Act 5, Scene 2

The Rebel Camp.

[Enter Worcester and Vernon.]
Earl of Worcester
2460 O no, my nephew must not know, Sir Richard,
2461 The liberal-kind offer of the King.
Sir Richard Vernon
2462 'Twere best he did.
Earl of Worcester
2463 Then are we all undone.
2464 It is not possible, it cannot be,
2465 The King should keep his word in loving us;
2466 He will suspect us still, and find a time
2467 To punish this offence in other faults:
2468 Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes;
2469 For treason is but trusted like the fox,
2470 Who, ne'er so tame, so cherish'd, and lock'd up,
2471 Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.
2472 Look how we can, or sad or merrily,
2473 Interpretation will misquote our looks;
2474 And we shall feed like oxen at a stall,
2475 The better cherish'd, still the nearer death.
2476 My nephew's trespass may be well forgot:
2477 It hath th' excuse of youth and heat of blood,
2478 And an adopted name of privilege,—
2479 A hare-brain'd Hotspur, govern'd by a spleen:
2480 All his offences live upon my head
2481 And on his father's: we did train him on;
2482 And, his corruption being ta'en from us,
2483 We, as the spring of all, shall pay for all.
2484 Therefore, good cousin, let not Harry know,
2485 In any case, the offer of the King.
Sir Richard Vernon
2486 Deliver what you will, I'll say 'tis so.
2487 Here comes your cousin.
[Enter Hotspur and Douglas; Officers and Soldiers behind.]
Hotspur
2488 My uncle is return'd: deliver up
2489 My Lord of Westmoreland.—Uncle, what news?
Earl of Worcester
2490 The King will bid you battle presently.
Earl of Douglas
2491 Defy him by the Lord Of Westmoreland.
Hotspur
2492 Lord Douglas, go you and tell him so.
Earl of Douglas
2493 Marry, I shall, and very willingly.
[Exit.]
Earl of Worcester
2494 There is no seeming mercy in the King.
Hotspur
2495 Did you beg any? God forbid!
Earl of Worcester
2496 I told him gently of our grievances,
2497 Of his oath-breaking; which he mended thus,
2498 By new-forswearing that he is forsworn:
2499 He calls us rebels, traitors; and will scourge
2500 With haughty arms this hateful name in us.
[Re-enter Douglas.]
Earl of Douglas
2501 Arm, gentlemen; to arms! for I have thrown
2502 A brave defiance in King Henry's teeth,
2503 And Westmoreland, that was engaged, did bear it;
2504 Which cannot choose but bring him quickly on.
Earl of Worcester
2505 The Prince of Wales stepp'd forth before the King,
2506 And, nephew, challenged you to single fight.
Hotspur
2507 O, would the quarrel lay upon our heads;
2508 And that no man might draw short breath to-day
2509 But I and Harry Monmouth! Tell me, tell me,
2510 How show'd his tasking? seem'd it in contempt?
Sir Richard Vernon
2511 No, by my soul: I never in my life
2512 Did hear a challenge urged more modestly,
2513 Unless a brother should a brother dare
2514 To gentle exercise and proof of arms.
2515 He gave you all the duties of a man;
2516 Trimm'd up your praises with a princely tongue;
2517 Spoke your deservings like a chronicle;
2518 Making you ever better than his praise,
2519 By still dispraising praise valued with you;
2520 And, which became him like a prince indeed,
2521 He made a blushing cital of himself;
2522 And chid his truant youth with such a grace,
2523 As if he master'd there a double spirit,
2524 Of teaching and of learning instantly.
2525 There did he pause: but let me tell the world,
2526 If he outlive the envy of this day,
2527 England did never owe so sweet a hope,
2528 So much misconstrued in his wantonness.
Hotspur
2529 Cousin, I think thou art enamoured
2530 Upon his follies: never did I hear
2531 Of any prince so wild o' liberty.
2532 But be he as he will, yet once ere night
2533 I will embrace him with a soldier's arm,
2534 That he shall shrink under my courtesy.—
2535 Arm, arm with speed: and, fellows, soldiers, friends,
2536 Better consider what you have to do
2537 Than I, that have not well the gift of tongue,
2538 Can lift your blood up with persuasion.
[Enter a Messenger.]
Messenger
2539 My lord, here are letters for you.
Hotspur
2540 I cannot read them now.—
2541 O gentlemen, the time of life is short!
2542 To spend that shortness basely were too long,
2543 If life did ride upon a dial's point,
2544 Still ending at th' arrival of an hour.
2545 An if we live, we live to tread on kings;
2546 If die, brave death, when princes die with us!
2547 Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair,
2548 When the intent of bearing them is just.
[Enter another Messenger.]
Messenger
2549 My lord, prepare: the King comes on apace.
Hotspur
2550 I thank him, that he cuts me from my tale,
2551 For I profess not talking; only this,
2552 Let each man do his best: and here draw I
2553 A sword, whose temper I intend to stain
2554 With the best blood that I can meet withal
2555 In the adventure of this perilous day.
2556 Now, Esperance! Percy! and set on.
2557 Sound all the lofty instruments of war,
2558 And by that music let us all embrace;
2559 For, Heaven to Earth, some of us never shall
2560 A second time do such a courtesy.
[The trumpets sound. They embrace, and exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 2468rhetorical device
“Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes”
Worcester imagines 'Suspicion' as a grotesque body bristling with eyes — always watching, never trusting. The image draws on the classical figure of Argus, the hundred-eyed giant, and on the proverbial idea that a traitor once caught is watched forever, however much the king pardons him.
TLN 2469cultural context
“treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherish'd, and lock'd up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors”
Worcester draws on a well-known Elizabethan proverb: you can tame a fox, pet it, and keep it caged, but its inborn wildness will eventually resurface. Applied to himself and the Percys, the point is that the king will never fully trust former rebels -- they carry their treasonous 'nature' by heredity, and no pardon can erase that suspicion.
TLN 2474rhetorical device
“feed like oxen at a stall, The better cherish'd, still the nearer death”
Worcester warns that if they accept the king's pardon they will be like cattle fattened in a stall: the more carefully they are fed and tended, the sooner they are led to slaughter. This is an extended metaphor (conceit) turning royal 'cherishing' -- favor, gifts, safety -- into a death-trap.
TLN 2477cultural context
“heat of blood”
In Elizabethan medicine and psychology, personality was governed by four bodily fluids ('humors'): blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler), and black bile (melancholy). Hot, abundant blood was the humor of youth — passionate, brave, impulsive, and sexually bold. 'Heat of blood' excuses Hotspur's rebellion as a youthful failure of self-regulation, not a reasoned treachery.
TLN 2479cultural context
“govern'd by a spleen”
The spleen was held to be the organ that produced the hot, bilious humor causing sudden, uncontrollable anger, whims, and impulsive action. To say Hotspur is 'govern'd by a spleen' means his impulsiveness is a physiological condition, not merely bad character. It continues Worcester's argument that Hotspur's offenses should be pardoned as youthful medical failures.
TLN 2493archaic vocab
“Marry, I shall, and very willingly”
'Marry' is a mild oath derived from the name of the Virgin Mary, used in Elizabethan English as a simple intensifier meaning 'indeed' or 'certainly.' Douglas is not invoking Mary in any religious sense; it is a verbal tic that has lost its devotional content, like the modern 'my goodness.'
TLN 2498rhetorical device
“By new-forswearing that he is forsworn”
Worcester describes the king's response to being accused of oath-breaking: rather than admit it, Henry compounds the original perjury with a new denial. The line is a pointed paradox — a 'forsworn' man (one who has broken his oath) 'forswears' (denies) the fact, making the lie a second oath-breaking. The rhetorical term for this figure, playing the same word in different forms against itself, is antanaclasis.
TLN 2521archaic vocab
“He made a blushing cital of himself”
'Cital' (also spelled 'recital' or 'citement') is a formal summoning or public recitation — here, a candid, self-deprecating accounting of his own past faults. Vernon is saying Prince Hal blushed as he publicly admitted his misspent youth in a kind of formal self-citation, the way a lawyer cites evidence against his own client.
TLN 2527archaic vocab
“England did never owe so sweet a hope”
'Owe' here means 'own' or 'possess,' not 'be indebted.' Vernon is saying England has never had (possessed, been home to) so promising a young man. The 'owe/own' alternation was common in Early Modern English; the modern sense of financial debt is not intended.
TLN 2543rhetorical device
“If life did ride upon a dial's point, Still ending at th' arrival of an hour”
Hotspur imagines life as a rider balanced on the tip of a clock- or sundial-hand, which moves constantly toward the fatal moment when the hour strikes. A 'dial' was a clock face or sundial; its 'point' is the needle or gnomon. The image drives home the brevity of life: the hour-mark is always coming. Wasting what little time remains in fear or hesitation is, by Hotspur's logic, to betray the life itself.
TLN 2556historical topical
“Esperance! Percy! and set on”
'Esperance' (French for 'Hope') was the actual battle-cry and heraldic motto of the Percy family, Earls of Northumberland. Hotspur shouts it as a rallying call before leading the charge at Shrewsbury. The Percys' family arms bore the motto 'Esperance en Dieu' — 'Hope in God' — and the cry identifies the charge as a Percy action.
historical The Battle of Shrewsbury (1403)
TLN 2559archaic vocab
“Heaven to Earth, some of us never shall A second time do such a courtesy”
'Heaven to Earth' is an Elizabethan odds-formula, equivalent to 'I'd wager heaven against earth' — an emphatic way of saying the odds are overwhelming and certain. Hotspur is not making a theological claim; he is saying it is as sure as the sky above that some of them will die before they can embrace again. The line ends the scene on a note of solemn, collective acknowledgment of mortality.