THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH. PERSONS REPRESENTED. KING HENRY THE FOUrth. HENRY OF MONMOUTH, his Sons. RALPH NEVILLE, Earl of Westmoreland. OWEN GLENDOWER. SIR MICHAEL, & Friend cf the Arch- THOMAS PERCY, Earl of Worcester. POINTZ GADSHILL. SPUR. EDMUND MORTIMER, Earl of March. 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, And breathe short-winded accents of new broils Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood; Which, like the meteors of a troubled Heaven, 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 Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross you we will go: Therefore we meet not now.3. -Then let me hear Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,neman. In forwarding this dear expedience. West. My liege, this haste was hot in question, Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse, By those Welshwomen done, as may not be 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: Ou Holy-Rood day, the gallant Hotspur eter 14' Safe Cumbr there, crver. Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald, At Holmedon met; Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour, And shape of likelihood, the news was told; King. Here is a dear and true-industrious friend, Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours; Ten thousand bold Scots, two-and-twenty knights, To beaten Douglas,13 and the Earls of Athol, And is not this an honourable spoil, 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; Lower Who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride: Of my young Harry. O, that it could be prov'd To his own use he keeps; and sends me word 15 West. This is his uncle's teaching, this is Worcester, 16 Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up King. But I have sent for him to answer this; Cousin, on Wednesday next our Council we [Exeunt. SCENE II. The Same. An Apartment of Prince HENRY'S. 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? 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. 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. |