King Henry IV Part 2, page 31
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HOSTESS O the Lord, that Sir John were come! I would
make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God
the fruit of her womb miscarry.
BEADLE If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions
again. You have but eleven now. Come, I charge you
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both go with me, for the man is dead that you and
Pistol beat amongst you.
DOLL I’ll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will
have you as soundly swinged for this – you bluebottle
rogue, you filthy famished correctioner! If you be
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not swinged, I’ll forswear half-kirtles.
BEADLE Come, come, you she-knight-errant, come!
HOSTESS O God, that right should thus overcome
might! Well, of sufferance comes ease.
DOLL Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.
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HOSTESS Ay, come, you starved bloodhound.
DOLL Goodman death! Goodman bones!
HOSTESS Thou atomy, thou!
DOLL Come, you thin thing. Come, you rascal.
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BEADLE Very well. FExeunt.F
5.5
Enter [three] Strewers of rushes.
1 STREWER More rushes, more rushes!
2 STREWER The trumpets have sounded twice.
3 STREWER ’Twill be two a’clock ere they come from
the coronation. Dispatch, dispatch! FExeunt.F
Trumpets sound, and the KING and his train pass over
the stage. After them enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW,
PISTOL, BARDOLPH and the Boy [PAGE].
FALSTAFF Stand here by me, Master Shallow! I will
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make the King do you grace. I will leer upon him as
’a comes by, and do but mark the countenance that
he will give me.
PISTOL God bless thy lungs, good knight!
FALSTAFF Come here, Pistol; stand behind me. [to
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Shallow] O, if I had had time to have made new
liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound
I borrowed of you! But ’tis no matter. This poor show
doth better; this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.
PISTOL It doth so.
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FALSTAFF It shows my earnestness of affection –
PISTOL It doth so.
FALSTAFF My devotion –
PISTOL It doth, it doth, it doth.
FALSTAFF As it were to ride day and night and not to
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deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to
shift me –
SHALLOW It is best, certain.
FFALSTAFFF – but to stand stained with travel and sweat
ing with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else,
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putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were
nothing else to be done but to see him.
PISTOL ’Tis semper idem, for absque hoc nihil est; ’tis
in every part.
SHALLOW ’Tis so indeed.
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PISTOL My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver and
make thee rage! Thy Doll and Helen of thy noble
thoughts is in base durance and contagious prison,
haled thither by most mechanical and dirty hand.
Rouse up Revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s
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snake, for Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.
FALSTAFF I will deliver her.
[Shouts within.] FTrumpets sound.F
PISTOL
There roared the sea, and trumpet clangour sounds.
Enter the KING and his train[, his FBrothers,F
the FLord Chief JUSTICEF and others].
FALSTAFF
God save thy grace, King Hal, my royal Hal!
PISTOL The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal
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imp of fame!
FALSTAFF God save thee, my sweet boy!
KING
My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.
JUSTICE (to Falstaff)
Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak?
FALSTAFF
My King, my Jove, I speak to thee, my heart!
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KING
I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester!
I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old and so profane;
But being awaked, I do despise my dream.
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Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace.
Leave gormandizing: know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest.
Presume not that I am the thing I was,
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For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
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The tutor and the feeder of my riots.
Till then, I banish thee on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
[also addressing Falstaff’s companions]
For competence of life I will allow you,
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That lack of means enforce you not to evils;
And as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. [to Justice] Be it your charge, my lord,
To see performed the tenor of my word.
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Set on. FExit KingF [with his train].
FALSTAFF Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.
SHALLOW Yea, marry, Sir John, which I beseech you to
let me have home with me.
FALSTAFF That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not
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you grieve at this: I shall be sent for in private to him.
Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not
your advancements. I will be the man yet that shall
make you great.
SHALLOW I cannot perceive how, unless you give me
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your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech
you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my
thousand.
FALSTAFF Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that
you heard was but a colour.
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SHALLOW A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.
FALSTAFF Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner. Come,
Lieutenant Pistol; come Bardolph. I shall be sent for
soon at night.
Enter [the Lord Chief] JUSTICE
and Prince JOHN [with Officers].
JUSTICE [to Officers]
Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet.
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Take all his company along with him.
FALSTAFF My lord, my lord!
JUSTICE
I cannot now speak. I will hear you soon.
Take them away.
PISTOL Si fortuna me tormenta, spero contenta.
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Exeunt [Officers with Falstaff, Pistol,
Shallow, Bardolph and Page].
JOHN
I like this fair proceeding of the King’s.
He hath intent his wonted followers
Shall all be very well provided for,
But all are banished till their conversations
Appear more wise and modest to the world.
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JUSTICE
And so they are.
JOHN
The King hath called his parliament, my lord.
JUSTICE
He hath.
JOHN
I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,
We bear our civil swords and native fire
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As far as France. I heard a bird so sing,
Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the King.
Come, will you hence? FExeunt.F
EPILOGUE [1]
[Enter the Speaker of the EPILOGUE.]
First my fear, then my curtsy, last my speech.
My fear is your displeasure; my curtsy, my duty;
and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for
a good speech now, you undo me; for what I have to
say is of mine own making, and what indeed I should
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say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the
purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you,
as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a
displeasing play to pray your patience for it and to
promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with
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this, which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily
home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose.
Here I promised you I would be, and here I commit
my body to your mercies. Bate me some, and I will
pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you
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infinitely. And so I kneel down before you [Kneels.]
– but, indeed, to pray for the Queen.
[EPILOGUE 2]
If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will
you command me to use my legs? And yet that were
but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a
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good conscience will make any possible satisfaction,
and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have for
given me. If the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen
do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never
seen in such an assembly.
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One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too
much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will
continue the story with Sir John in it and make
you merry with fair Katherine of France, where, for
anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat unless
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already ’a be killed with your hard opinions; for
Oldcastle died martyr, and this is not the man. My
tongue is weary. When my legs are too, I will bid you
good night. [Dances a jig, then exits.]
Commentary and Textual Notes
HISTORICAL NOTES
LIST OF ROLES not in Q; adapted from ‘THE ACTORS NAMES’ in F (sig. gg8v). Speaking roles are designated by names in upper case. Names and titles not in F are in brackets. F omits three speaking roles – those of the Porter (1.1), the Lord Chief Justice’s Servant (1.2) and the Messenger (4.1) – which were added by Capell. Only three other plays in F have similar lists: Tem, MM and Oth.
1 RUMOUR an allegorical figure whose appearance draws on that of Fame, a mythic creature whose multiple tongues and eyes are indicative of the unreliability of historical reportage. Rumour is therefore an appropriate ‘presenter’ of what transpires in the play. For sources and analogues, see Ind.0.1–2n.
2 KING Henry the Fourth (1367–1413), called Bolingbroke for the Lincolnshire castle in which he was born, was the eldest son of John of Gaunt – Duke of Lancaster and the most powerful noble in the realm – and usurper of Richard II’s throne in 1399. His reign was fraught with civil unrest, particularly rebellions led by the powerful Percy family who had helped him to the crown (1403–8), the Welsh chieftain Owen Glendower (1400–12) and Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York (1405). Though Henry succeeded in suppressing these threats to his government, familial discord proved equally threatening when the Prince of Wales joined his father’s ruling Council in 1407, made powerful political alliances and, during a period of the King’s ill health, challenged his father’s authority. In 1411 the King retaliated by dismissing the Prince from the Council and replacing him with his second son, Thomas of Clarence. Throughout his reign, Henry was plagued by doubts of his legitimacy on account of his having deposed Richard, God’s anointed king, and, it is alleged, having had him put to death.
3 PRINCE Henry (1386–1422), eldest son of Henry IV and his first wife Mary Bohun, born at Monmouth and therefore called Harry Monmouth, was made Prince of Wales in 1399 at the age of 12 and acceded to the throne on his father’s death in 1413, becoming the legendary king and warrior Henry V. Stories of his madcap youth that circulated during his lifetime were embellished by later chroniclers; however, they are contradicted by his participation as early as 1400 in attempts to suppress the Welsh insurrection led by Owen Glendower, by his fighting in his father’s cause – and sustaining a facial wound – at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, and by his taking full command of English forces against the Welsh from 1406–8. Legends of his riotous misdeeds and his miraculous reformation may, however, have served to counterbalance the reported discord that arose between the Prince and his father over his role in the Council and possibly his ambition to supplant him as king.
5 Prince JOHN of Lancaster (1389–1435), third son of Henry IV, was only 16 at the time of his encountering the rebels at Gaultree in 1405. He was knighted at his father’s coronation in 1399, made Constable of England in 1403, and between 1403 and 1405 given lands forfeited by the Percy family, which ensured him a considerable income. Holinshed refers to him as John of Lancaster after the place of his birth, but in the play he is mistakenly called Duke of Lancaster, a title rightly belonging to his brother Thomas of Clarence, as Stow reports: ‘Then the king rose and made his eldest sonne prince of Wales … his second sonne was there made Duke of Lancast[er]’ (Annales, 513). John was in fact created Duke of Bedford by his brother Henry V in 1414, and by that title he plays a role in 1H6.
6 Humphrey, Duke of GLOUCESTER (1390–1447), fourth and youngest son of Henry IV, was knighted by his father in 1399, but unlike his older brothers was given no significant military command during his father’s reign. He was created Duke of Gloucester by Henry V in 1414, and in that capacity he fought in the French wars, suffering a wound at Agincourt, where he was rescued by Henry himself. He figures prominently in the H6 plays as Protector of England during Henry VI’s minority.
7 Thomas, Duke of CLARENCE (1387 – 1421), second and ostensibly favourite son of Henry IV, was at a young age appointed the King’s lieutenant in Ireland, where he served intermittently from 1401 to 1409 until his father’s illness gave him reason to return to London. According to chroniclers, he frequently indulged in unseemly behaviour at taverns and brothels in the company of his brother John. Stow reports that on St John’s Eve 1410 the two princes were the principal instigators of a riot in Eastcheap (Annales, 550). Nevertheless, after Thomas’s marriage to the rich widow of the Earl of Somerset in 1410, the King in 1411 bestowed upon him the titles Earl of Albemarle and Duke of Clarence, and appointed him president of his Council when Prince Henry fell from favour. With titles and wealth to support him, he was given a major military command, and led the King’s expedition against the Duke of Burgundy in 1412 – a snub to Prince Henry, who worried that his succession to the throne might be in jeopardy. The brothers apparently resolved their differences when Henry acceded to the throne, however, and Clarence played a major role in the French wars.
8 NORTHUMBERLAND Henry Percy (1341–1408), 1st Earl of Northumberland, provided the military backing for Henry Bolingbroke when the latter usurped Richard II’s throne in 1399, and was rewarded when he became the leading member of the new King’s royal Council. He subsequently turned against Henry for apparent ingratitude and, in an attempt to maintain his authority as the most powerful lord in the north of England, joined his son Henry Percy (Hotspur) and his brother, the Earl of Worcester, in a protracted insurrection. Though Northumberland submitted to the King and was briefly imprisoned after the rebel defeat at Shrewsbury – a battle in which he did not participate – there was insufficient evidence to charge him with treason, so he secured a royal pardon. Nevertheless, he was forced to forfeit some of his lands and revenues, and in 1405 he led another rebellion against the King, joining Lord Bardolph, Thomas Mowbray and Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York. When his attempt to remove the Earl of Westmorland at Durham failed, he abandoned Mowbray and Scrope and fled to Scotland in the company of Lord Bardolph. Three years later, the two fugitive lords launched an ill-starred invasion of England, but they did not get far. At the Battle of Bramham Moor in Yorkshire, in February 1408, Northumberland was killed. His body, as befitted a traitor, was decapitated and quartered, and his head sent to London for display on London Bridge.
