Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray'd
The lives of those that he did lead to fight
Against the great magician, damn'd 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 indent10 with fears,
When they have lost and forfeited themselves?
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.

Hot. 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 mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took, When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,

In single opposition, hand to hand,

He did confound 11 the best part of an hour

In changing hardiment with great Glendower:

Three times they breath'd, 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,

proper Mortimer of this play; the other Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle to the former, and brother to Lady Percy. The poet has confounded the two persons.

10 To indent with fears is to enter into compact with cowards. To make a covenant or to indent with one. Paciscor.' Baret. So in Antony and Cleopatra, the soothsayer says to Antony :'Near Cæsar's angel thy own becomes a fear.' The king affects to speak of Mortimer (though in the plural number) as the fear or timid object which had lost or forfeited itself. 11 Shakspeare again uses confound for spending or losing time in Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 6:

• How could'st thou in a mile confound an hour.'

And hid his crisp 1o head in the hollow bank,
Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.
Never did bare 13 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 slander'd with revolt.

K. Hen. 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 you.-My Lord Northumberland,
We licence your departure with your son:—
Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of it.

[Exeunt KING HENRY, BLUNT, and Train.
Hot. And 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.

12 Crisp is curled. Thus in Kyd's Cornelia, 1595 :'O beauteous Tyber, with thine easy streams That glide as smoothly as a Parthian shaft, Turn not thy crispy tides, like silver curls, Back to thy grass-green banks to welcome us.'

Beaumont and Fletcher have the same image in The Loyal Subject:

the Volga trembled at his terror,

And hid his seven curled heads.'

And Ben Jonson, in one of his Masques:-
The rivers run as smoothed by his hand,
Only their heads are crisped by his stroke.'

13 Some of the quarto copies read base.

North. What, drunk with choler? stay, and pause

awhile;

Here comes your uncle.

Hot.

Re-enter WORCESTER.

Speak of Mortimer?

'Zounds, I will speak of him; and let my soul
Want mercy, if I do not join with him:
Yea, on his part, I'll empty all these veins,
And shed my dear blood drop by drop i' the dust,
But I will lift the down-trod Mortimer

As high i' the air as this unthankful king,
As this ingrate and canker'd Bolingbroke.

mad.

North. Brother, the king hath made your nephew [TO WORCESTER. Wor. Who struck this heat up, after I was gone? Hot. He will, forsooth, have all my prisoners; And when I urg'd the ransom once again

Of

my wife's brother, then his cheek look'd pale; And on my face he turn'd an eye of death, Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

Wor. I cannot blame him: Was he not proclaim'd, By Richard that dead is, the next of blood 14?

14 Roger Mortimer, earl of March, was declared heir apparent to the crown in 1385: but he was killed in Ireland in 1398. The person who was proclaimed heir apparent by Richard II. previous to his last voyage to Ireland, was Edmund Mortimer, son of Roger, who was then but seven years old: he was not Lady Percy's brother, but her nephew. He was the undoubted heir to the crown after the death of Richard. Thomas Walsingham asserts that he married a daughter of Owen Glendower, and the subsequent historians copied him. Sandford says that he married Anne Stafford, daughter of Edmund earl of Stafford. Glendower's daughter was married to his antagonist Lord Grey of Ruthven. Holinshed led Shakspeare into the error. This Edmund, who is the Mortimer of the present play, was born in 1392, and consequently, at the time when this play is supposed to commence, was little more than ten years old. The prince of Wales was not fifteen.

North. 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 depos'd, and shortly, murdered.

Wor. And for whose death, we in the world's wide mouth

Live scandaliz'd, and foully spoken of.

Hot. But, soft, I pray you; Did King Richard then Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer

Heir to the crown?

North.

He did; myself did hear it.

Hot. Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin king, That wish'd him on the barren mountains starv'd. But shall it be, that you,-that set the crown Upon the head of this forgetful man;

And, for his sake, wear the detested blot

Of murd'rous 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 me, 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 15, Bolingbroke?
And shall it, in more shame, be further spoken,

15 The canker-rose is the dog-rose, the flower of the Cynosbaton. So in Much Ado about Nothing :-'I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in his grace.'

That you are fool'd, discarded, and shook off
By him, for whom these shames
ye underwent?
No; yet time serves, wherein you may redeem
Your banish'd honours, and restore yourselves
Into the good thoughts of the world again:
Revenge the jeering, and disdain'd 16 contempt,
Of this proud king; who studies, day and night,
To answer all the debt he owes to you,
Even with the bloody payment of your deaths.
Therefore, I say,

Wor.

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 and dangerous ;
As full of peril, and advent'rous spirit,
As to o'erwalk a current, roaring loud,
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.
Hot. If he fall in, good night :-
:-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:-O! the blood more stirs,
To rouse a lion, than to start a hare.

North. Imagination of some great exploit
Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.

Hot. By heaven, methinks, it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd moon; Or dive into the bottom of the deep 17,

16 i. e. disdainful.

17 Warburton observes that Euripides has put the same sentiment into the mouth of Eteocles:-'I will not, madam, disguise my thoughts; I would scale heaven, I would descend to the very entrails of the earth, if so be that by that price I could obtain a kingdom.' Johnson says, 'Though I am far from condemning this speech, with Gildon and Theobald, as absolute madness, yet I cannot find in it that profundity of reflection, and beauty of allegory, which Warburton endeavoured to display. This sally of Hotspur may be, I think, soberly and rationally vindicated as the violent eruption of a mind inflated with ambition and fired with resentment; as the boasted clamour of a man