An I do not, call
    me villain and baffle

PRINCE HENRY   I see a good amendment of life in thee, from
    praying to purse-taking.

FALSTAFF   Why, Hal, ’tis my vocation, Hal: ’tis no sin for a man
    to labour in his vocation. Poins! Now shall we know if
    Gadshill have set a watch. O, if men were to be saved by
    merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him? This is the
    most omnipotent villain that ever cried ‘Stand’ to a true
    man.

[Enter Poins]

PRINCE HENRY   Good morrow, Ned.

POINS   Good morrow, sweet Hal. What says Monsieur
    Remorse? What says Sir John Sack and Sugar, 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?

PRINCE HENRY   Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have
    his bargain, for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs: he will
    give the devil his due.

POINS   Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with
    the devil.

PRINCE HENRY   Else he had been damned for cozening the devil.

POINS   But, my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning, by four
    o’clock, early at Gad’s Hill, there are pilgrims going to
    Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London
    with fat purses. I have vizards for you all; you have horses for
    yourselves. Gadshill lies tonight in Rochester. I have bespoke
    supper tomorrow in Eastcheap; we may do it as secure as
    sleep. If you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns: if
    you will not, tarry at home and be hanged.

FALSTAFF   Hear ye, Yedward, if I tarry at home and go not, I’ll
    hang you for going.

POINS   You will, chops?

FALSTAFF   Hal, wilt thou make one?

PRINCE HENRY   Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I.

FALSTAFF   There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good
    fellowship in thee, nor thou cam’st not of the blood royal, if
    thou dar’st not stand for ten shillings .

PRINCE HENRY   Well then, once in my days I’ll be a madcap.

FALSTAFF   Why, that’s well said.

PRINCE HENRY   Well, come what will, I’ll tarry at home.

FALSTAFF   I’ll be a traitor then, when thou art king.

PRINCE HENRY   I care not.

POINS   Sir John, I prithee leave the prince and me alone: I
    will lay him down such reasons for this adventure that he
    shall go.

FALSTAFF   Well, mayst thou have the spirit of persuasion and
    he the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move
    and what he hears may be believed, that the true prince may,
    for recreation sake, prove a false thief; for the poor abuses of
    the time want countenance. Farewell. You shall find me in
    Eastcheap.

PRINCE HENRY   Farewell, the latter spring! Farewell, All-hallown
    summer

[Exit Falstaff]

POINS   Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us
    tomorrow. I have a jest to execute that I cannot manage
    alone. Falstaff, Peto, Bardolph and Gadshill shall rob those
    men that we have already waylaid: yourself and I will not be
    there. And when they have the booty, if you and I do not rob
    them, cut this head from my shoulders.

PRINCE HENRY   But how shall we part with them in setting forth?

POINS   Why, we will set forth before or after them, and
    appoint them a place of meeting, wherein it is at our
    pleasure to fail; and then will they adventure upon the
    exploit themselves, which they shall have no sooner
    achieved, but we’ll set upon them.

PRINCE HENRY   Ay, but ’tis like that they will know us by our
    horses, by our habits and by every other appointment, to be
    ourselves.

POINS   Tut! Our horses they shall not see: I’ll tie them in the
    wood. Our vizards we will change after we leave them. And,
    sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our
    noted outward garments.

PRINCE HENRY   But I doubt they will be too hard for us.

POINS   Well, for two of them, I know them to be as truebred
    cowards as ever turned back. And for the third, if he
    fight longer than he sees reason, I’ll forswear arms. The
    virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible lies that this
    fat rogue will tell us when we meet at supper: how thirty at
    least he fought with, what wards, what blows, what
    extremities he endured; and in the reproof of this lies the
    jest.

PRINCE HENRY   Well, I’ll go with thee. Provide us all things
    necessary and meet me tomorrow night in Eastcheap. There
    I’ll sup. Farewell.

POINS   Farewell, my lord.

Exit Poins

PRINCE HENRY   I know you all, and will awhile uphold
    The unyoked humour 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,
    That when he please again to be himself,
    Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
    By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
    Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
    If all the year were playing holidays,
    To sport would be as tedious as to work;
    But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
    And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
    So, when this loose behaviour I throw off
    And pay the debt I never promisèd,
    By how much better than my word I am,
    By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes,
    And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
    My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
    Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
    Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
    I’ll so offend to make offence a skill,
    Redeeming time when men think least I will.

[Exit]

Act 1 Scene 3

running scene 3

Location: the royal court

Enter the King, Northumberland, Worcester, Hotspur, Sir Walter Blunt and others

KING HENRY IV   My blood hath been too cold and temperate ,
    Unapt to stir at these indignities,
    And you have found me; for accordingly
    You tread upon my patience. But be sure
    I will from henceforth rather be myself,
    Mighty and to be feared, 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.

WORCESTER   Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves
    The scourge of greatness to be used on it.
    And that same greatness too which our own hands
    Have holp to make so portly.

NORTHUMBERLAND   My lord—

To the King

KING HENRY IV   Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see
    Danger and disobedience in thine eye.
    O, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,
    And majesty might never yet endure
    The moody frontier of a servant brow.
    You have good leave to leave us. When we need
    Your use and counsel, we shall send for you.—

[Exit Worcester]

    You were about to speak.

To Northumberland

NORTHUMBERLAND   Yea, my good lord.
    Those prisoners in your highness’ name demanded,
    Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,
    Were, as he says, not with such strength denied
    As was delivered to your majesty,
    Who either through envy or misprision
    Was guilty of this fault and not my son.

HOTSPUR   My liege, I did deny no prisoners.

To the King

    But I remember, when the fight was done,
    When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
    Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
    Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,
    Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin new reaped
    Showed like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
    He was perfumèd like a milliner,
    And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held
    A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
    He gave his nose and took’t away again,
    Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
    Took it in snuff. And still he smiled and talked,
    And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
    He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
    To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse
    Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
    With many holiday and lady terms
    He questioned me, among the rest demanded
    My prisoners in your majesty’s behalf.
    I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
    To be so pestered with a popinjay,
    Out of my grief and my impatience,
    Answered neglectingly I know not what,
    He should or should not. For he made me mad
    To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet
    And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman
    Of guns and drums and wounds — God save the mark! —
    And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth
    Was parmaceti for an inward bruise,
    And that it was great pity, so it was,
    That villainous saltpetre should be digged
    Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
    Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed
    So cowardly, and but for these vile guns,
    He would himself have been a soldier.
    This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,
    Made me to answer indirectly, as I said,
    And I beseech you let not this report
    Come current for an accusation
    Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

BLUNT   The circumstance considered, good my lord,

To the King

    Whatever 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.

KING HENRY IV   Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,
    But with proviso and exception,
    That we at our own charge shall ransom straight
    His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer,
    Who, in my soul, hath wilfully betrayed
    The lives of those that he did lead to fight
    Against the great magician, damned Glendower,
    Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March
    Hath lately married. Shall our coffers, then,
    Be emptied to redeem a traitor home?
    Shall we buy treason, and indent with fears
    When they have lost and forfeited themselves?
    No, on the barren mountain 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.

HOTSPUR   Revolted Mortimer?
    He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,
    But by the chance of war. To prove that true
    Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,
    Those mouthèd wounds, which valiantly he took
    When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank,
    In single opposition, hand to hand,
    He did confound the best part of an hour
    In changing hardiment with great Glendower.
    Three times they breathed and three times did they drink,
    Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood;
    Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
    Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
    And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
    Bloodstainèd with these valiant combatants.
    Never did base and rotten policy
    Colour her working with such deadly wounds;
    Nor never could the noble Mortimer
    Receive so many, and all willingly.
    Then let him not be slandered with revolt.

KING HENRY IV   Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him;
    He never did encounter with Glendower.
    I tell thee, he durst as well have met the devil alone
    As Owen Glendower for an enemy.
    Art thou not ashamed? But, sirrah, henceforth
    Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer.
    Send me your prisoners with the speediest means,
    Or you shall hear in such a kind from me
    As will displease ye.— My lord Northumberland,
    We license your departure with your son.—
    Send us your prisoners, or you’ll hear of it.

To Hotspur

Exeunt King [Henry, Blunt and train]

HOTSPUR   An if the devil come and roar for them
    I will not send them. I will after straight
    And tell him so, for I will ease my heart,
    Although it be with hazard of my head.

NORTHUMBERLAND   What? Drunk with choler? Stay and pause awhile.
    Here comes your uncle.

Enter Worcester

HOTSPUR   Speak of Mortimer?
    Yes, I will speak of him, and let my soul
    Want mercy, if I do not join with him.
    In his behalf I’ll empty all these veins,
    And shed my dear blood drop by drop i’th’dust,
    But I will lift the downfall Mortimer
    As high i’th’air as this unthankful king,
    As this ingrate and cankered Bullingbrook.

NORTHUMBERLAND   Brother, the king hath made your nephew mad.

WORCESTER   Who struck this heat up after I was gone?

HOTSPUR   He will, forsooth, have all my prisoners.
    And when I urged the ransom once again
    Of my wife’s brother, then his cheek looked pale,
    And on my face he turned an eye of death,
    Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

WORCESTER   I cannot blame him: was he not proclaimed
    By Richard, that dead is, the next of blood?

NORTHUMBERLAND   He was. I heard the proclamation.
    And then it was when the unhappy king —
    Whose wrongs in us God pardon! — did set forth
    Upon his Irish expedition,
    From whence he intercepted did return
    To be deposed and shortly murderèd.

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

HOTSPUR   But soft, I pray you; did King Richard then
    Proclaim my brother Mortimer
    Heir to the crown?

NORTHUMBERLAND   He did. Myself did hear it.

HOTSPUR   Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin king,
    That wished him on the barren mountains starved.
    But shall it be that you that set the crown
    Upon the head of this forgetful man
    And for his sake wore the detested blot
    Of murderous subornation, shall it be,
    That you a world of curses undergo,
    Being the agents, or base second means,
    The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather?
    O, pardon if that I descend so low,
    To show the line and the predicament
    Wherein you range under this subtle king.
    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,
    As both of you — God pardon it! — have done,
    To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,
    And plant this thorn, this canker, Bullingbrook?
    And shall it in more shame be further spoken,
    That you are fooled, discarded and shook off
    By him for whom these shames ye underwent?
    No. Yet time serves wherein you may redeem
    Your banished honours and restore yourselves
    Into the good thoughts of the world again,
    Revenge the jeering and disdained contempt
    Of this proud king, who studies day and night
    To answer all the debt he owes unto you
    Even with the bloody payment of your deaths:
    Therefore, I say—

WORCESTER   Peace, cousin, say no more.
    And now I will unclasp a secret book,
    And to your quick-conceiving discontents
    I’ll read you matter deep
    As full of peril and adventurous spirit
    As to o’er-walk a current roaring loud
    On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

HOTSPUR   If he fall in, goodnight, or sink or swim.
    Send danger from the east unto the west,
    So honour cross it from the north to south,
    And let them grapple.