[I] Dramatis Personæ. First given by Rowe. See note ([I]).
THE FIRST PART OF
KING HENRY IV.
ACT I.
Scene I. London. The palace.
Enter King Henry, Lord John of Lancaster, the Earl of Westmoreland, Sir Walter Blunt, and others.[1971]
King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care,[1972]
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in stronds afar remote.[1973]
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil[1974]5
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;[1975]
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs[1976][1977]
Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,[1977][1978]
Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,10
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in the intestine shock
And furious close of civil butchery
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,[1979]
March all one way and be no more opposed15
Against acquaintance, kindred and allies:[1980]
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ,
Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross[1981]20
We are impressed and engaged to fight,
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy;[1982]
Whose arms were moulded in their mothers' womb[1983]
To chase these pagans in those holy fields[1984]
Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet25
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross.
But this our purpose now is twelve month old,[1985]
And bootless 'tis to tell you we will go:
Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear30
Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,
What yesternight our council did decree
In forwarding this dear expedience.[1986]
West. My liege, this haste was hot in question,
And many limits of the charge set down35
But yesternight: when all athwart there came
A post from Wales loaden with heavy news;
Whose worst was, that the noble Mortimer,
Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight[1987]
Against the irregular and wild Glendower,40
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,[1988]
A thousand of his people butchered;[1989]
Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse,[1990]
Such beastly shameless transformation,[1991]
By those Welshwomen done, as may not be45
Without much shame retold or spoken of.[1992]