Till I were couching with the doctor’s clerk.
Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing
So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring. Exeunt
1 HENRY IV
THE play described in the 1623 Folio as The First Part of Henry the Fourth had been entered on the Stationers’ Register on 25 February 1598 as The History of Henry the Fourth, and that is the title of the first surviving edition, of the same year. An earlier edition, doubtless also printed in 1598, is known only from a single, eight-page fragment. Five more editions appeared before the Folio.
The printing of at least two editions within a few months, and the fact that one of them was read almost out of existence, reflect a matter of exceptional topical interest. The earliest title-page advertises the play’s portrayal of ‘the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstaff’; but when it was first acted, probably in 1596 or 1597, this character bore the name of his historical counterpart, the Protestant martyr Sir John Oldcastle. Shakespeare changed his surname as the result of protests from Oldcastle’s descendants, the influential Cobham family, one of whom—William Brooke, 7th Lord Cobham—was Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain from August 1596 till he died on 5 March 1597. Our edition restores Sir John’s original surname for the first time in printed texts (though there is reason to believe that even after the earliest performances the name ’Oldcastle’ was sometimes used on the stage), and also restores Russell and Harvey, names Shakespeare was probably obliged to alter to Bardolph and Peto.
Shakespeare had already shown Henry IV’s rise to power, and his troubled state of mind on achieving it, in Richard II; that play also shows Henry’s dissatisfaction with his wayward son, Prince Harry, later Henry V. 1 Henry IV continues the story, but in a very different dramatic style. A play called The Famous Victories of Henry V, entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1594, was published anonymously, in a debased and shortened text, in 1598. This text—which also features Oldcastle as a reprobate—gives a sketchy version of the events portrayed in 1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V. Shakespeare must have known the original play, but in the absence of a full text we cannot tell how much he depended on it. The surviving version contains nothing about the rebellions against Henry IV, for which Shakespeare seems to have gone to IIolinshed’s, and perhaps other, Chronicles; he draws also on Samuel Daniel’s poem The First Four Books of the Civil Wars (1595).
1 Henry IV is the first of Shakespeare’s history plays to make extensive use of the techniques of comedy. On a national level, the play shows the continuing problems of Henry Bolingbroke, insecure in his hold on the throne, and the victim of rebellions led by Worcester, Hotspur (Harry Percy), and Glyndwr. These scenes are counterpointed by others, written mainly in prose, which, in the manner of a comic sub-plot, provide humorous diversion while also reflecting and extending the concerns of the main plot. Henry suffers not only public insurrection but the personal rebellion of Prince Harry, in his unprincely exploits with the reprobate old knight, Oldcastle. Sir John has become Shakespeare’s most famous comic character, but Shakespeare shows that the Prince’s treatment of him as a surrogate father who must eventually be abandoned has an intensely serious side.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
The History of Henry the Fourth
1.1 Enter King Henry, Lord John of Lancaster, and the Earl of Westmorland, with other ⌈lords⌉
KING HENRY
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 commenced 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 flow‘rets 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
March all one way, and be no more opposed
Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies.
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathèd knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ—
Whose soldier now, under whose blessèd cross
We are impressèd and engaged to fight—
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,
Whose arms were moulded in their mothers’ womb
To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed,
For our advantage, on the bitter cross.
But this our purpose now is twelve month old,
And bootless ’tis to tell you we will go.
Therefor we meet not now. Then let me hear
Of you, my gentle cousin Westmorland,
What yesternight our Council did decree
In forwarding this dear expedience.
WESTMORLAND
My liege, this haste was hot in question,
And many limits of the charge set down
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 the irregular and wild Glyndwr,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
A thousand of his people butcherèd,
Upon whose dead corpse’ there was such misuse,
Such beastly shameless transformation,
By those Welshwomen done as may not be
Without much shame retold or spoken of.
KING HENRY
It seems then that the tidings of this broil
Brake off our business for the Holy Land.
WESTMORLAND
This matched with other did, my gracious lord,
For more uneven and unwelcome news
Came from the north, and thus it did import:
On Holy-rood day the gallant Hotspur there—
Young Harry Percy—and brave Archibald,
That ever valiant and approvèd 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 in the very heat
And pride of their contention did take horse,
Uncertain of the issue any way.
KING HENRY
Here is a dear, a true industrious friend,
Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse,
Stained with the variation of each soil
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,
Balked in their own blood did Sir Walter see
On Holmedon’s plains. Of prisoners Hotspur took
Mordake the Earl of Fife and eldest son
To beaten Douglas, and the Earl of Athol,
Of Moray, Angus, and Menteith;
And is not this an honourable spoil,
A gallant prize? Ha, cousin, is it not?
WESTMORLAND
In faith, it is a conquest for a prince to boast of.
KING HENRY
Yea, there thou mak‘st me sad, and mak’st me sin
In envy that my lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son—
A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue,
Amongst a grove the very straightest plant,
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 proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle clothes our children where they lay,
And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
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 surprised
To his own use he keeps, and sends me word
I shall have none but Mordake Earl of Fife.
WESTMORLAND
This is his uncle’s teaching. This is Worcester,
Malevolent to you in all aspects,
Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up
The crest of youth against your dignity.
KING HENRY
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.
WESTMORLAND I will, my liege.
Exeunt ⌈King Henry, Lancaster, and other lords at one door; Westmorland at another door⌉
1.2 Enter Harry Prince of Wales and Sir John Oldcastle SIR JOHN Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
PRINCE HARRY Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst 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 clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.
SIR JOHN 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 wand’ring knight so fair’. And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art a king, as God save thy grace—‘majesty’ I should say, for grace thou wilt have none—
PRINCE HARRY What, none?
SIR JOHN No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter.
PRINCE HARRY Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.
SIR JOHN Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called 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 HARRY Thou sayst 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 snatched 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 by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.
SIR JOHN By the Lord, thou sayst true, lad; and is not my Hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?
PRINCE HARRY As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle; and is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?
SIR JOHN How now, how now, mad wag? What, in thy quips and thy quiddities? What a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?
PRINCE HARRY Why, what a pox have I to do with my Hostess of the tavern?
SIR JOHN Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft.
PRINCE HARRY Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?
SIR JOHN No, I’ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.
PRINCE HARRY Yea, and elsewhere so far as my coin would stretch; and where it would not, I have used my credit.
SIR JOHN Yea, and so used it that were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent—but I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king, and resolution thus fubbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father Antic the law? Do not thou when thou art king hang a thief.
PRINCE HARRY No, thou shalt.
SIR JOHN Shall I? O, rare! By the Lord, I’ll be a brave judge!
PRINCE HARRY Thou judgest false already. I mean thou shalt have the hanging of the thieves, and so become a rare hangman.
SIR JOHN Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour as well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.
PRINCE HARRY For obtaining of suits?
SIR JOHN Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean wardrobe. ’Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat, or a lugged bear.
PRINCE HARRY Or an old lion, or a lover’s lute.
SIR JOHN Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.
PRINCE HARRY What sayst thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moor-ditch?
SIR JOHN Thou hast the most unsavoury similes, and art indeed the most comparative, rascalliest sweet young Prince. But Hal, I prithee trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of the Council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir, but I marked him not; and yet he talked very wisely, but I regarded him not; and yet he talked wisely, and in the street too.
PRINCE HARRY Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it.
SIR JOHN O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over. By the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain. I’ll be damned for never a king’s son in Christendom.
PRINCE HARRY Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?
SIR JOHN Zounds, where thou wilt, lad! I’ll make one; an I do not, call me villain and baffle me.
PRINCE HARRY I see a good amendment of life in thee, from praying to purse-taking.
SIR JOHN Why, Hal, ‘tis my vocation, Hal. ’Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.
Enter Poins
Poins! Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a match. 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.
PRINCE HARRY Good morrow, Ned. no
POINS Good morrow, sweet Hal. (To Sir John) 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 HARRY 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 (to Sir John) Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with the devil.
PRINCE HARRY Else he had been damned for cozening the devil.
POINS But my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning by four o’clock early, at Gads Hill, there are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I have visors for 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.
SIR JOHN Hear ye, Edward, if I tarry at home and go not, I’ll hang you for going.
POINS You will, chops?
SIR JOHN Hal, wilt thou make one?
PRIN
CE HARRY Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith.
SIR JOHN There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou earnest not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.
PRINCE HARRY Well then, once in my days I’ll be a madcap.
SIR JOHN Why, that’s well said.
PRINCE HARRY Well, come what will, I’ll tarry at home.
SIR JOHN By the Lord, I’ll be a traitor then, when thou art king.
PRINCE HARRY 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.
SIR JOHN 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 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 HARRY Farewell, the latter spring; farewell, Allhallown summer. Exit Sir John
POINS Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us tomorrow. I have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone. Oldcastle, Harvey, Russell, 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 off from my shoulders.
PRINCE HARRY 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 HARRY 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 visors we will change after we leave them; and, sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our noted outward garments.
PRINCE HARRY 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. 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.
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 161