Thus, for instance, the historical Hotspur was twenty years older than Hal, but Daniel made them contemporaries for dramatic effect. The intermingling of historical materials and comedy, in the context of the prince’s riotous youth, is developed from the anonymous Queen’s Men play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (performed late 1580s), which includes characters who may be regarded as crude prototypes of Falstaff and Poins.

TEXT: Quarto 1598 (text probably based on a scribal transcript of Shakespeare’s manuscript; two printings, one of them lost save for a few sheets), reprinted 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613, 1622 (indicating that this was one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays). The Folio text was set from the Fifth Quarto, correcting some but nowhere near all of its mistakes. Oaths were systematically removed in accordance with the 1606 Parliamentary “Act to Restrain the Abuses of Players”: since the Act applied to stage performances, not printed books, this suggests that a theatrical manuscript also lay behind the Folio text. There is therefore good reason to regard Folio as an autonomous text, with its own authority. Our text is based on Folio, but where there are manifest errors, either derived from the Quarto tradition or introduced by the Folio compositors, we restore readings from the First Quarto.

THE FIRST PART OF
HENRY THE FOURTH,
with the Life and
Death of Henry
Surnamed Hotspur

LIST OF PARTS

KING HENRY IV, formerly Henry Bullingbrook, Duke of Lancaster

PRINCE HENRY, Prince of Wales, Hal or Harry Monmouth

PRINCE JOHN, his younger brother, Lord of Lancaster

Earl of WESTMORLAND

Sir Walter BLUNT

Sir John FALSTAFF

Edward or Ned POINS

PETO

BARDOLPH

Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND, Henry Percy

Earl of WORCESTER, Thomas Percy, his younger brother

HOTSPUR, Sir Henry (or Harry) Percy, Northumberland’s son

Lord Edmund MORTIMER, Earl of March, Hotspur’s brother-inlaw

Owen GLENDOWER, Welsh lord, Mortimer’s father-in-law

Earl of DOUGLAS, a Scots Lord

Sir Richard VERNON

ARCHBISHOP of York, Richard Scroop

SIR MICHAEL, member of Archbishop’s household

LADY PERCY (Kate), Hotspur’s wife, Mortimer’s sister

LADY MORTIMER, Mortimer’s wife, Glendower’s daughter

FIRST CARRIER (Mugs)

OSTLER

SECOND CARRIER (Tom)

GADSHILL

CHAMBERLAIN

FIRST TRAVELLER

SECOND TRAVELLER

FRANCIS, an apprentice drawer or tapster

VINTNER

HOSTESS QUICKLY, landlady of a tavern

SHERIFF

SERVANT

MESSENGER

Lords, Soldiers, other Travellers, and Attendants

Act 1 Scene 1

running scene 1

Location: the royal court. Henry Bullingbrook had usurped the English crown in 1399 when he forced his cousin, Richard II, to abdicate. Richard died shortly afterward in mysterious circumstances. The early years of Henry’s reign were dominated by a determination to justify and consolidate his claim to the throne and by a number of insurrections. As the play opens, Henry voices his anxiety about civil unrest

Enter the King, Lord John of Lancaster, [the] Earl of Westmorland, with others

KING HENRY IV   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 commenced in strands afar remote.
    No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
    Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood.
    No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
    Nor bruise her flow’rets with the armèd hoofs
    Of hostile paces. Those opposèd eyes,
    Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
    All of one nature, of one substance bred,
    Did lately meet in the intestine shock
    And furious close of civil butchery
    Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
    March all one way and be no more opposed
    Against acquaintance, kindred and allies.
    The edge of war, like an ill-sheathèd knife,
    No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
    As far as to the sepulchre of Christ —
    Whose soldier now, under whose blessèd cross
    We are impressèd and engaged to fight —
    Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,
    Whose arms were moulded in their mother’s womb
    To chase these pagans in those holy fields
    Over whose acres walked those blessèd feet
    Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed
    For our advantage on the bitter cross.
    But this our purpose is a twelvemonth old,
    And bootless ’tis to tell you we will go:
    Therefore we meet not now.— Then let me hear
    Of you, my gentle cousin Westmorland,
    What yesternight our council did decree
    In forwarding this dear expedience.

WESTMORLAND   My liege, this haste was hot in question,
    And many limits of the charge set down
    But yesternight, when all athwart there came
    A post from Wales loaden with heavy news;
    Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer,
    Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight
    Against the irregular and wild Glendower,
    Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
    And a thousand of his people butcherèd,
    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.

KING HENRY IV   It seems then that the tidings of this broil
    Brake off our business for the Holy Land.

WESTMORLAND   This matched with other like, my gracious lord.
    Far more uneven and unwelcome news
    Came from the north and thus it did report:
    On Holy Rood day, the gallant Hotspur there,
    Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,
    That ever-valiant and approvèd Scot,
    At Holmedon met, where they did spend
    A sad and bloody hour,
    As by discharge of their artillery,
    And shape of likelihood, the news was told,
    For he that brought them, in the very heat
    And pride of their contention did take horse,
    Uncertain of the issue any way.

KING HENRY IV   Here is a dear and true industrious friend,
    Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse,
    Stained with the variation of each soil
    Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours,
    And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news.
    The Earl of Douglas is discomfited,
    Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knights,
    Balked in their own blood did Sir Walter see
    On Holmedon’s plains. Of prisoners, Hotspur took
    Mordake, Earl of Fife, and eldest son
    To beaten Douglas, and the Earl of Athol,
    Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith.
    And is not this an honourable spoil?
    A gallant prize? Ha, cousin, is it not?

WESTMORLAND   In faith, it is a conquest for a prince to boast of.

KING HENRY IV   Yea, there thou mak’st me sad and mak’st me sin
    In envy that my Lord Northumberland
    Should be the father of so blest a son:
    A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue;
    Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant,
    Who is sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride,
    Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,
    See riot and dishonour stain the brow
    Of my young Harry. O, that it could be proved
    That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
    In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
    And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet:
    Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.
    But let him from my thoughts. What think you, coz,
    Of this young Percy’s pride? The prisoners,
    Which he in this adventure hath surprised,
    To his own use he keeps, and sends me word
    I shall have none but Mordake Earl of Fife.

WESTMORLAND   This is his uncle’s teaching. This is Worcester,
    Malevolent to you in all aspects,
    Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up
    The crest of youth against your dignity.

KING HENRY IV   But I have sent for him to answer this.
    And for this cause awhile we must neglect
    Our holy purpose to Jerusalem.
    Cousin, on Wednesday next our council we
    Will hold at Windsor, and so inform the lords.
    But come yourself with speed to us again,
    For more is to be said and to be done
    Than out of anger can be utterèd.

WESTMORLAND   I will, my liege.

Exeunt

Act 1 Scene 2

running scene 2

Location: in London, but unspecified; perhaps the prince’s apartments

Enter Henry, Prince of Wales [and] Sir John Falstaff

FALSTAFF   Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE HENRY   Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack
    and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon
    benches in the afternoon, that thou hast forgotten to
    demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a
    devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? 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-coloured
    taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous
    to demand the time of the day.

FALSTAFF   Indeed, you come near me now, Hal, for we that
    take purses go by the moon and seven stars, and not by
    Phoebus, he, ‘that wand’ring knight so fair’. And, I prithee,
    sweet wag, when thou art king, as God save thy grace —
    majesty I should say, for grace thou wilt have none—

PRINCE HENRY   What, none?

FALSTAFF   No, not so much as will serve to be prologue to an
    egg and butter.

PRINCE HENRY   Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.

FALSTAFF   Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not
    us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the
    day’s beauty. Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the
    shade, minions of the moon; and let men say we be men of
    good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble
    and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance
    we steal.

PRINCE HENRY   Thou say’st well, and it holds well too, for the
    fortune of us that are the moon’s men doth ebb and flow like
    the sea, being governed, as the sea is, by the moon. As, for
    proof, now: a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on
    Monday night and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday
    morning; got with swearing ‘Lay by’ and spent with crying
    ‘Bring in’, now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder and
    by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.

FALSTAFF   Thou say’st true, lad. And is not my hostess of the
    tavern a most sweet wench?

PRINCE HENRY   As is the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle.
    And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

FALSTAFF   How now, how now, mad wag? What, in thy quips
    and thy quiddities ? What a plague have I to do with a buff
    jerkin?

PRINCE HENRY   Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of
    the tavern?

FALSTAFF   Well, thou hast called her to a reck’ning many a
    time and oft.

PRINCE HENRY   Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?

FALSTAFF   No, I’ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.

PRINCE HENRY   Yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would
    stretch, and where it would not, I have used my credit.

FALSTAFF   Yea, and so used it that
    were it here apparent that thou art heir apparent — but, I prithee, sweet wag, shall
    there be gallows standing in England when thou art king?
    And resolution thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old
    father antic the law? Do not thou, when thou art a king,
    hang a thief.

PRINCE HENRY   No, thou shalt.

FALSTAFF   Shall I? O rare! I’ll be a brave judge.

PRINCE HENRY   Thou judgest false already: I mean, thou shalt
    have the hanging of the thieves and so become a rare
    hangman.

FALSTAFF   Well, Hal, well, and in some sort it jumps with my
    humour as well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.

PRINCE HENRY   For obtaining of suits

FALSTAFF   Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman
    hath no lean wardrobe. I am as melancholy as a gib cat or a
    lugged bear.

PRINCE HENRY   Or an old lion, or a lover’s lute.

FALSTAFF   Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.

PRINCE HENRY   What say’st thou to a hare, or the melancholy of
    Moorditch?

FALSTAFF   Thou hast the most unsavoury similes and art
    indeed the most comparative, rascalli’st, sweet young prince.
    But, Hal, I prithee trouble me no more with vanity. I would
    thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to
    be bought. An old lord of the council rated me the other day
    in the street about you, sir, but I marked him not. And yet he
    talked very wisely, but I regarded him not; and yet he talked
    wisely, and in the street too.

PRINCE HENRY   Thou didst well, for no man regards it.

FALSTAFF   O, thou hast damnable iteration and art indeed able
    to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm unto me, Hal,
    God forgive thee for it! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew
    nothing. And now I am, if a man should speak truly, little
    better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I
    will give it over. An I do not, I am a villain. I’ll be damned for
    never a king’s son in Christendom.

PRINCE HENRY   Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?

FALSTAFF   Where thou wilt, lad, I’ll make one.