The least of which haunting a nobleman
Loseth men’s hearts and leaves behind a stain
Upon the beauty of all parts besides,
Beguiling them of commendation.
HOTSPUR Well, I am schooled. Good manners be your speed!
Here come our wives, and let us take our leave.
Enter Glendower with the Ladies
MORTIMER This is the deadly spite that angers me:
My wife can speak no English, I no Welsh.
GLENDOWER My daughter weeps. She’ll not part with you,
She’ll be a soldier too, she’ll to the wars.
MORTIMER Good father, tell her that she and my aunt Percy
Shall follow in your conduct speedily.
Glendower speaks to her in Welsh, and she answers him in the same
GLENDOWER She is desperate here: a peevish self-willed harlotry,
One that no persuasion can do good upon.
The Lady speaks in Welsh
MORTIMER I understand thy looks: that pretty Welsh
Which thou pour’st down from these swelling heavens
I am too perfect in, and, but for shame,
In such a parley should I answer thee.
The Lady [speaks] again in Welsh
I understand thy kisses and thou mine,
And that’s a feeling disputation.
But I will never be a truant, love,
Till I have learned thy language, for thy tongue
Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned,
Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bow’r,
With ravishing division, to her lute.
GLENDOWER Nay, if thou melt, then will she run mad.
The Lady speaks again in Welsh
MORTIMER O, I am ignorance itself in this!
GLENDOWER She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down
And rest your gentle head upon her lap,
And she will sing the song that pleaseth you
And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,
Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,
Making such difference ’twixt wake and sleep
As is the difference betwixt day and night
The hour before the heavenly-harnessed team
Begins his golden progress in the east.
MORTIMER With all my heart I’ll sit and hear her sing:
By that time will our book, I think, be drawn.
GLENDOWER Do so,
And those musicians that shall play to you
Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence,
And straight they shall be here: sit, and attend.
HOTSPUR Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down: come,
quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.
LADY PERCY Go, ye giddy goose.
The music plays
HOTSPUR Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh, and ’tis
no marvel he is so humorous. By’r lady, he’s a good musician.
LADY PERCY Then would you be nothing but musical, for you are
altogether governed by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear
the lady sing in Welsh.
HOTSPUR I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.
LADY PERCY Wouldst have thy head broken?
HOTSPUR No.
LADY PERCY Then be still.
HOTSPUR Neither, ’tis a woman’s fault.
LADY PERCY Now God help thee!
HOTSPUR To the Welsh lady’s bed.
LADY PERCY What’s that?
HOTSPUR Peace, she sings.
Here the Lady sings a Welsh song
HOTSPUR Come, I’ll have your song too.
To Lady Percy
LADY PERCY Not mine, in good sooth.
HOTSPUR Not yours, in good sooth?
You swear like a comfit-maker’s wife.
‘Not you, in good sooth’, and ‘As true as I live’,
And ‘As God shall mend me’ and ‘As sure as day!’
And givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths,
As if thou never walk’st further than Finsbury.
Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,
A good mouth-filling oath, and leave ‘in sooth’,
And such protest of pepper-gingerbread,
To velvet-guards and Sunday-citizens.
Come, sing.
LADY PERCY I will not sing.
HOTSPUR ’Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breast
teacher. An the indentures be drawn, I’ll away within these
two hours, and so, come in when ye will.
Exit
GLENDOWER Come, come, Lord Mortimer, you are as slow
As hot Lord Percy is on fire to go.
By this our book is drawn, we’ll but seal,
And then to horse immediately.
MORTIMER With all my heart.
Exeunt
Act 3 Scene 2
running scene 9
Location: the royal court.
Enter the King, Prince of Wales and others
KING HENRY IV Lords, give us leave. The Prince of Wales and I
Must have some private conference. But be near at hand,
For we shall presently have need of you.
Exeunt Lords
I know not whether heaven 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.
But thou dost in thy passages of life
Make me believe that thou art only marked
For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven
To punish my mistreadings. Tell me else,
Could such inordinate and low desires,
Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts,
Such barren pleasures, rude society,
As thou art matched withal and grafted to,
Accompany the greatness of thy blood
And hold their level with thy princely heart?
PRINCE HENRY So please your majesty, I would I could
Quit all offences with as clear excuse
As well as I am doubtless I can purge
Myself of many I am charged withal:
Yet such extenuation let me beg,
As, in reproof of many tales devised,
Which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear
By smiling pick-thanks and base news-mongers,
I may, for some things true, wherein my youth
Hath faulty wand’red and irregular,
Find pardon on my true submission.
KING HENRY IV Heaven pardon thee! Yet let me wonder, Harry,
At thy affections, which do hold a wing
Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.
Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost,
Which by thy younger brother is supplied,
And art almost an alien to the hearts
Of all the court and princes of my blood.
The hope and expectation of thy time
Is ruined, and the soul of every man
Prophetically do forethink thy fall.
Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap to vulgar company,
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,
Had still kept loyal to possession
And left me in reputeless banishment,
A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.
By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wondered at,
That men would tell their children, ‘This is he’.
Others would say, ‘Where? Which is Bullingbrook?’
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dressed 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 crownèd king.
Thus I did keep my person fresh and new;
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne’er seen but wondered at: and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast
And won by rareness such solemnity.
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 carping fools,
Had his great name profanèd with their scorns
And gave his countenance, against his name,
To laugh at gibing boys and stand the push
Of every beardless vain comparative;
Grew a companion to the common streets,
Enfeoffed himself to popularity,
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.
So when he had occasion to be seen,
He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded, seen, but with such eyes
As, sick and blunted with community,
Afford no extraordinary gaze,
Such as is bent on sun-like majesty
When it shines seldom in admiring eyes.
But rather drowsed and hung their eyelids down,
Slept in his face and rendered such aspect
As cloudy men use to do to their adversaries,
Being with his presence glutted, gorged and full.
And in that very line, Harry, standest thou,
For thou hast lost thy princely privilege
With vile participation. Not an eye
But is a-weary of thy common sight,
Save mine, which hath desired to see thee more,
Which now doth that I would not have it do,
Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.
PRINCE HENRY I shall hereafter, my thrice-gracious lord,
Be more myself.
KING HENRY IV For all the world
As thou art to this hour was Richard then,
When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh,
And even as I was then is Percy now.
Now, by my sceptre and my soul to boot,
He hath more worthy interest to the state
Than thou, the shadow of succession;
For of no right, nor colour like to right,
He doth fill fields with harness in the realm,
Turns head against the lion’s armèd jaws,
And, being no more in debt to years than thou,
Leads ancient lords and reverend bishops on
To bloody battles and to bruising arms.
What never-dying honour hath he got
Against renownèd Douglas, whose high deeds,
Whose hot incursions and great name in arms
Holds from all soldiers chief majority
And military title capital
Through all the kingdoms that acknowledge Christ!
Thrice hath the Hotspur, Mars in swaddling clothes,
This infant warrior, in his enterprises
Discomfited great Douglas, ta’en him once,
Enlargèd him and made a friend of him,
To fill the mouth of deep defiance up
And shake the peace and safety of our throne.
And what say you to this? Percy, Northumberland,
The archbishop’s grace of York, Douglas, Mortimer,
Capitulate against us and are up.
But wherefore do I tell these news to thee?
Why, Harry, do I tell thee of my foes,
Which art my near’st and dearest enemy?
Thou that art like enough, through vassal fear,
Base inclination and the start of spleen,
To fight against me under Percy’s pay,
To dog his heels and curtsy at his frowns,
To show how much thou art degenerate.
PRINCE HENRY Do not think so. You shall not find it so.
And heaven forgive them that so much have swayed
Your majesty’s good thoughts away from me!
I will redeem all this on Percy’s head
And in the closing of some glorious day
Be bold to tell you that I am your son,
When I will wear a garment all of blood
And stain my favours in a bloody mask,
Which, washed away, shall scour my shame with it.
And that shall be the day, whene’er it lights,
That this same child of honour and renown,
This gallant Hotspur, this all-praisèd knight,
And your unthought-of Harry chance to meet.
For every honour sitting on his helm,
Would they were multitudes, and on my head
My shames redoubled! For the time will come,
That I shall make this northern youth exchange
His glorious deeds for my indignities.
Percy is but my factor, good my lord,
To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf,
And I will call him to so strict account,
That he shall render every glory up,
Yea, even the slightest worship of his time,
Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart.
This, in the name of heaven, I promise here:
The which if I perform and do survive
I do beseech your majesty may salve
The long-grown wounds of my intemperature.
And I will die a hundred thousand deaths
Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.
KING HENRY IV A hundred thousand rebels die in this:
Thou shalt have charge and sovereign trust herein.
Enter Blunt
How now, good Blunt? Thy looks are full of speed.
BLUNT So hath the business that I come to speak of.
Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word
That Douglas and the English rebels met
The eleventh of this month at Shrewsbury.
A mighty and a fearful head they are,
If promises be kept on every hand,
As ever offered foul play in a state.
KING HENRY IV The Earl of Westmorland set forth today,
With him my son, Lord John of Lancaster,
For this advertisement is five days old.
On Wednesday next, Harry, thou shalt set forward:
On Thursday we ourselves will march.
Our meeting is Bridgnorth, and, Harry, you shall march
Through Gloucestershire, by which account,
Our business valuèd, some twelve days hence
Our general forces at Bridgnorth shall meet.
Our hands are full of business: let’s away.
Advantage feeds him fat while men delay.
Exeunt
Act 3 Scene 3
running scene 10
Location: the tavern in Eastcheap
Enter Falstaff and Bardolph
FALSTAFF Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last
action? Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why my skin hangs
about me like an old lady’s loose gown. I am withered like an
old apple-john. Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I
am in some liking. I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I
shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten
what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer’s
horse. The inside of a church! Company, villainous
company, hath been the spoil of me.
BARDOLPH Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long.
FALSTAFF Why, there is it: come sing me a bawdy song, make
me merry. I was as virtuously
given as a gentleman need to
be; virtuous enough: swore little, diced not — above seven
times a week, went to a bawdy-house not above once in a
quarter — of an hour, paid money that I borrowed — three
of four times, lived well and in good compass: and now I live
out of all order, out of compass.
BARDOLPH Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be
out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.
FALSTAFF Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life:
thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop,
but ’tis in the nose of thee; thou art the Knight of the
Burning Lamp.
BARDOLPH Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
FALSTAFF No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a
man doth of a death’s-head or a memento mori: I never see thy
face but I think upon hellfire and Dives that lived in purple, for
there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any
way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath
should be ‘By this fire’, but thou art altogether given over; and
wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter
darkness. When thou ran’st up Gad’s Hill in the night to
catch my horse, if I did not think that thou hadst been an
ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money.
O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light!
Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches,
walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern. But
the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me
lights as good cheap as the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I
have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time
this two and thirty years. Heaven reward me for it!
BARDOLPH I would my face were in your belly!
FALSTAFF So should I be sure to be heart-burned.
Enter Hostess [Quickly]
How now, Dame Partlet the hen! Have you inquired yet who
picked my pocket?
HOSTESS QUICKLY Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John?
Do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have searched, I
have inquired, 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.
FALSTAFF Ye lie, hostess: Bardolph was shaved and lost many