The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  PRINCE HARRY 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 HARRY I know you all, and will a while uphold The unyoked 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, Being wanted he may be more wondered 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; But when they seldom come, they wished-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, 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. I’ll so offend to make offence a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will. Exit

  1.3 Enter the King, the Earls of Northumberland and Worcester, Hotspur, Sir Walter Blunt, with other ⌈lords⌉

  KING HENRY (to Hotspur, Northumberland, and Worcester) 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, Mighty and to be feared, 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 The scourge of greatness to be used on it, And that same greatness too, which our own hands Have holp to make so portly.

  NORTHUMBERLAND (to the King) My lord—

  KING HENRY

  Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see

  Danger and disobedience in thine eye.

  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.

  Exit Worcester

  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 denied

  As was delivered to your majesty,

  Who either through envy or misprision

  Was guilty of this fault, and not my son.

  HOTSPUR (to the King)

  My liege, I did deny no prisoners;

  But I remember, when the fight was done,

  When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,

  Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,

  Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,

  Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin, new-reaped,

  Showed like a stubble-land at harvest-home.

  He was perfumed like a milliner,

  And ‘twixt his finger and his thumb he held

  A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

  He gave his nose and took’t away again—

  Who therewith angry, when it next came there

  Took it in snuff—and still he smiled and talked;

  And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,

  He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly

  To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse

  Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

  With many holiday and lady terms

  He questioned me; amongst the rest demanded

  My prisoners in your majesty’s behalf.

  I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold—

  To be so pestered with a popinjay!—

  Out of my grief and my impatience

  Answered neglectingly, I know not what—

  He should, or 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!

  And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth

  Was parmacity for an inward bruise,

  And that it was great pity, so it was,

  This villainous saltpetre should be digged

  Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

  Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed

  So cowardly, and but for these vile guns

  He would himself have been a soldier.

  This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,

  Made me to answer indirectly, as I said,

  And I beseech you, let not his report

  Come current for an accusation

  Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

  BLUNT (to the King)

  The circumstance considered, good my lord,

  Whate’er Lord Harry Percy then had said

  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.

  KING HENRY

  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 betrayed

  The lives of those that he did lead to fight

  Against that great magician, damned Glyndŵr—

  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 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

  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,

  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 Glyndwr.

  Three times they breathed, 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,

  Bloodstainèd 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.

  Then let not him be slandered with revolt.

  KING HENRY

  Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him.

  He never did encounter with Glyndŵr. I tell thee,

  He durst as well have met the devil alone

  As Owain Glyndŵr 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 license your departure with your son.

  (To Hotspur) Send us your prisoners, or you’ll hear of it.

  Exeunt all but Hot
spur and Northumberland

  HOTSPUR

  An 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.

  NORTHUMBERLAND

  What, drunk with choler? Stay and pause awhile.

  Enter the Earl of Worcester

  Here comes your uncle.

  HOTSPUR Speak of Mortimer?

  Zounds, I will speak of him, and let my soul

  Want mercy if I do not join with him.

  In his behalf I’ll empty all these veins,

  And shed my dear blood drop by drop in the dust,

  But I will lift the downfall Mortimer

  As high in the air as this unthankful King,

  As this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke.

  NORTHUMBERLAND (to Worcester)

  Brother, the King hath made your nephew mad.

  WORCESTER

  Who struck this heat up after I was gone?

  HOTSPUR

  He will forsooth have all my prisoners;

  And when I urged the ransom once again

  Of my wife’s brother, then his cheek looked pale,

  And on my face he turned an eye of death,

  Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

  WORCESTER

  I cannot blame him: was not he proclaimed

  By Richard, that dead is, the next of blood?

  NORTHUMBERLAND

  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 deposed, and shortly murdered.

  WORCESTER

  And for whose death we in the world’s wide mouth

  Live scandalized and foully spoken of.

  HOTSPUR

  But soft, I pray you; did King Richard then

  Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer

  Heir to the crown?

  NORTHUMBERLAND He did; myself did hear it.

  HOTSPUR

  Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin King

  That wished him on the barren mountains starve.

  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 murderous 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, Bolingbroke?

  And shall it in more shame be further spoken

  That you are fooled, discarded, and shook off

  By him for whom these shames ye underwent?

  No; yet time serves wherein you may redeem

  Your banished honours, and restore yourselves

  Into the good thoughts of the world again,

  Revenge the jeering and disdained 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—

  WORCESTER 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 adventurous spirit

  As to o’erwalk a current roaring loud

  On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

  HOTSPUR

  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!

  NORTHUMBERLAND (to Worcester)

  Imagination of some great exploit

  Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.

  ⌈HOTSPUR⌉

  By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap

  To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,

  Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

  Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,

  And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,

  So he that doth redeem her thence might wear,

  Without corrival, all her dignities.

  But out upon this half-faced fellowship!

  WORCESTER (to Northumberland)

  He apprehends a world of figures here,

  But not the form of what he should attend.

  (To Hotspur) Good cousin, give me audience for a while,

  And list to me.

  HOTSPUR

  I cry you mercy.

  WORCESTER Those same noble Scots

  That are your prisoners—

  HOTSPUR I’ll keep them all.

  By God, he shall not have a Scot of them;

  No, if a scot would save his soul he shall not.

  I’ll keep them, by this hand.

  WORCESTER You start away,

  And lend no ear unto my purposes.

  Those prisoners you shall keep.

  HOTSPUR Nay, I will; that’s flat.

  He said he would not ransom Mortimer,

  Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer;

  But I will find him when he lies asleep,

  And in his ear I’ll hollo ‘Mortimerl’

  Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak

  Nothing but ‘Mortimer’, and give it him

  To keep his anger still in motion.

  WORCESTER Hear you, cousin, a word.

  HOTSPUR

  All studies here I solemnly defy,

  Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke.

  And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales—

  But that I think his father loves him not

  And would be glad he met with some mischance—

  I would have him poisoned with a pot of ale.

  WORCESTER

  Farewell, kinsman. I’ll talk to you

  When you are better tempered to attend.

  NORTHUMBERLAND (to Hotspur)

  Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool

  Art thou to break into this woman’s mood,

  Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own I

  HOTSPUR

  Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods,

  Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear

  Of this vile politician Bolingbroke.

  In Richard’s time—what d‘ye call the place?

  A plague upon’t, it is in Gloucestershire.

  ‘Twas where the madcap Duke his uncle kept—

  His uncle York—where I first bowed my knee

  Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke.

  ’Sblood, when you and he came back from

  Ravenspurgh.

  NORTHUMBERLAND

  At Berkeley castle.

  HOTSPUR You say true.

  Why, what a candy deal of courtesy

  This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!

  ‘Look when his infant fortune came to age’,

  And ‘gentle Harry Percy’, and ‘kind cousin’.

  O, the devil take such cozeners!—God forgive me.

  Good uncle, tell your tale; I have done.

  WORCESTE
R

  Nay, if you have not, to’t again.

  We’ll stay your leisure.

  HOTSPUR I have done, i’faith.

  WORCESTER

  Then once more to your Scottish prisoners.

  Deliver them up without their ransom straight;

  And make the Douglas’ son your only mean

  For powers in Scotland, which, for divers reasons

  Which I shall send you written, be assured

  Will easily be granted. (To Northumberland) You, my

  lord,

  Your son in Scotland being thus employed,

  Shall secretly into the bosom creep

  Of that same noble prelate well-beloved,

  The Archbishop.

  HOTSPUR Of York, is’t not?

  WORCESTER True, who bears hard

  His brother’s death at Bristol, the Lord Scrope.

  I speak not this in estimation,

  As what I think might be, but what I know

  Is ruminated, plotted, and set down,

  And only stays but to behold the face

  Of that occasion that shall bring it on.

  HOTSPUR

  I smell it; upon my life, it will do well!

  NORTHUMBERLAND

  Before the game is afoot thou still lett’st slip.

  HOTSPUR

  Why, it cannot choose but be a noble plot—

  And then the power of Scotland and of York

  To join with Mortimer, ha?

  WORCESTER And so they shall.

  HOTSPUR

  In faith, it is exceedingly well aimed.

  WORCESTER

  And ’tis no little reason bids us speed

  To save our heads by raising of a head;

  For, bear ourselves as even as we can,

  The King will always think him in our debt,

  And think we think ourselves unsatisfied

  Till he hath found a time to pay us home.

  And see already how he doth begin

  To make us strangers to his looks of love.

  HOTSPUR

  He does, he does. We’ll be revenged on him.

  WORCESTER

  Cousin, farewell. No further go in this

  Than I by letters shall direct your course.

  When time is ripe, which will be suddenly,

  I’ll steal to Glyndŵr and Lord Mortimer,

  Where you and Douglas and our powers at once,

  As I will fashion it, shall happily meet,

  To bear our fortunes in our own strong arms,

  Which now we hold at much uncertainty.

  NORTHUMBERLAND

  Farewell, good brother. We shall thrive, I trust.