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
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you all; you have horses for yourselves. Gadshill lies
tonight in Rochester, I have bespoke supper tomorrow
night 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.
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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 Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith.
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FALSTAFF There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good
fellowship in thee, nor thou cam’st not of the blood
royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.
PRINCE Well then, once in my days I’ll be a madcap.
FALSTAFF Why, that’s well said.
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PRINCE Well, come what will, I’ll tarry at home.
FALSTAFF By the Lord, I’ll be a traitor then, when thou
art king.
PRINCE I care not.
POINS Sir John, I prithee leave the Prince and me alone:
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I will lay him down such reasons for this adventure
that he shall go.
FALSTAFF Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion,
and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest
may move, and what he hears may be believed, that the
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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 East-
cheap.
PRINCE Farewell, the latter spring! Farewell, All-hallown
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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, Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill
shall rob those men that we have already waylaid –
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yourself and I will not be there: and when they have
the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head
off from my shoulders.
PRINCE How shall we part with them in setting forth?
POINS Why, we will set forth before or after them, and
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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 Yea, but ’tis like that they will know us by our
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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
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nonce, to immask our noted outward garments.
PRINCE Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for us.
POINS Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-
bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if
he fight longer than he sees reason, I’ll forswear arms.
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The virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible
lies that this same 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 lives the jest.
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PRINCE 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.
PRINCE I know you all, and will awhile uphold
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The unyok’d 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,
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Being wanted he may be more wonder’d 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;
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But when they seldom come, they wish’d-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents:
So when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
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By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly, and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
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I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will. Exit.
1.3 Enter the KING, NORTHUMBERLAND, WORCESTER, HOTSPUR, SIR WALTER BLUNT, with others.
KING 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,
5
Mighty, and to be fear’d, 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
10
The scourge of greatness to be us’d on it,
And that same greatness too which our own hands
Have holp to make so portly.
NORTHUMBERLAND My lord, –
KING Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see
Danger and disobedience in thine eye:
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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.
20
Exit Worcester.
[to Northumberland] You were about to speak.
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 deny’d
As is deliver’d to your Majesty.
25
Either envy therefore, or misprision,
Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.
HOTSPUR My liege, I did deny no prisoners,
But I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil,
30
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dress’d,
Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin new reap’d
Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
He was perfumed like a milliner,
35
And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He ga
ve his nose, and took’t away again –
Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff – and still he smil’d and talk’d:
40
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
45
He question’d me, amongst the rest demanded
My prisoners in your Majesty’s behalf.
I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
To be so pester’d with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience
50
Answer’d neglectingly, I know not what,
He should, or he 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!
55
And telling me the sovereignest thing on earth
Was parmacity for an inward bruise,
And that it was great pity, so it was,
This villainous saltpetre should be digg’d
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
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Which many a good tall fellow had destroy’d
So cowardly, and but for these vile guns
He would himself have been a soldier.
This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,
I answer’d indirectly, as I said,
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And I beseech you, let not his report
Come current for an accusation
Betwixt my love and your high Majesty.
BLUNT The circumstance consider’d, good my lord,
Whate’er Lord Harry Percy then had said
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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.
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KING 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, on my soul, hath wilfully betray’d
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The lives of those that he did lead to fight
Against that great magician, damn’d Glendower,
Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March
Hath lately marry’d: shall our coffers then
Be empty’d to redeem a traitor home?
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Shall we buy treason, and indent 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
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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,
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Those mouthed 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.
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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,
And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
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Bloodstained with these valiant combatants.
Never did bare and rotten policy
Colour her working with such deadly wounds,
Nor never could the noble Mortimer
Receive so many, and all willingly:
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Then let not him be slander’d with revolt.
KING 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.
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Art thou not asham’d? 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:
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We license your departure with your son.
Send us your prisoners, or you will hear of it.
Exit King, with Blunt and train.
HOTSPUR And if the devil come and roar for them
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 154