Henry IV, Part 2: Act 3

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great

O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common ’larum bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the shipboy’s eyes and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge

And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafing clamor in the slippery clouds
That with the hurly death itself awakes?

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king?

KING: Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords.
Have you read o’er the letter that I sent you?
WARWICK: We have, my liege.

O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book and sit him down and die.

“The time will come that foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption”—so went on,
Foretelling this same time’s condition
And the division of our amity.

Such things become the hatch and brood of time,
And by the necessary form of this,
King Richard might create a perfect guess
That great Northumberland, then false to him,
Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness,
Which should not find a ground to root upon
Unless on you.

Your Majesty hath been this fortnight ill,
And these unseasoned hours perforce must add
Unto your sickness.

Your Majesty hath been this fortnight ill,
And these unseasoned hours perforce must add
Unto your sickness.

How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair?

By my troth, cousin, I was not there.

My captain, sir, commends him to you, my captain, Sir John Falstaff, a tall gentleman, by heaven, and a most gallant leader.

It is my cousin Silence, in commission with me.

My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery.

Prick him, for we have a number of shadows to fill up the muster book.

It were superfluous, for his apparel is built upon his back, and the whole frame stands upon pins.

Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove or most magnanimous mouse.

I cannot put him to a private soldier that is the leader of so many thousands. Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.

I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble.—Who is the next?

Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tarry dinner.

She would always say she could not abide Master Shallow.

I’ll ne’er bear a base mind.

He shall charge you and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer’s hammer, come off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer’s bucket.

Fare you well, gentlemen both.

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying.

This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth and the feats he hath done about Turnbull Street, and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk’s tribute.

I do remember him at Clement’s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese paring.

And now is this Vice’s dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly of John o’ Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him, and I’ll be sworn he ne’er saw him but once in the tilt-yard, and then he burst his head for crowding among the Marshal’s men.