The arden shakespeare co.., p.160
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, page 160
to this intolerable deal of sack? What there is else keep
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close, we’ll read it at more advantage. There let him
sleep till day; I’ll to the court in the morning. We must
all to the wars, and thy place shall be honourable. I’ll
procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know his
death will be a march of twelve score. The money shall
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be paid back again with advantage. Be with me
betimes in the morning; and so, good morrow, Peto.
PETO Good morrow, good my lord. Exeunt.
3.1 Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, LORD MORTIMER, OWEN GLENDOWER.
MORTIMER These promises are fair, the parties sure,
And our induction full of prosperous hope.
HOTSPUR
Lord Mortimer, and cousin Glendower, will you sit down?
And uncle Worcester. A plague upon it!
I have forgot the map.
GLENDOWER No, here it is:
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Sit, cousin Percy, sit, good cousin Hotspur;
For by that name as oft as Lancaster doth speak of you
His cheek looks pale, and with a rising sigh
He wisheth you in heaven.
HOTSPUR And you in hell,
As oft as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of.
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GLENDOWER I cannot blame him; 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
Shak’d like a coward.
HOTSPUR Why, so it would have done
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At the same season if your mother’s cat
Had but kitten’d, though yourself had never been born.
GLENDOWER
I say the earth did shake when I was born.
HOTSPUR And I say the earth was not of my mind,
If you suppose as fearing you it shook.
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GLENDOWER
The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble –
HOTSPUR
O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,
And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions, oft the teeming earth
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Is with a kind of colic pinch’d and vex’d
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb, which for enlargement striving
Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth
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Our grandam earth, having this distemp’rature,
In passion shook.
GLENDOWER Cousin, of many men
I do not bear these crossings; give me leave
To tell you once again that at my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
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The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have mark’d me extraordinary,
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
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Where is he living, clipp’d in with the sea
That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales,
Which calls me pupil or hath read to me?
And bring him out that is but woman’s son
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art,
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And hold me pace in deep experiments.
HOTSPUR I think there’s no man speaks better Welsh:
I’ll to dinner.
MORTIMER
Peace, cousin Percy, you will make him mad.
GLENDOWER I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
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HOTSPUR Why, so can I, or so can any man,
But will they come when you do call for them?
GLENDOWER
Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.
HOTSPUR
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil,
By telling truth; tell truth, and shame the devil.
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If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,
And I’ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence:
O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil!
MORTIMER
Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat.
GLENDOWER
Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
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Against my power, thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him
Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.
HOTSPUR
Home without boots, and in foul weather too!
How scapes he agues, in the devil’s name?
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GLENDOWER
Come, here is the map, shall we divide our right
According to our threefold order ta’en?
MORTIMER The Archdeacon hath divided it
Into three limits very equally:
England, from Trent and Severn hitherto,
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By south and east is to my part assign’d:
All westward, Wales beyond the Severn shore,
And all the fertile land within that bound,
To Owen Glendower: and, dear coz, to you
The remnant northward lying off from Trent.
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And our indentures tripartite are drawn,
Which being sealed interchangeably,
(A business that this night may execute)
Tomorrow, cousin Percy, you and I
And my good Lord of Worcester will set forth
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To meet your father and the Scottish power,
As is appointed us, at Shrewsbury.
My father Glendower is not ready yet,
Nor shall we need his help these fourteen days.
[to Glendower] Within that space you may have drawn together
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Your tenants, friends, and neighbouring gentlemen.
GLENDOWER
A shorter time shall send me to you, lords,
And in my conduct shall your ladies come,
From whom you now must steal and take no leave,
For there will be a world of water shed
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Upon the parting of your wives and you.
HOTSPUR
Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
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A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
I’ll have the current in this place damm’d up,
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel fair and evenly;
It shall not wind with such a deep indent,
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To rob me of so rich a bottom here.
GLENDOWER
Not wind? It shall, it must – you see it doth.
MORTIMER Yea,
But mark how he bears his course, and runs me up
With like advantage on the other side,
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Gelding the opposed continent as much
As on the other side it takes from you.
WORCESTER
Yea, but a little charge will trench him here,
And on this north side win this cape of land,
And then he runs straight and even.
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HOTSPUR I’ll have it so, a little charge will do it.
GLENDOWER I’ll not have it alter’d.
HOTSPUR Will not you?
GLENDOWER No, nor you shall not.
HOTSPUR Who shall say me nay?
GLENDOWER Why, that will I.
HOTSPUR
Let me not understand you then, speak it in Welsh.
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GLENDOWER I can speak English, lord, as well as you,
For I was train’d up in the English court,
Where being but young I framed to the harp
Many an English ditty lovely well,
And gave the tongue a helpful ornament –
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A virtue that was never seen in you.
HOTSPUR Marry and I am glad of it with all my heart!
I had rather be a kitten and cry ‘mew’
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;
I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn’d,
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Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree,
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry –
’Tis like the forc’d gait of a shuffling nag.
GLENDOWER Come, you shall have Trent turn’d.
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HOTSPUR I do not care, I’ll give thrice so much land
To any well-deserving friend:
But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,
I’ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.
Are the indentures drawn? Shall we be gone?
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GLENDOWER
The moon shines fair, you may away by night:
I’ll haste the writer, and withal
Break with your wives of your departure hence.
I am afraid my daughter will run mad,
So much she doteth on her Mortimer. Exit.
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MORTIMER Fie, cousin Percy, how you cross my father!
HOTSPUR I cannot choose; sometime he angers me
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,
And of a dragon and a finless fish,
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A clip-wing’d griffin and a moulten raven,
A couching lion and a ramping cat,
And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff
As puts me from my faith. I tell you what –
He held me last night at least nine hours
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In reckoning up the several devils’ names
That were his lackeys: I cried ‘Hum’, and ‘Well, go to!’
But mark’d him not a word. O, he is as tedious
As a tired horse, a railing wife,
Worse than a smoky house. I had rather live
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With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,
Than feed on cates and have him talk to me
In any summer house in Christendom.
MORTIMER In faith, he is a worthy gentleman,
Exceedingly well read, and profited
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In strange concealments, valiant as a lion,
And wondrous affable, and as bountiful
As mines of India. Shall I tell you, cousin?
He holds your temper in a high respect
And curbs himself even of his natural scope
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When you come ‘cross his humour, faith he does:
I warrant you that man is not alive
Might so have tempted him as you have done
Without the taste of danger and reproof:
But do not use it oft, let me entreat you.
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WORCESTER
In faith, my lord, you are too wilful-blame,
And since your coming hither have done enough
To put him quite besides his patience;
You must needs learn, lord, to amend this fault.
Though sometimes it show greatness, courage, blood,
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– And that’s the dearest grace it renders you –
Yet oftentimes it doth present harsh rage,
Defect of manners, want of government,
Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain,
The least of which haunting a nobleman
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Loseth men’s hearts and leaves behind a stain
Upon the beauty of all parts besides,
Beguiling them of commendation.
HOTSPUR
Well, I am school’d – good manners be your speed!
Here come our wives, and let us take our leave.
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Re-enter GLENDOWER with the Ladies.
MORTIMER This is the deadly spite that angers me,
My wife can speak no English, I no Welsh.
GLENDOWER
My daughter weeps, she’ll not part with you,
She’ll be a soldier too, she’ll to the wars.
MORTIMER
Good father, tell her that she and my aunt Percy
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