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That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knows.

      — Othello, Act I Scene 1

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1

Henry IV, Part II
[Prologue, 1]

Rumour

2

Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth.
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace while covert emnity,
Under the smile of safety, wounds the world;
And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters and prepar'd defence,
Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wav'ring multitude,
Can play upon it. But what need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize
Among my household? Why is Rumour here?
I run before King Harry's victory,
Who, in a bloody field by Shrewsbury,
Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,
Quenching the flame of bold rebellion
Even with the rebels' blood. But what mean I
To speak so true at first? My office is
To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell
Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword,
And that the King before the Douglas' rage
Stoop'd his anointed head as low as death.
This have I rumour'd through the peasant towns
Between that royal field of Shrewsbury
And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,
Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland,
Lies crafty-sick. The posts come tiring on,
And not a man of them brings other news
Than they have learnt of me. From Rumour's tongues
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.

2

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 1]

Lord Bardolph

82

My lord, I over-rode him on the way;
And he is furnish'd with no certainties
More than he haply may retail from me.

3

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 1]

Earl of Northumberland

124

How doth my son and brother?
Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dread in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;
But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,
And I my Percy's death ere thou report'st it.
This thou wouldst say: 'Your son did thus and thus;
Your brother thus; so fought the noble Douglas'—
Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds;
But in the end, to stop my ear indeed,
Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,
Ending with 'Brother, son, and all, are dead.'

4

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 1]

Morton

163

I am sorry I should force you to believe
That which I would to God I had not seen;
But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,
Rend'ring faint quittance, wearied and out-breath'd,
To Harry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down
The never-daunted Percy to the earth,
From whence with life he never more sprung up.
In few, his death—whose spirit lent a fire
Even to the dullest peasant in his camp—
Being bruited once, took fire and heat away
From the best-temper'd courage in his troops;
For from his metal was his party steeled;
Which once in him abated, all the rest
Turn'd on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.
And as the thing that's heavy in itself
Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed,
So did our men, heavy in Hotspur's loss,
Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear
That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim
Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,
Fly from the field. Then was that noble Worcester
Too soon ta'en prisoner; and that furious Scot,
The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword
Had three times slain th' appearance of the King,
Gan vail his stomach and did grace the shame
Of those that turn'd their backs, and in his flight,
Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all
Is that the King hath won, and hath sent out
A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,
Under the conduct of young Lancaster
And Westmoreland. This is the news at full.

5

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 1]

Morton

220

Sweet Earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.
The lives of all your loving complices
Lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er
To stormy passion, must perforce decay.
You cast th' event of war, my noble lord,
And summ'd the account of chance before you said
'Let us make head.' It was your pre-surmise
That in the dole of blows your son might drop.
You knew he walk'd o'er perils on an edge,
More likely to fall in than to get o'er;
You were advis'd his flesh was capable
Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit
Would lift him where most trade of danger rang'd;
Yet did you say 'Go forth'; and none of this,
Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall'n,
Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth
More than that being which was like to be?

6

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 1]

Morton

245

'Tis more than time. And, my most noble lord,
I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth:
The gentle Archbishop of York is up
With well-appointed pow'rs. He is a man
Who with a double surety binds his followers.
My lord your son had only but the corpse,
But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;
For that same word 'rebellion' did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls;
And they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd,
As men drink potions; that their weapons only
Seem'd on our side, but for their spirits and souls
This word 'rebellion'—it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop
Turns insurrection to religion.
Suppos'd sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He's follow'd both with body and with mind;
And doth enlarge his rising with the blood
Of fair King Richard, scrap'd from Pomfret stones;
Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;
Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,
Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;
And more and less do flock to follow him.

7

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 2]

Page

276

He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water;
for the party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than
knew for.

8

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 2]

Falstaff

281

Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The
this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent
that intends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented
me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is
other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath
overwhelm'd all her litter but one. If the Prince put thee
my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then
have no judgment. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to
worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never mann'd
an agate till now; but I will inset you neither in gold nor
silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your
master, for a jewel—the juvenal, the Prince your master,
chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a beard grow in
palm of my hand than he shall get one off his cheek; and yet
will not stick to say his face is a face-royal. God may
when he will, 'tis not a hair amiss yet. He may keep it still
a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of
and yet he'll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his
father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he's
out of mine, I can assure him. What said Master Dommelton
the satin for my short cloak and my slops?

9

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 2]

Falstaff

368

What! a young knave, and begging! Is there not wars?
there not employment? Doth not the King lack subjects? Do not
rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side
one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side,
it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it.

10

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 2]

Servant

383

I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your
soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you you in your
throat, if you say I am any other than an honest man.

11

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 2]

Falstaff

542

Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look
pray, all you that kiss my Lady Peace at home, that our
join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two
out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily. If it
hot day, and I brandish anything but a bottle, I would I
never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can
out his head but I am thrust upon it. Well, I cannot last
but it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they
have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs
am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my
were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to
eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with
perpetual motion.

12

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 2]

Falstaff

575

If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can
more separate age and covetousness than 'a can part young
and lechery; but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches
other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!

13

Henry IV, Part II
[I, 3]

Lord Bardolph

632

It was, my lord; who lin'd himself with hope,
Eating the air and promise of supply,
Flatt'ring himself in project of a power
Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts;
And so, with great imagination
Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,
And, winking, leapt into destruction.

14

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 1]

Hostess Quickly

797

It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all—all
have. He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all
substance into that fat belly of his. But I will have some of
out again, or I will ride thee a nights like a mare.

15

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 1]

Lord Chief Justice

846

Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted with
manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a
confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such
than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level
consideration. You have, as it appears to me, practis'd upon
easy yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your
both in purse and in person.

16

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 2]

Henry V

956

Belike then my appetite was not-princely got; for, by
troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But
indeed these humble considerations make me out of love with
greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name,
to know thy face to-morrow, or to take note how many pair of
stockings thou hast—viz., these, and those that were thy
peach-colour'd ones—or to bear the inventory of thy shirts-
one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the
tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb
linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou
not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries
have made a shift to eat up thy holland. And God knows
those that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen shall inherit
kingdom; but the midwives say the children are not in the
whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily
strengthened.

17

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 2]

Henry V

988

It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than

18

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 2]

Henry V

1010

It would be every man's thought; and thou art a blessed
fellow to think as every man thinks. Never a man's thought in
world keeps the road-way better than thine. Every man would
me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful
thought to think so?

19

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 3]

Lady Percy

1163

O, yet, for God's sake, go not to these wars!
The time was, father, that you broke your word,
When you were more endear'd to it than now;
When your own Percy, when my heart's dear Harry,
Threw many a northward look to see his father
Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.
Who then persuaded you to stay at home?
There were two honours lost, yours and your son's.
For yours, the God of heaven brighten it!
For his, it stuck upon him as the sun
In the grey vault of heaven; and by his light
Did all the chivalry of England move
To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs that practis'd not his gait;
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;
For those who could speak low and tardily
Would turn their own perfection to abuse
To seem like him: so that in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,
In military rules, humours of blood,
He was the mark and glass, copy and book,
That fashion'd others. And him—O wondrous him!
O miracle of men!—him did you leave—
Second to none, unseconded by you—
To look upon the hideous god of war
In disadvantage, to abide a field
Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur's name
Did seem defensible. So you left him.
Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong
To hold your honour more precise and nice
With others than with him! Let them alone.
The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong.
Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,
To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck,
Have talk'd of Monmouth's grave.

20

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 4]

Doll Tearsheet

1267

Better than I was—hem.

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