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THE FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY THE FOURTH

ACT I

SCENE I.-London.

The Palace.

Enter KING HENRY, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, the EARL OF WESTMORELAND, SIR WALTER BLUNT, and others.

King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care,

Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in stronds afar remote.

No more the thirsty entrance of this soil

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ACT I. SCENE 1.] Acts and Scenes not marked in Qq; marked throughout in Ff. London. .] Cambridge; London. A Room in the Palace. Capell; The court in London. Theobald. Lord John of Lancaster,] Qq, Ff; omitted Capell. Sir Walter Blunt] Dering MS., Capell; omitted Qq, Ff.

5. entrance] Entrails F 4; entrants Steevens conj.; Erinnys M. Mason conj., Steevens (1793); bosom Dering MS.

2-4. Find... remote] Let us now suffer peace, whom our feuds have affrighted, to take breath, and presently she will whisper in short-breathed accents rumours of new wars against infidels in distant lands. The general sense is that the declaration of a holy war against the infidels will bring about a cessation of hostilities at home. Peace will then slumber once more undisturbed in her native seat of England. The same thought, or its converse, occurs in Richard II. IV. i. 139-141 :-"Peace shall go sleep with Turks

and infidels,

And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound."

3

Cf. ibid. 1. iii. 132-137. To pant, to take breath, as in Coriolanus, 11. ii. 126. Breathe, to whisper, as in King John, Iv. ii. 36. For "short-winded " cf. Shelton, Don Quixote, Part II. xxiii: "deep sighs and short-breathed accents." Stronds, strands, coasts; "strond" is a phonetic variant of "strand."

5. thirsty entrance of this soil] "Entrance" is here used collectively for the pores in the soil, the cracks and crannies of the earth, the language being intentionally vague in order to veil the boldness of the figure. Malone refers to Genesis iv. II as the source of the imagery: "the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood," and compares 3 Henry

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,
Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
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,
March all one way, and be no more opposed
Against acquaintance, kindred and allies:

8. flowerets] flowers Qq 6-8. armed] armd Q3.
files Warburton.
14. mutual] naturall Q 8.
VI. 11. iii. 15: ""
Thy brother's blood
the thirsty earth hath drunk," and the
old play of King John (1591): "the
blood y-spilt on either part, Closing the
crannies of the thirsty earth." See
also Richard III. iv. iv. 29, 30. Of
many conjectural emendations the most
interesting are F 4 Entrails, Steevens'
entrants (= invaders), and Mason's
Erinnys.

6. daub] Corrupted in Ff 2-4 into dambe or damb, which is altered by Theobald to damp and by Warburton to trempe.

6. her

her] Both pronouns refer to "this soil." Q8 reads his . . . her, the first pronoun referring apparently to " entrance” and the second to “ this soil." So Malone and others construe, reading her her. For "her own children" cf. Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, Part 1. (ed. Furnivall, p. 29): "Dame Nature bryngeth vs all into the worlde... and receiueth all againe into the womb of our mother, I meane the bowells of the earth."

7. trenching] cutting trenches in the earth.

8, 9. bruise. paces] Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Loyal Subject, IV.

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9. eyes] arms Hanmer; 16. allies] all eyes Q 4.

opponents," eyes" standing by synecdoche for the combatants themselves. For eyes Hanmer substituted arms, Warburton files. The flashing eyes of the opposed warriors suggest fiery meteors; and these meteors resemble the warriors themselves, being, like them, of one and the same origin. See Florio, The New World of Words:

Meteors, certain imperfectly mix't bodies, consisting of vapours drawn up into the Middle Region of the Air, and set out in different forms; as rain, hail, snow, wind, thunder and lightening, Blazing stars, etc." Aristotle (Meteor, 1. iv) writes concerning meteors, shooting stars, etc.: “ ταῦτα γὰρ πάντ ̓ ἐστὶ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν, διαφέρει δὲ r4 μâλλov кal ĥTTOV."

10. the heaven] Cf. Heywood, The Iron Age (Pearson, ii. 323): "Contrary elements, the warring meteors Are not so oppos'd." Meteors, shooting stars, as in Richard II. II. iv. 9.

13. furious close] fierce encounter of combatants fighting hand to hand. New Eng. Dict. quotes Feltham, Resolves, I. ii: "Lest . . . they should get a wound in the cloze." For "close" as a technical term in fencing see G. Silver, Bref Instructions (1599), ed. Matthey, p. 101 et seq.

14. mutual ranks] ranks in which all are commingled or united. Titus Andronicus, v. iii. 71:"to knit again

This scatter'd corn into one mutual sheaf."

Well-beseeming, becoming, seemly, as in Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 56.

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
We are impressed and engaged to fight,
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy;

20

Whose arms were moulded in their mothers' womb
To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet,
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross.

25

But this our purpose now is twelve month old,
And bootless 'tis to tell you we will go:
Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear
Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,
What yesternight our council did decree
In forwarding this dear expedience.

30

levy] leauy Q 1.
23. mothers']
24. in those] from those Dering MS.
month Qq 3-6; is a tweluemonth Ff.

22. Forthwith a] Forth with a Q 3. mother's F 4. womb] wombs Qq 6-8. 28. now is twelve month] Qq 1, 2; is twelue

17, 18. The edge .. master] Cf. Norton and Sackville, Gorboduc, II. ii: "woe to wretched land That wastes itself with civill sword in hand."

=

Edge vi. 113.

this

sword, as in Coriolanus, v.

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19-22. As far as to... levy] For construction, which Steevens thought quite unexampled, if not corrupt," Gifford quotes a parallel from Gosson's Schoole of Abuse, 1579 (ed. Arber, p. 50): "Scipio leuied his force to the walls of Carthage.' The pregnant construction occurs occasionally in the dramatists; cf. Mucedorus, 1598 (Hazlitt's Dodsley, vii. 255): "[I] Disguis'd myself from out father's court."

my

20. Whose soldier now] sc. we are. The anacoluthon presents no difficulty, the general sense being quite clear.

21. impressed] enlisted by our oath. Cf. Holland, Plutarch, The Romane Questions (ed. Jevons, p. 62): "prest soldiers by oth and enrolled."

21. engaged] pledged, bound by the obligation of an oath; as in Richard II. 1. iii. 17. The king refers here and in line 28 to his vow in Richard II. v. vi. 49, 50.

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28. now old] "month" represents an old genitive plural, as in Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, B. 1674: "a child of twelf monthe oold," where "monthe" is a genitive plural after the numeral "twelf." To supply the loss of now, which dropped out of the text in Qq 3-6, Q 7 read is but twelve months old, and F is a tweluemonth old. See Introd. p. xiii.

30. Therefore . . . now] we do not meet for this purpose, viz. that I may tell you we will go. Cf. 2 Henry VI. Iv. viii. 24.

31. cousin] "Cousin" is used by Shakespeare of any degree of kinship after the first; but it was also a title of courtesy given by kings to great nobles. Wright: "Westmoreland was Henry's brother-in-law, his second wife Joan being the daughter of John of Gaunt by Catharine Swynford."

33. dear] dear in its import, important, as in Romeo and Juliet, v. iii. 32.

West. My liege, this haste was hot in question,
And many limits of the charge set down
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
Against the irregular and wild Glendower,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
A thousand of his people butchered;
Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse,
Such beastly shameless transformation,

By those Welshwomen done, as may not be
Without much shame retold or spoken of.
King. It seems then that the tidings of this broil
Brake off our business for the Holy Land.

39. Herefordshire] Herdforshire Qq 1, 2; Herdfordshire Qq 3-5. And a Ff. 43. corpse] corpes Q 1, Ff 1, 2; corps the rest. shameless] hyphened Elton (S. Walker conj.).

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The primary meaning of "expedience' is speed (cf. Henry V. IV. iii. 70) or that which requires speed; and in this sense the word is echoed in Westmoreland's reply, “this haste was hot in question.'

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34. was hot .] was being eagerly debated. Cf. Twelfth Night, I. ii. 32: "'twas fresh in murmur.". 35. And... down] The general sense of this line must depend upon the meaning to be attached to "limits" and charge." "To limit" occurs in the sense of to assign or to appoint (e.g. in Richard III. v. iii. 25: "Limit each leader to his several charge," and in Macbeth, II. iii. 56), and here "limits of the charge" may mean appropriations of the estimated expenditure or assignment of commands in the expeditionary force. Cf. The Play of Stucley (Simpson's School of Shakspere, i. pp. 246, 247): "Ant. How shall it please your sacred Majesty To appoint the several charges of this war. Seb. Now Antonie unto our several charges.. we do commit of Tanieers,

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35

40

45

42. A] 44. beastly

46. retold] Qq; re-told Ff.

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36. all athwart] perversely, thwarting our purposes. Measure for Measure, 1. iii. 30; “quite athwart Goes all decorum."

37. post] messenger, as in Marlowe, Edward II. v. i; "Another post! what news brings he?"

38-46. See Introd. p. xxxv.

40. irregular] wild, lawless, as in III. ii. 27. "Irregulous" has the same sense in Cymbeline, IV. ii. 315.

42. A thousand] F has And a thousand. Vaughan conjectured And 'bove a thousand (suggested by Holinshed's "abcue a thousand ").

43. corpse] corpses, as in 2 Henry IV. 1. i. 192. So Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 11. ii; "The dead corps of poor calves and sheep." So we find the plurals "circumstance" (1. iii. 70), "balance" (Merchant of Venice, iv. i. 255) and “ sense (Sonnets, cxii. 10).

43. misuse] abuse. Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, Iv. ii. 105.

West. This match'd with other did, my gracious lord;
For more uneven and unwelcome news
Came from the north and thus it did import:
On Holy-rood day, the gallant Hotspur there,
Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,
That ever-valiant and approved Scot,
At Holmedon met,

Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour;
As by discharge of their artillery,

And shape of likelihood, the news was told;
For he that brought them, in the very heat
And pride of their contention did take horse,
Uncertain of the issue any way.

50

55

60

49. other did] Qq 1, 2; other like the rest. 50. For more] Qq 1-4; Far more Qq 5-8, Ff 3, 4; Farre more Ff 1, 2. 51. import] report Qq 5-8, Ff. 54. ever-valiant] hyphened Ff; every valiant Q7; very valiant Q 8. 56. At... hour ;] divided as by Capell; lines ending spend houre: in Qq, Ff.

49. match'd with] joined with, as in Love's Labour's Lost, II. i. 49. 50. uneven] untoward. Richard II. II. ii. 121;—

"all is uneven, And everything is left at six and

seven.

51. thus . . . import] thus it purported, this was its purport. Cf. Hamlet, I. ii. 23, and Othello, II. ii. 3.

52. Holy-rood day] "the Rood daie in haruest" (Holinshed) i.e. September 14th. See Introd. pp. xv and xxxvi. 54. approved] tried, proved by experience. Kyd, Soliman and Perseda, I. iv :

"Tis wondrous that so yong a toward warriour

Should bide the shock of such approoued knights"; also Much Ado About Nothing, II. i.

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55, 56. At hour;] The text follows Capell's division of the lines; in Qq and Ff line 55 ends at spend. Pope read At Holmedon spent a sad and bloody hour, and Vaughan conjectured At Holmedon met did spend a bloody

hour.

55,

as was reported by the messenger who had heard the discharge of artillery, from which he inferred the probability of a hotly contested fight. At Holmedon only the archers were engaged, but Shakespeare may have misunderstood Holinshed's statement that "with violence of the English shot they [the Scotch] were quite vanquished and put to flight." In the corresponding passage in Holinshed's Historie of Scotland we read: "with such incessant shot of arrows. 'Artillery" formerly included bows as well as guns, but that Shakespeare had the latter in mind is clear from the context and from the explicit mention of "vile guns” (1. iii. 63 post) and "salt-petre" (ibid. 1. 60). 59. them] As " news is treated as a singular in line 58, Pope altered them to it. Cf. however, Othello, I.iii. 1,

2:

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"There is no composition in these

news

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That gives them credit " (Folio). Elizabethan usage in respect to "news and 66 tidings" settled, but the tendency was to treat them as singulars. FI frequently alters "these news to "this news," and Wright notes that in Richard II. III. iv. "this news "in lines 74 and 82 is followed by "these news in line 100. 60. pride] height, highest pitch. in Rape of Lucrece, 705, and Macbeth, told] II. iv. 12.

55. Holmedon] Now Humbleton, in Northumberland. Hall and Grafton, Chronicle, 1575: "A mountane neare to the Towne of Wollar called Halydoe Hill" (p. 551). A dissyllable, as in Drayton, Polyolbion, xxii. 45357, 58. As by discharge.

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