HENRY IV PART 1 – FAMOUS LINES
 

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.
          King Henry Act I scene I

Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I…little better than one of the wicked.
            Falstaff Act I scene ii

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humor of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
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 vapors that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work,
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
            Prince Hal Act I scene ii

My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
But I remember, when the fight was done, when I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bride groom, and his chin new reaped
Showed like a stubble land at harvest home.
            Hotspur Act I scene iii

To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,
And plant this thorn, the canker, Bolingbroke?
            Hotspur Act I scene iii

If he fall in, good night, or sink or swim!
Send danger from east unto the west,
So honor cross it from the north to south,
And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion than to start a hare.
By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honor by the locks,
So that he doth redeem her thence might wear
Without corrival all her dignities.
            Hotspur Act I scene iii

Hotspur: That roan shall be my throne.
               Well, I will back him straight. O, Esperance!
Lady Percy: But hear you, my lord.
Hotspur: What say’st thou, my lady?
Lady Percy: What is it carries you away?
Hotspur: Why, my horse, my love, my horse.
Lady Percy: Out, you mad-headed ape!
                     A weasel has not such a deal of spleen
                     As you are tossed with. In faith,
                      I’ll know your business, Harry, that I will.
                                    Act II scene iii

I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the north, he that kills me some six or seven dozen of scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.”
            Prince Hal Act II scene iv

A plague of all cowards!—Give me a cup of sack, rogue!—Is there no virtue extant?
            Falstaff Act II scene iv

Go thy ways, old Jack. Die when thou wilt. If manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. There lives not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old, God help the while. A bad world, I say.
            Falstaff Act II scene iv

Falstaff: If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked. If to be old and merry is a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat is to be hated then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.
Prince Hal: I do, I will.
                                    Act II scene iv 

Glendower: At my nativity
            The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
            Of burning cressets, and at my birth
            The frame and huge foundation of the earth
            Shaked like a coward.
Hotspur:                                  Why, so it would have done
            At the same season if your mother’s cat
            Had but kittened, though you yourself had never been born.
                                    Act III scene 1

By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wondered at,
That men would tell their children “This is he.”
Others would say “Where? Which is Bolingbroke?”
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dressed myself in such humility
That I did pluck allegiance from men’s hearts,
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,
Even in the presence of the crowned 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, showed like a feast
And won by rareness such solemnity.
            King Henry Act III scene ii

I will redeem all this on Percy’s head,
And, in the closing of some glorious day,
Be bold to tell you that I am your son,
When I will wear a garment all of blood
And stain my favors in a bloody mask,
Which, washed away, shall scour my shame with it.
And that shall be the day, whene’er it lights,
That this same child of honor and renown,
This gallant Hotspur, this all-praised knight,
And your unthought-of Harry chance to meet.
            Prince Hal Act III scene ii

Come, sing me a bawdy song, make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need be, virtuous enough: swore little; diced not above seven times—a week; went to a bawdy house not above once in a quarter—of an hour; paid money that I borrowed—three or four times.
            Falstaff Act III scene iii

Let them come.
They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war
All hot an bleeding will we offer them.
The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit
Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire
To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh
And yet not ours. Come, let me taste my horse,
Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt
Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales.
Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse,
Meet and ne’er part till one drop down a corse.
            Hotspur Act IV scene i

Doomsday is near. Die all, die merrily.
            Hotspur Act IV scene I

Prince Hal: Say thy prayers, and farewell.
Falstaff: I would ‘twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.
Prince Hal: Why, thou owest God a death.   [He exits.]
Falstaff: ‘Tis not due yet. I would be loathe to pay him before his day…. Honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No….What is honor? A word. What is in that word “honor”? Air….Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I’ll none of it.
            Act V scene I

The better part of valor is discretion.
            Falstaff Act V scene iv

Open you ears, for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth.
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
            Rumor Induction

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

You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young.
            Falstaff Act I scene ii

O thou fond many, with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke
Before he was what thou wouldst have him be.
And being now trimmed in thine own desires,
Thou, that beastly feeder, art so full of him
That thou provok’st thyself to cast him up.
So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up
And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these times.
            Archbishop Act I scene iii

Hostess: Yonder he comes, and that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, Master Fang and Master Fang, do me, do me, do me your offices.
Falstaff: How now, whose mare’s dead?
            Act II scene I

He hath eaten me out of house and home.
            Hostess Act II scene I

Hostess: Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my dolphin chamber at the round table by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Weeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as Y was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me thy lady wife. Canst thou deny it?…And didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now on thy book-oath. Deny it if thou canst.
Falstaff: My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says up and down the town that her eldest son is like you.
            Act II scene I

O yet, for God’s, sake go not to these wars.
The time was, father, that you broke your word
When you were more endeared to it than now,
When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry,
Threw many a northward look to see his father
Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.
Who then persuaded you to stay at home?
There were two honor’s lost, yours and your son’s.
For yours, the God in haven brighten it.
For his, it stuck upon him as the sun
In the gray vault of heaven, and by his light
Did all the chivalry of England move
To do grave acts. He was indeed the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He has no legs that practiced not his gait;
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;
For those who could speak low and tardily
Would turn their own perfection to abuse
To seem like him. So that in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,
He was the mark and glass, copy and book,
That fashioned others. And him – O wondrous him!
O miracle of men! – him did you leave,
Second to none, unseconded by you,
To look upon the hideous god of war
In disadvantage, to abide a field
Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur’s name
Did seem defensible. So you left him.
Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong
To hold your honor more precise and nice
With others than with him. Let them alone.
The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong.
Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,
Today I might, hanging on Hotspur’s neck,
Have talked of Monmouth’s grave.
            Lady Percy Act II scene iii

Ah, you sweet little rogue, you. Alas, my poor ape, how thou sweat’st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson chops. Ah, rogue, i’faith, I love thee. Thou art as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the Nine Worthies. Ah, villain!
            Doll Tearsheet Act II scene iv

What’s joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?
            Hostess Act II scene iv

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 hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled with sound of sweetest melody?…
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
            King Henry Act III scene I

O God, that one might read the book of fate
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea, and other times to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Nature’s hips; how chance mocks
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! 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.
            King Henry Act III scene i

We have heard the climes at midnight.
            Falstaff Act III scene ii

A man can die but once. We owe God a death. I’ll ne’er bear a base mind. An ‘t be my estiny, so; an ‘t be not so. No man’s too good to serve’s prince, and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is qyit for the next.
            Feeble Act III scene ii

O, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones.
            Falstaff Act III scene ii

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to the 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… I do remember him at Clement’s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese paring. When he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife.
            Falstaff Act III scene ii

O, when the King did throw his warder down —
His own life hung upon the staff he threw —
Then threw him down himself and all their lives
That by indictment and by dint of sword
Have miscarried under Bolingbroke.
            Mowbray Act IV scene I

The time misordered doth, in common sense,
Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form
To hold our safety up. I sent your Grace
The parcels and particulars of grief,
The which hath been with scorn shoved from the court,
Whereon this Hydra son of war is born,
Whose dangerous eyes may well be charmed asleep
With grant of our most just and right desires,
And true obedience, of this madness cured,
Stoop tamely to the foot of majesty.
            Archbishop Act IV scene I

…travel-tainted as I am, have in my pure and immaculate valor taken Sir John Colevile of the Dale, a most furious knight and valorous enemy. But what of that? He saw me and yielded, that I may justly say, with he hook-nose follow of Rome, “There, cousin, I came, saw, and overcame.”
            Falstaff Act IV scene ii

Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh. But that’s no marvel; he drinks no wine. There’s never none of these demure boys come to any proof, for thin drink doth so overcool their blood, and making many fish meals, That they fall into a kind of male green-sickness, and when they marry, they get wenches….Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant, for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled with excellent endeavor of drinking good and good store of fertile sherries, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sone, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.
            Falstaff Act IV scene ii

The prince but studies his companions
Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language,
‘Tis needful that the most immodest word
Be looked upon and learned; which, once attained,
Your Highness knows, comes to no further use
But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms,
The Prince will, in the fullness of time,
Cast off his followers, and their memory
Shall as a pattern or a measure live,
By which his Grace must mete the lives of others,
Turning past evils to advantages.
            Warwick Act IV scene iii

Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,
Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
O polished 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. O majesty,
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like rich armor worn in the heat of day,
That scald’st with safety.
            Prince Hal Act IV scene iii

Thou hast stol’n that which after a few hours
Were thine without offense, and at my death
Thou hast sealed up my expectation….
Harry the Fifth is crowned. Up, vanity,
Down, royal state, all you sage councilors, hence,
And to the English court assemble now,
From every region, apes of idelness.
Now, neighbor confines, purge you of your scum.
Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
The oldest sins the newest kinds of ways?
Be happy, he will trouble you no more.
England shall double gild his treble guilt.
England shall give him office, honor, might,
For the Fifth Harry from curbed license plucks
The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.
O my poor kingdom!, sick with civil blows!
When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?
O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants.
            King Henry Act IV scene iii

Thus my royal liege,
Accusing it, I put it on my head
To try with it, as with an enemy
That had before my face murdered my father,
The quarrel of a true inheritor.
But if it did infect my blood with joy,
Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride,
If any rebel or vain spirit of mine
Did with the least affection of a welcome
Give entertainment to the might of it,
Let God forever keep it from my head
And me as the poorest vassal is
That doth with awe and terror kneel to it.
            Prince Hal Act IV scene iii

…my Harry,
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
            King Henry Act IV scene iii

…let men take heed of their company.
Falstaff Act V scene I

And we shall be merry; now comes in the sweet o’ th’ night.
            Justice Silence Act V scene iii

I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester.
I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane;
But being awaked, I do despise my dream….
Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know – so shall the world perceive –
That I have turned away from my former self.
So will I those that kept me company.
            King Henry V Act V scene v

I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,
We bear our civil swords and native fire
As far as France. I heard a bird so sing,
Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the King.
            John of Lancaster Act V scene v