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THE FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY THE FOURTH.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

KING HENRY THE FOUrth.

HENRY OF MONMOUTH, his Sons.
JOHN OF LANCASTER,

RALPH NEVILLE, Earl of Westmoreland.
SIR WALTER BLUNT

OWEN GLENDOWER.
SIR RICHARD VERNON.
SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.

SIR MICHAEL, & Friend cf the Arch-
bishop.

THOMAS PERCY, Earl of Worcester. POINTZ GADSHILL.
HENRY PERCY, Earl of Northumberland PETO. BARdolph.
HENRY PERCY, his Son, surnamed Hor-

SPUR.

EDMUND MORTIMER, Earl of March.
RICHARD SCROOP, Archbishop of York.
ARCHIBALD, Earl of Douglas.

LADY PERCY, Wife to Hotspur.

LADY MORTIMER, Daughter to Glen

dower.

MRS QUICKLY, Hostess in Eastcheap.

Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, Carriers, Travellers, and

Attendants.

SCENE, England.

ACT I. SCENE I. London. A Room in the Palace. Enter the KING, WESTMORELAND, BLUNT, and Others.

King. 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 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 flowerets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces: those opposed 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,

1 Of course entrance here means mouth, for what but a mouth should have lips nor can I appreciate the difficulty which commentators have found in the expression. Several emendations have been proposed, all of which may well be set aside by a simple reference to Genesis iv. 11: "And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand."

March all one way, and be no more oppos'd
Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies:
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ,

Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross
We are impressed and engag'd to fight,-
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,
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.
But this our purpose is a twelve-month old,
And bootless 'tis to tell

you we will

go:

Therefore we meet not now.3. -Then let me hear

Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,neman.
What yesternight our Council did decree

In forwarding this dear expedience.

West. My liege, this haste was hot in question,
And many limits of the charge set down ${A
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 th' irregular and wild Glendower,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken;
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 re-told or spoken of.

King. It seems, then, that the tidings of this broil

Brake off our business for the Holy Land.

2 Levying an army to a place is only an elliptical form of expression, though some have thought the text corrupt. So, in Gosson's School of Abuse, 1587: Scipio. before he leried his forces to the walls of Carthage, gave his soldiers the print of the city in a cake, to be devoured."

8 We meet not on that question now, or to consider that matter.

4 Ralph Neville, the present Earl of Westmoreland, married for his first wife Joan, daughter to John of Gaunt, by Catharine Swynford, and therefore half-sister to King Henry the Fourth. Cousin, in old English, bears much the same sense as kinsman in our time.

5 The Poet uses expedience and expedition interchangeably: likewise, expedient and expeditious.

6 Limits of the charge are estimates of expense.

7 Hereford is a trisyllable; was always so pronounced in the Poet's time, and is so still.

8 So in all the quartos: the folio has "And a thousand." I prefer the former, because it makes the connection plainer between a thousand people and whose dead corpse. Of course being is understood before butchered, and corpse is used as a collective noun.

West. This, match'd with other, did, my gracious lord; For more uneven and unwelcome news

Came from the North, and thus it did import:

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Ou Holy-Rood day, the gallant Hotspur eter 14' Safe Cumbr there, crver.

Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,
That ever-valiant and approved 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,10 in the very heat
And pride of their contention did take horse,
Uncertain of the issue any way.

King. Here is a dear and true-industrious friend,
Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse,
Stain'd with the variation of each soil 11

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,
Balk'd in their own blood,12 did Sir Walter see
On Holmedon's plains: of prisoners, Hotspur took
Mordake the Earl of Fife and eldest son

To beaten Douglas,13 and the Earls of Athol,
Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith.

And is not this an honourable spoil,
A gallant prize? ha, cousin, is it not?
West. In faith,

It is a conquest for a prince to boast of.

In

King. Yea, there thou mak'st me sad, and mak'st me sin envy that my Lord Northumberland Should be the father to so blest a son:

Rood is an old word for cross: thus we have the expression, "The Duke that died on rood." Holy-Rood day was the 14th of September. Hotspur is said to have been so called, because, from the age of twelve years, when he first began to bear arms, his “ spur was never cold," he being continually at war with the Scots.

10 News was used indifferently as singular or plural; hence was and them in this case.

11 No circumstance could have been better chosen to mark the expedi tion of Sir Walter.

12 Balk'd in their own blood is heaped, or laid on heaps, in their own blood. A balk was a ridge or bank of earth standing up between two furrows; and to balk was to throw up the earth so as to form those heaps or banks.

13 This reads as if the Earl of Fife were the son of Douglas, whereas in fact he was son to the Duke of Albany, who was then regent or governor of Scotland, the king, his brother, being incapable of the office. The matter is thus given by Holinshed, pointing and all: “Of prisoners among other were these, Mordacke earle of Fife, son to the governour Archembald earle Dowglas, which in the fight lost one of his eies." The Poet's mistake was evidently caused by the omission of the (,) after governour.

A son who is the theme of honour's tongue;
Amongst a grove the very straightest plant;

Lower 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 prov'd
That some night-tripping fairy had exchang'd
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet! 14
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 surpris'd,

To his own use he keeps; and sends me word
I shall have none but Mordake Earl of Fife.1

15

West. This is his uncle's teaching, this is Worcester,
Malevolent to you in all aspects;

16

Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up
The crest of youth against your dignity.

King. 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; 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 uttered."
West. I will, my liege.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. The Same. An Apartment of Prince HENRY'S.
Enter Prince HENRY and FALSTAFF.

Fal. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

'Prince. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack,

14 Among the naughty pranks which the ancient "night-tripping fairies" were supposed to enact, was that of stealing choice babies out of their cradles, and leaving inferior specimens in their stead. Shakespeare has several allusions to the roguish practice, as many other old writers also have. See A Midsummer-Night's Dream, ii. 1.

15 Percy had an exclusive right to these prisoners, except the Earl of Fife. By the law of arms, every man who had taken any captive, whose redemption did not exceed ten thousand crowns, had him to himself to acquit or ransom at his pleasure. But Percy could not refuse the Earl of Fife; for he, being a prince of the royal blood, Henry might justly claim him, by his acknowledged military prerogative

16 An astrological allusion. Worcester is represented as a malignant star that influenced the conduct of Hotspur. A hawk is said to prune herself when she picks off the loose feathers and smooths the rest. We now use plume in the same sense.

17 More is to be said than anger will suffer me to say.

and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st 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 the blessed Sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colour'd taffeta, I see no reason why.

thou should'st be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

Fal. Indeed you come near me now, Hal; for we that take purses go by the Moon and the seven stars, and not by Phoebus,he, that wandering knight so fair. And I pr'ythee, sweet wag, when thou art King,-as, God save thy Grace,Majesty, I should say, for grace thou wilt have none,Prince. What, none?

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Fal. No, by my troth; not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter.2

Prince. Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly.

Fal. 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 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. 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 snatch'd 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 byand-by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows. Fal. By the Lord, thou says't true, lad. And is not my Hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?

1 Falstaff, with great propriety, according to vulgar astronomy, calls the Sun a wandering knight. The words may be part of some forgotten ballad. 2 Not so much grac as will serve for saving grace before meat. Eggs and butter appear to have been a favourite lunch. — Roundly, in the next line, is speak plainly, or bluntly.

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8 Falstaff is an inveterate player upon words, as here between night and knight, beauty and booty. A squire of the body originally meant an attendant on a knight. As to Diana's foresters, Hall the chronicler tells of a pageant exhibited in the reign of Henry VIII., wherein were certain persons called Diana's knights.

4 Lay by is a nautical phrase for to slacken sail, and is here used in the sense of be still, or keep quiet, something like the phrase of our time, “he low and keep dark;" as' in Henry VIII., Act iii. scene 1, Song: "Even the billows of the sea hung their heads, and then lay by." — Bring in was a cal to the drawers to bring in more wine.

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