Which hath been smooth as oil,

soft as

young down,

And therefore lost that title of respect,

Which the proud soul ne'er pays, but to the proud. Wor. Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves The scourge of greatness to be used on it;

And that same greatness too which our own hands Have holp to make so portly.

North. My lord,

K. Hen. Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see Danger and disobedience in thine eye :

O, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,
And majesty might never yet endure

The moody frontier2 of a servant brow.

You have good leave to leave us; when we need Your use and counsel, we shall send for you.

You were about to speak.

[Exit WORCESTER.

[TO NORTH.

Yea, my good lord.

North.
Those prisoners in your highness' name demanded,
Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,
Were, as he says, not with such strength denied
As is deliver'd to your majesty :

Either envy, therefore, or misprision
Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.

Hot. My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
But, I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil,

2 Frontier is said anciently to have meant forehead, to prove which the following quotation has been adduced from Stubbe's Anatomy of Abuses: Then on the edges of their bolster'd hair, which standeth ousted round their frontiers, and hangeth over their brow.' Mr. Nares has justly observed, that this does not seem to explain the above passage, "The moody forehead of a servant brow" is not sense. Surely it may be better interpreted the moody or threatening outwork;' in which sense frontier is used in Act ii. Sc. 3 :—

'Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets.'

See note on that passage, p. 160.

Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap'd,
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest home3;
He was perfumed like a milliner:

And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box*, which ever and anon

He

gave his nose, and took❜t away again;

Who, therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff5:-and still he smil'd, and talk'd;
And, as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call'd them-untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms

He question'd me; among the rest demanded
My prisoners, in your majesty's behalf.

I then, all smarting, with my wounds being cold,
To be so pestered with a popinjay 6,

Out of my grief7 and my impatience,
Answer'd neglectingly, I know not what;

He should, or he should not;-for he made me mad,
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman,

3 To completely understand this simile the reader should bear in mind that the courtiers' beard, according to the fashion in the poet's time, would not be closely shaved, but shorn or trimmed, and would therefore show like a stubble land new reap'd.

+ A box perforated with small holes, for carrying perfumes; quasi pounced-box.

5 Took it in snuff means no more than snuffed it up, but there is a quibble on the phrase, which was equivalent to taking huff at it, in familiar modern speech; to be angry, to take offence; 'To take in snuffe, Pigliar ombra, Pigliar in mala parte.'-Torriano.

6 A popinjay or popingay is a parrot. Papegay, Fr. Papagallo, Ital. The Spaniards have a proverbial phrase, ' Hablar como papagayo,' to designate a chattering ignorant person.

7 i. e. pain, dolor ventris is rendered belly-grief in the old dictionaries.

Of guns,and drums, and wounds (God save the mark!)
And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmaceti, for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
That villanous salt-petre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly; and, but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.
This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,
I answer'd indirectly, as I said;
And, I beseech you, let not his report
Come current for an accusation,

Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

Blunt. The circumstance consider'd, good my lord, Whatever Harry Percy then had said,

To such a person, and in such a place,
At such a time, with all the rest re-told,
May reasonably die, and never rise
To do him wrong, or any way impeach
What then he said, so he unsay it now.

K. Hen. Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners; But with proviso, and exception,

That we, at our own charge, shall ransome straight His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer9;

8 So in Sir T. Overburie's Characters, 1616 [An Ordinarie Fencer], his wounds are seldom skin-deepe; for an inwardbruise lambstones and sweetebreads are his only spermaceti.

9 Shakspeare has fallen into some contradictions with regard to this Lord Mortimer. Before he makes his personal appearance in the play, he is repeatedly spoken of as Hotspur's brotherin-law. In Act II. Lady Percy expressly calls him her brother Mortimer. And yet when he enters in the third Act, he calls Lady Percy his aunt, which in fact she was, and not his sister. This inconsistency may be accounted for as follows; it appears from Dugdale and Sandford's account of the Mortimer family, that there were two of them taken prisoners at different times by Glendower, each of them bearing the name of Edmund; one being Edmund earl of March, nephew to Lady Percy, and the

Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray'd
The lives of those that he did lead to fight
Against the great magician, damn'd Glendower;
Whose daughter, as we hear, the earl of March
Hath lately married. Shall our coffers then
Be emptied, to redeem a traitor home?

Shall we buy treason? and indent10 with fears,
When they have lost and forfeited themselves?
No, on the barren mountains let him starve;
For I shall never hold that man my friend,
Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost
To ransom home revolted Mortimer.

Hot. Revolted Mortimer!

He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,

But by the chance of war;-To prove

that true,

Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds, Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took, When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,

In single opposition, hand to hand,

He did confound 11 the best part of an hour

In changing hardiment with great Glendower: Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink,

Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;

Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,

proper Mortimer of this play; the other Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle to the former, and brother to Lady Percy. The poet has confounded the two persons.

10 To indent with fears is to enter into compact with cowards. 'To make a covenant or to indent with one. Paciscor.' Baret. So in Antony and Cleopatra, the soothsayer says to Antony :-'Near Cæsar's angel thy own becomes a fear.'

The king affects to speak of Mortimer (though in the plural number) as the fear or timid object which had lost or forfeited itself. 11 Shakspeare again uses confound for spending or losing time in Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 6:

'How could'st thou in a mile confound an hour.'

And hid his crisp 12 head in the hollow bank,
Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.
Never did bare 13 and rotten policy

Colour her working with such deadly wounds;
Nor never could the noble Mortimer
Receive so many, and all willingly:

Then let him not be slander'd with revolt.

K. Hen. Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him;

He never did encounter with Glendower;

I tell thee,

He durst as well have met the devil alone,
As Owen Glendower for an enemy.

Art thou not ashamed? But, sirrah, henceforth
Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer :

Send me your prisoners with the speediest means, shall hear in such a kind from me

Or

you

As will displease you.-My Lord Northumberland,
We licence your departure with your son:-
Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of it.

[Exeunt KING HENRY, BLUNT, and Train.
Hot. And if the devil come and roar for them,
I will not send them;-I will after straight,
And tell him so; for I will ease my heart,
Although it be with hazard of my head.

12 Crisp is curled. Thus in Kyd's Cornelia, 1595:'O beauteous Tyber, with thine easy streams That glide as smoothly as a Parthian shaft, Turn not thy crispy tides, like silver curls, Back to thy grass-green banks to welcome us.'

Beaumont and Fletcher have the same image in The Loyal Subject:

the Volga trembled at his terror,

And hid his seven curled heads.'

And Ben Jonson, in one of his Masques:-
The rivers run as smoothed by his hand,
Only their heads are crisped by his stroke.'

13 Some of the quarto copies read base.