William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1

 

William Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part 1, Arden

 

King: …O, that it could be proved

That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged

In cradle clothes our children where they lay,

And called mine ‘Percy’, his ‘Plantagenet’; (1.1.85-88)

 

Falstaff: Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

Prince: Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack,

and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon

benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand

that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil

hast thou to do with the time of day? Unless hours

were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the

tongues of bawds, … (1.2.1-8) [sack – Spanish white wine; capons – roosters castrated and subsequently fattened for eating.]

 

Falstaff: And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art a king, as God

save thy grace—‘majesty’, I should say, for grace thou

wilt have none—

Prince: What, none?

Falstaff: No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to

be prologue to an egg and butter. (1.2.15-20) [an egg and butter – a light meal, not requiring an elaborate blessing]

 

Poins: … What says Sir John Sack and Sugar, Jack?

How agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou

soldest him on Good Friday last for a cup of madeira

and a cold capon’s leg? (1.2.107-111) [sack and sugar – a teasing reference to Falstaff’s taste in drink; the desire for sweeter wines, achieved by adding sugar, was seen as a sign of old age; madeira – This is the earliest citation in the OED.]

 

Poins: You will, chops? (1.2.129) [chops – fat cheeks]

 

Northumberland: Either envy, therefore, or misprision

Is guilty of this fault and not my son. (1.3.27-8) [misprision – misunderstanding]

 

Hotspur: But shall it be that you that set the crown

Upon the head of this forgetful man

And for his sake wear the detested  blot

Of murderous subornation—shall it be

That you a world of curses undergo,

Being the agents or base second means,

The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather? (1.3.159-65)

 

Hotspur: … Why, that’s certain: ‘tis dangerous to take a

cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out

of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. (2.3.7-9)

 

Prince: … I have sounded the very bass

string of humility. … (2.4.5-6)

 

Falstaff: A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance

too. Marry and amen!—Give me a cup of sack, boy.—

Ere I lead this life long, I’ll sew netherstocks and mend

them, and foot them too. A plague of cowards,—Give

me a cup of sack, rogue.—Is there  no virtue extant? (2.4.110-14) [Ere…too—Befor I live any longer I’ll stitch, darn and even remake the feet of my stocking (since he has been forced to walk a great distance.)]

 

Bardoll: My lord, do you see these meteors? Do you

behold these exhalations?

Prince: I do.

Bardoll: What you think they portend?

Prince: Hot livers and cold purses. (2.4.310-14) [hot livers and cold purses – drunkenness and poverty]

 

Falstaff: … Give me a cup of sack

to make my eyes look red, that it may be thought I have

wept, for I must speak in passion, … (2.4.374-6)

 

Falstaff: … For though

the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it

grows, so youth, the more it is wasted the sooner it

wears. … (2.4.389-92) [camomile…wears – a proverbial simile; Cf Lyle’s Camomile is a creeping plant with white flowers that spreads easily by sending out runners.]

 

Falstaff: … but chiefly a villainous

trick of thine eye and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip (2.4.393-4) [a hanging lower lip was considered a mark of wantonness; cf. Brome, Queen’s: ‘the hanging of the nether lip / Which the best Phisiognomists tell us / Shews women apt to lust, and strong incontinence’ (sig. C2r)]

Falstaff: … Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a

micher and eat blackberries? … (2.4.397-8) [micher – truant (who might go off to eat blackberries]

 

Hotspur: … I had rather live

With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,

Than feed on cates and have him talk to me

In any summer-house in Christendom. (3.1.157-60) [with cheese and garlic in a windmill – i.e. poorly and uncomfortably; cheese and onions were proverbially the food of the poor (cf. Heywood, Captives, 4.1.485, where ‘the poore’ are said to fill their bellies ‘with cheese and onions’); and windmills were notoriously noisy and unsteady]

 

King: … Tell me else,

Could such inordinate and low desires,

Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts,

Such barren pleasures, rude society

As though art matched withal and grafted to,

Accompany the greatness of thy blood

And hold their level with thy princely heart? (3.2.11-17) [rhythm, line 14]

 

King: Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,

My presence like a robe pontifical,

Ne’er seen but wondered at; and so my state,

Seldom but sumptuous, … (3.2.55-58) [state – formal appearance in public; seldom – seldom seen]

 

King: He was but as the cuckoo is in June,

Heard, not regarded; … (3.2.75-6) [by June no one pays the cuckoo any attention, although when it first appears each year it is welcomed as a sign of the return of spring]

 

Falstaff: … Thou seest I

have more flesh than another man and therefore more

frailty. … (3.3.165-7)

 

Falstaff: … I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, … (4.2.20-21) [contemptuous term for pampered citizens; cf. Moryson: ‘all within the sound of Bow-Bell, are in reproach called Cocknies, and eaters of buttered tostes’ (3.463)]

 

Falstaff: Tut, never fear me. I am as vigilant as a cat to

steal cream. (4.2.57-8)

 

Worcester: … and posted day and night

To meet you on the way and kiss your hand

When yet you were in place and in account

Nothing so strong and fortunate as I. (5.1.35-8)

 

Falstaff: … Can honour set to a leg? Or an arm?

No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour

hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A

word. … (5.1.131-4)

 

Hotspur: —O gentlemen, the time of life if short;

To spend that shortness basely were too long

If life did ride upon a dial’s point,

Still ending at the arrival of an hour. (5.2.81-4)

 

Falstaff: … let him make a carbonado of me. … (5.3.59) [meat scored with a knife to ready it for broiling]

 

Hotspur: I can no longer brook thy vanities. They fight. (5.4.73)

 

Prince: He spieth Falstaff on the ground.

What, old acquaintance! Could not all this flesh

Keep in a little life? … (5.4.101-2)

 

Falstaff: … the better

part of valour is discretion, … (5.4.118-20)

 

Falstaff: [He drops Hotspur’s body.] But, if I be not Jack Falstaff,

then am I a jack. There is Percy. If your father will do

me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy

himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure

you. (5.4.139-43)