Henry IV, Part II quotes

And who but Rumour, who but only I, Make fearful musters and prepared defence, Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief, Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, And no such matter?

Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it.

But what need I thus My well-known body to anatomize Among my household? Why is Rumour here? I run before King Harry’s victory;

What news, Lord Bardolph? every minute now Should be the father of some stratagem:

The times are wild; contention, like a horse Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose And bears down all before him.

Noble earl, I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury.

Why, he is dead.

See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

He that but fears the thing he would not know Hath by instinct knowledge from others’ eyes That what he fear’d is chanced. Yet speak, Morton;

If he be slain, say so; The tongue offends not that reports his death: And he doth sin that doth belie the dead, Not he which says the dead is not alive.

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office, and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, Remember’d tolling a departing friend.

I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.

Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me:

I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.

I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment.

To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.

I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but how should I be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.

I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.

I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.

You have misled the youthful prince.

Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound: your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting that action.

But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.

To wake a wolf is as bad as to smell a fox.

a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!

My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly.

For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding;

Well, God send the prince a better companion!

God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry: I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.

If ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is:

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition!

If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle.

A man can no more separate age and covetousness than a’ can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses.

Boy!

or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. ’Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable.

A good wit will make use of any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity.

Exit.

Let us on, And publish the occasion of our arms. The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; Their over-greedy love hath surfeited:

An habitation giddy and unsure Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

O thou fond many, with what loud applause Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke, Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!

Thou, that threw’st dust upon his goodly head When through proud London he came sighing on After the admired heels of Bolingbroke, Criest now “O earth, yield us that king again, And take thou this!” O thoughts of men accursed!

Past and to come seems best; things present worst.

Shall we go draw our numbers and set on?

Shall we go draw our numbers and set on?

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Exeunt.

and I have borne, and borne, and borne, and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on.

There is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and a beast, to bear every knave’s wrong.

Yonder he comes; and that errant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, do your offices: Master Fang and Master Snare, do me, do me, do me your offices.

Pray thee, peace.

Pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villany you have done her: the one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.

My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You call honourable boldness impudent sauciness: if a man will make courtesy and say nothing, he is virtuous: no, my lord, my humble duty remembered, I will not be your suitor.

Faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it.

Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?

Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to remember so weak a composition.

God send the wench no worse fortune! But I never said so.

Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.

Is your master here in London?

Better than I was: hem!

Why, that’s well said; a good heart’s worth gold.

Lo, here comes Sir John.

you are both, i’ good truth, as rheumatic as two dry toasts; you cannot one bear with another’s confirmities. What the good-year! one must bear, and that must be you: you are the weaker vessel, as they say, the emptier vessel.

Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full hogshead? there’s a whole merchant’s venture of Bourdeaux stuff in him; you have not seen a hulk better stuffed in the hold.

Come, I’ll be friends with thee, Jack: thou art going to the wars; and whether I shall ever see thee again or no, there is nobody cares.

Look, whether the withered elder hath not his poll clawed like a parrot.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! what says the almanac to that?

Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick; But, ere they come, bid them o’er-read these letters, And well consider of them: make good speed. Exit Page. How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep!

O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?

“The time shall come,” thus did he follow it, “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.

There is a history in all men’s lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds And weak beginnings lie intreasured.

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;

Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?

We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.

That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we have: our watch-word was “Hem boys!” Come, let’s to dinner; come, let’s to dinner: Jesus, the days that we have seen! Come, come. Exeunt Falstaff and Justices.

And this same half-faced fellow, Shadow; give me this man: he presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. And for a retreat; how swiftly will this Feeble the woman’s tailor run off!

O, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones.

Put me a caliver into Wart’s hand, Bardolph.

Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. Exeunt Justices. On, Bardolph; lead the men away. Exeunt Bardolph, Recruits, etc. As I return, I will fetch off these justices: I do see the bottom of Justice Shallow.

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.

That argues but the shame of your offence:

A rotten case abides no handling.

Hath the Prince John a full commission, In very ample virtue of his father, To hear and absolutely to determine Of what conditions we shall stand upon?

You wish me health in very happy season; For I am, on the sudden, something ill.

Against ill chances men are ever merry; But heaviness foreruns the good event.

Therefore be merry, coz; since sudden sorrow Serves to say thus, “some good thing comes to-morrow.”

This had been cheerful after victory.

A peace is of the nature of a conquest; For then both parties nobly are subdued, And neither party loser.

Go, my lord, And let our army be discharged too. Exit Westmoreland. And, good my lord, so please you, let our trains March by us, that we may peruse the men We should have coped withal.

And wherefore should these good news make me sick? Will Fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters?

She either gives a stomach and no food; Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast And takes away the stomach; such are the rich, That have abundance and enjoy it not.

I should rejoice now at this happy news; And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy: O me! come near me; now I am much ill.

And wherefore should these good news make me sick?

Will Fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters?

She either gives a stomach and no food; Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast And takes away the stomach; such are the rich, That have abundance and enjoy it not. I should rejoice now at this happy news;

No; I will sit and watch here by the king. Exeunt all but the Prince.

Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, Being so troublesome a bedfellow?

O polish’d perturbation! golden care! That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide To many a watchful night! sleep with it now! Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet As he whose brow with homely biggen bound Snores out the watch of night.

If I had a suit to Master Shallow, I would humour his men with the imputation of being near their master: if to his men, I would curry with Master Shallow that no man could better command his servants.

It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another: therefore let men take heed of their company.

I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep Prince Harry in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions, which is four terms, or two actions, and a’ shall laugh without intervallums.

O God, that right should thus overcome might!

Well, of sufferance comes ease.

Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.