King Henry IV. William Hazlitt

I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,

       Out of my grief and my impatience

       To be so pester’d with a popinjay,

       Answer’d neglectingly, I know not what,—

       He should, or he should not; for’t made me mad

       To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,

       And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman

       Of guns and drums and wounds,—God save the mark!—

       And telling me the sovereign’st thing on Earth

       Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;

       And that it was great pity, so it was,

       This villainous 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 answered 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.

      KING.

       Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,

       But with proviso and exception,

       That we at our own charge shall ransom straight

       His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer;

       Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray’d

       The lives of those that he did lead to fight

       Against that great magician, damn’d Glendower,

       Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March

       Hath lately married. Shall our coffers, then,

       Be emptied to redeem a traitor home?

       Shall we buy treason? and indent with fears

       When they have lost and forfeited themselves?

       No, on the barren mountains let him starve;

       For I shall never hold that man my friend

       Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost

       To ransom home revolted Mortimer.

      HOT.

       Revolted Mortimer!

       He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,

       But by the chance of war: to prove that true

       Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,

       Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took,

       When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank,

       In single opposition, hand to hand,

       He did confound the best part of an hour

       In changing hardiment with great Glendower.

       Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink,

       Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood;

       Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,

       Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,

       And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank

       Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.

       Never did base and rotten policy

       Colour her working with such deadly wounds;

       Nor never could the noble Mortimer

       Receive so many, and all willingly:

       Then let not him be slander’d with revolt.

      KING.

       Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him;

       He never did encounter with Glendower:

       I tell thee,

       He durst as well have met the Devil alone

       As Owen Glendower for an enemy.

       Art not ashamed? But, sirrah, henceforth

       Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer:

       Send me your prisoners with the speediest means,

       Or you shall hear in such a kind from me

       As will displease you.—My Lord Northumberland,

       We license your departure with your son.—

       Send us your prisoners, or you’ll hear of it.

      [Exeunt King Henry, Blunt, and train.]

      HOT.

       An if the Devil come and roar for them,

       I will not send them: I will after straight,

       And tell him so; for I will else my heart,

       Although it be with hazard of my head.

      NORTH.

       What, drunk with choler? stay, and pause awhile:

       Here comes your uncle.

      [Re-enter Worcester.]

      HOT.

       Speak of Mortimer!

       Zounds, I will speak of him; and let my soul

       Want mercy, if I do not join with him:

       Yea, on his part I’ll empty all these veins,

       And shed my dear blood drop by drop i’ the dust,

       But I will lift the down-trod Mortimer

       As high i’ the air as this unthankful King,

       As this ingrate and canker’d Bolingbroke.

      NORTH.

      [To Worcester.]

      Brother, the King hath made your nephew mad.

      WOR.

       Who struck this heat up after I was gone?

      HOT.

       He will, forsooth, have all my prisoners;

       And when I urged the ransom once again

       Of my wife’s brother, then his cheek look’d pale,

       And on my face he turn’d an eye of death,

       Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

      WOR.

       I cannot blame him: was not he proclaim’d

       By Richard that dead is the next of blood?

      NORTH.

       He was; I heard the proclamation:

       And then it was when the unhappy King—

       Whose wrongs in us God pardon!—did set forth

       Upon his Irish expedition;

       From whence he intercepted did return

       To be deposed, and shortly murdered.

      WOR.

       And for whose death we in the world’s wide mouth

       Live scandalized and foully spoken of.

      HOT.