there receive Money and order for their furniture. The land is burning, Percy stands on high, And either we or they must lower lie.

There’s neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.

These signs have mark’d me extraordinary, And all the courses of my life do show I am not in the roll of common men.

They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh. But thoughts, the slaves of life, and life, time’s fool, And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop.

Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell, and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty.

Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war, And thus hath so bestirr’d thee in thy sleep, That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow, Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream,

To chase these pagans in those holy fields, Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d For our advantage on the bitter cross.

To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac’d moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honor by the locks,

To set so rich a main On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour? It were not good, for therein should we read The very bottom and the soul of hope, The very list, the very utmost bound Of all our fortunes.

Tomorrow, good Sir Michael, is a day Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men Must bide the touch; for, sir, at Shrewsbury, As I am truly given to understand,

Tut, never fear me, I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere, Nor can one England brook a double reign Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.

Uncle, adieu! O, let the hours be short, Till fields, and blows, and groans applaud our sport!

Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-color’d taffata;

Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move and what he hears may be believ’d, that the true prince may (for recreation sake) prove a false thief, for the poor abuses of the time want countenance.

What e’er Lord Harry Percy then had said To such a person, and in such a place, At such a time, with all the rest retold, May reasonably die, and never rise To do him wrong, or any way impeach What then he said, so he unsay it now.

When that this body did contain a spirit, A kingdom for it was too small a bound, But now two paces of the vilest earth Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.

Where you did give a fair and natural light, And be no more an exhal’d meteor, A prodigy of fear, and a portent Of broached mischief to the unborn times?

—why, that’s certain. ’Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink, but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool Art thou to break into this woman’s mood, Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!

Yea, there thou mak’st me sad, and mak’st me sin In envy that my Lord Northumberland Should be the father to so blest a son— A son who is the theme of honor’s tongue, Amongst a grove the very straightest plant,