Henry IV, Part 2: Induction and Act 1

I speak of peace while covert enmity
Under the smile of safety wounds the world.

Rumor 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.

Rumor 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.

Contention, like a horse
Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose
And bears down all before him.

I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence,
A gentleman well bred and of good name,
That freely rendered me these news for true.

Now, Travers, what good tidings comes with you?

With that he gave his able horse the head
And, bending forward, struck his armèd heels
Against the panting sides of his poor jade
Up to the rowel-head

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 dead in look, so woebegone,
Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt

You are too great to be by me gainsaid,
Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

The tongue offends not that reports his death;
And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,
Not he which says the dead is not alive.

For from his mettle was his party steeled,
Which, once in him abated, all the rest
Turned on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.

In poison there is physic, and these news,
Having been well, that would have made me sick,
Being sick, have in some measure made me well.

A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel
Must glove this hand.

Yet did you say “Go forth,” and none of this,
Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
The stiff-borne action.

But now the Bishop
Turns insurrection to religion.

He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph.

Your Lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of an ague in you, some relish of the saltness of time in you, and I most humbly beseech your Lordship to have a reverend care of your health.

Your Lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of an ague in you, some relish of the saltness of time in you, and I most humbly beseech your Lordship to have a reverend care of your health.

And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

It hath it original from much grief, from study, and perturbation of the brain.

Rather, an ’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

Your Lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty, but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.

Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound.

Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound.

Your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s Hill.

Your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s Hill.

A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow.

All the other gifts appurtenant to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry.

If it be a hot day and I brandish anything but a bottle, I would I might never spit white again.

A man can no more separate age and covetousness than he can part young limbs and lechery; but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other, and so both the degrees prevent my curses.

I well allow the occasion of our arms,
But gladly would be better satisfied
How in our means we should advance ourselves
To look with forehead bold and big enough
Upon the power and puissance of the King.

Our present musters grow upon the file
To five-and-twenty thousand men of choice,
And our supplies live largely in the hope
Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns
With an incensèd fire of injuries.

Or else
We fortify in paper and in figures,
Using the names of men instead of men,
Like one that draws the model of an house
Beyond his power to build it, who, half through,
Gives o’er and leaves his part-created cost
A naked subject to the weeping clouds
And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.

So is the unfirm king
In three divided, and his coffers sound
With hollow poverty and emptiness.

So is the unfirm king
In three divided, and his coffers sound
With hollow poverty and emptiness.

The commonwealth is sick of their own choice.

Their over-greedy love hath surfeited.

So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up
And howl’st to find it.

They that, when Richard lived, would have him die
Are now become enamored on his grave.