Henry IV, Part I William Shakespeare (best book series to read TXT) 📖

epub:type="z3998:persona">Prince This oily rascal is known as well as Paul’s. Go, call him forth. Peto Falstaff!⁠—Fast asleep behind the arras, and snorting like a horse. Prince Hark, how hard he fetches breath. Search his pockets. He searcheth his pockets, and findeth certain papers. What hast thou found? Peto Nothing but papers, my lord. Prince Let’s see what they be: read them. Peto

Reads.

Item, A capon, 2s. 2d. Item, Sauce, 4d. Item, Sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d. Item, Anchovies and sack after supper, 2s. 6d. Item, Bread, ob. Prince O monstrous! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack! What there is else, keep close; we’ll read it at more advantage: there let him sleep till day. I’ll to the court in the morning. We must all to the wars, and thy place shall be honourable. I’ll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot; and I know his death will be a march of twelve-score. The money shall be paid back again with advantage. Be with me betimes in the morning; and so, good morrow, Peto. Exeunt. Peto Good morrow, good my lord. Act III Scene I

Bangor. The Archdeacon’s house.

Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Mortimer, and Glendower. Mortimer

These promises are fair, the parties sure,
And our induction full of prosperous hope.

Hotspur

Lord Mortimer, and cousin Glendower,
Will you sit down?
And uncle Worcester: a plague upon it!
I have forgot the map.

Glendower

No, here it is.
Sit, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur,
For by that name as oft as Lancaster
Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale and with
A rising sigh he wisheth you in heaven.

Hotspur And you in hell, as oft as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of. Glendower

I cannot blame him: at my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.

Hotspur Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother’s cat had but kittened, though yourself had never been born. Glendower I say the earth did shake when I was born. Hotspur

And I say the earth was not of my mind,
If you suppose as fearing you it shook.

Glendower The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble. Hotspur

O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,
And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch’d and vex’d
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam earth and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth
Our grandam earth, having this distemperature,
In passion shook.

Glendower

Cousin, of many men
I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave
To tell you once again that at my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have mark’d me extraordinary;
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
Where is he living, clipp’d in with the sea
That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales,
Which calls me pupil, or hath read to me?
And bring him out that is but woman’s son
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art
And hold me pace in deep experiments.

Hotspur I think there’s no man speaks better Welsh. I’ll to dinner. Mortimer Peace, cousin Percy; you will make him mad. Glendower I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur

Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

Glendower

Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command
The devil.

Hotspur

And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil
By telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil.
If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,
And I’ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.
O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!

Mortimer Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat. Glendower

Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him
Bootless home and weather-beaten back.

Hotspur

Home without boots, and in foul weather too!
How ’scapes he agues, in the devil’s name?

Glendower

Come, here’s the map: shall we divide our right
According to our threefold order ta’en?

Mortimer

The archdeacon hath divided it
Into three limits very equally:
England, from Trent and Severn hitherto,
By south and east is to my part assign’d:
All westward, Wales beyond the Severn shore,
And all the fertile land within that bound,
To Owen Glendower: and, dear coz, to you
The remnant northward, lying off from Trent.
And our indentures tripartite are drawn;
Which being sealed interchangeably,
A business that this night may execute,
To-morrow, cousin Percy, you and I
And my good Lord of Worcester will set forth
To meet your father and the Scottish power,
As is appointed us, at Shrewsbury.
My father Glendower is not ready yet,
Not shall we need his help these fourteen days.
Within that space you may have drawn together
Your tenants, friends and neighbouring gentlemen.

Glendower

A shorter time shall send me to you, lords:
And in my conduct shall your ladies come;
From whom you now must steal and take no leave,
For there will be a world of water shed
Upon the parting of your wives and you.

Hotspur

Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
I’ll have the current in this place damm’d up;
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel, fair and evenly;
It shall not wind with such a deep indent,
To rob me of so rich a bottom here.

Glendower Not wind? it shall, it must; you see it doth. Mortimer

Yea, but
Mark how he bears his course, and runs me up
With like advantage on the other side;
Gelding the opposed continent as much
As on the other side it takes from you.

Worcester

Yea, but a little charge will trench him here
And on this north side