Henry IV, Part 1: Act 4

No man so potent breathes upon the ground
But I will beard him.

For, as he writes, there is no quailing now,
Because the King is certainly possessed
Of all our purposes.

Your father’s sickness is a maim to us.

A perilous gash, a very limb lopped off!

A rendezvous, a home to fly unto,
If that the devil and mischance look big
Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

And think how such an apprehension
May turn the tide of fearful faction
And breed a kind of question in our cause.

It lends a luster and more great opinion,
A larger dare, to our great enterprise
Than if the Earl were here

I am on fire
To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh
And yet not ours.

An if it do, take it for thy labor. An if it make twenty, take them all. I’ll answer the coinage.

I press me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons, inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns—such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lief hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck.

...and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies—slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never
soldiers, but discarded, unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers tradefallen, the cankers of a calm world and a long peace...

...and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies—slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never
soldiers, but discarded, unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers tradefallen, the cankers of a calm world and a long peace...

...and such have I to fill up the rooms of them as have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks.

A mad fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies.

There’s not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat
without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Albans or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry.

I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

Well,
To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast
Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

Well,
To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast
Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

DOUGLAS: You give him then advantage.
VERNON: Not a whit.

I wonder much,
Being men of such great leading as you are,
That you foresee not what impediments
Drag back our expedition.

I come with gracious offers from the King,
If you vouchsafe me hearing and respect.

And God defend but still I should stand so,
So long as out of limit and true rule
You stand against anointed majesty.

You conjure from the breast of civil peace
Such bold hostility, teaching his duteous land
Audacious cruelty.

If that the King
Have any way your good deserts forgot,
Which he confesseth to be manifold,
He bids you name your griefs

If that the King
Have any way your good deserts forgot,
Which he confesseth to be manifold,
He bids you name your griefs

And when he heard him swear and vow to God
He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,
To sue his livery, and beg his peace
With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,
My father, in kind heart and pity moved,
Swore him assistance and performed it too.

He presently, as greatness knows itself,
Steps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father while his blood was poor
Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh,
And now forsooth takes on him to reform
Some certain edicts and some strait decrees
That lie too heavy on the commonwealth

My good lord, I guess their tenor.

But there is Mordake, Vernon, Lord Harry Percy,
And there is my Lord of Worcester, and a head
Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen.

For if Lord Percy thrive not, ere the King
Dismiss his power he means to visit us,
For he hath heard of our confederacy,
And ’tis but wisdom to make strong against him.