P. Hen. But, I doubt, they will be too hard for us. Poins. Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I'll forswear arms. The virtue of this jest will be, the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us, when we meet at supper: how thirty, at least, he fought with; what wards, what blows, what extremities he endured; and, in the reproof 2+ of this, lies the jest.

P. Hen. Well, I'll go with thee: provide us all things necessary, and meet me to-morrow night 25 in Eastcheap, there I'll sup. Farewell.

Poins. Farewell, my lord.

[Exit POINS.
P. Hen. I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyok'd humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun;

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 26
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of
vapours, that did seem to strangle
If all the year were playing holidays,

him.

24 Reproof is confutation. To refute, to refell, to disallow, were ancient synonymes of to reprove. Thus in Cooper's Dictionary, 1584, Testes refutare' is rendered to 'reproove wit

nesses.

25 We should read to-night, for the robbery was to be committed, according to Poins, 'to-morrow morning by four o'clock.' Shakspeare had forgotten what he had written at the beginning of this scene.'

26

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,--
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face.'

27 Thus in Macbeth :

Shakspeare's 33d Sonnet.

And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.'

To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,

By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes 28
28;
And, like bright metal on a sullen 29 ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly, and attract more eyes,
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time, when men think least I will. [Exit.

The same.

SCENE III.

Another Room in the Palace.

Enter KING HENRY, NORTHUMBERLAND, WORCESTER, HOTSPUR, SIR WALTER BLUNT, and Others.

K. Hen. My blood hath been too cold and temperate,

Unapt to stir at these indignities,

And you have found me; for, accordingly,
You tread upon my patience: but, be sure,
I will from henceforth rather be myself,
Mighty, and to be fear'd, than my condition1,

28 Hopes is used simply for expectations, no uncommon use of the word even at the present day.

29 So in King Richard II. :

The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set

The precious jewel of thy home return.'

1 Condition is used for nature, disposition, as well as estate or fortune. It is so interpreted by Philips, in his World of Words. And we find it most frequently used in this sense by Shakspeare and his contemporaries.

Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, And therefore lost that title of respect,

Which the proud soul ne'er pays, but to the proud.

Wor. Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves The scourge of greatness to be used on it;

And that same greatness too which our own hands Have holp to make so portly.

North. My lord,

K. Hen. Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see Danger and disobedience in thine eye:

O, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory, And majesty might never yet endure

The moody frontier of a servant brow.

You have good leave to leave us; when we need Your use and counsel, we shall send for you.—

You were about to speak.

North.

[Exit WORCESter.

[To NORTH.

Yea, my good lord.

Those prisoners in your highness' name demanded,
Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,
Were, as he says, not with such strength denied
As is deliver'd to your majesty:

Either envy, therefore, or misprision
Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.

Hot. My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
But, I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil,

·

2 Frontier is said, anciently to have meant forehead, to prove which the following quotation has been adduced from Stubbe's Anatomy of Abuses: Then on the edges of their bolster'd hair, which standeth ousted round their frontiers, and hangeth over their brow.' Mr. Nares has justly observed, that this does not seem to explain the above passage, "The moody forehead of a servant brow" is not sense. Surely it may be better interpreted the moody or threatening outwork ;' in which sense frontier is used in Act ii. Sc. 3:

Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets.'

See note on that passage, p. 160.

Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap'd,
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest home3;
He was perfumed like a milliner:

And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He

gave his nose, and took't away again;

Who, therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff5:-and still he smil'd, and talk'd;
And, as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call'd them-untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms

He question'd me; among the rest' demanded
My prisoners, in your majesty's behalf.

I then, all smarting, with my wounds being cold,
To be so pestered with a popinjay 6,

Out of my grief and my impatience,
Answer'd neglectingly, I know not what;

He should, or he should not;-for he made me mad,
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman,

3 To completely understand this simile the reader should bear in mind that the courtiers' beard, according to the fashion in the poet's time, would not be closely shaved, but shorn or trimmed, and would therefore show like a stubble land new reap'd.

4 A box perforated with small holes, for carrying perfumes; quasi pounced-box.

5 Took it in snuff means no more than snuffed it up, but there is a quibble on the phrase, which was equivalent to taking huff at it, in familiar modern speech; to be angry, to take offence; To take in snuffe, Pigliar ombra, Pigliar in mala parte.'—Torriano.

6 A popinjay or popingay is a parrot. Papegay, Fr. Papagallo, Ital. The Spaniards have a proverbial phrase, 'Hablar como papagayo,' to designate a chattering ignorant person.

7 i. e. pain, dolor ventris is rendered belly-grief in the old dictionaries.

Of guns,and drums, and wounds (God save the mark!)
And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmaceti, for an inward bruiseR;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
That villanous salt-petre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly; and, but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.
This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,
I answer'd indirectly, as I said;
And, I beseech you, let not his report
Come current for an accusation,

Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

Blunt. The circumstance consider'd, good my lord, Whatever Harry Percy then had said, To such a person, and in such a place, At such a time, with all the rest re-told, May reasonably die, and never rise To do him wrong, or any way impeach What then he said, so he unsay it now.

K. Hen. Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners; But with proviso, and exception,

That we, at our own charge, shall ransome straight His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer9;

8 So in Sir T. Overburie's Characters, 1616 [An Ordinarie Fencer], his wounds are seldom skin-deepe; for an inwardbruise lambstones and sweetebreads are his only spermaceti.

9 Shakspeare has fallen into some contradictions with regard to this Lord Mortimer. Before he makes his personal appearance in the play, he is repeatedly spoken of as Hotspur's brotherin-law. In Act II. Lady Percy expressly calls him her brother Mortimer. And yet when he enters in the third Act, he calls Lady Percy his aunt, which in fact she was, and not his sister. This inconsistency may be accounted for as follows; it appears from Dugdale and Sandford's account of the Mortimer family, that there were two of them taken prisoners at different times by Glendower, each of them bearing the name of Edmund; one being Edmund earl of March, nephew to Lady Percy, and the