Act 1, Scene 3

York. The Archbishop's palace.

[Enter the Archbishop, the Lords Hastings, Mowbray, Bardolph.]
Archbishop of York
464 Thus have you heard our cause and known our means;
465 And, my most noble friends, I pray you all,
466 Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes:
467 And first, lord marshal, what say you to it?
Lord Mowbray
468 I well allow the occasion of our arms;
469 But gladly would be better satisfied
470 How in our means we should advance ourselves
471 To look with forehead bold and big enough
472 Upon the power and puissance of the king.
Lord Hastings
473 Our present musters grow upon the file
474 To five and twenty thousand men of choice;
475 And our supplies live largely in the hope
476 Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns
477 With an incensed fire of injuries.
Lord Bardolph
478 The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus:
479 Whether our present five and twenty thousand
480 May hold up head without Northumberland?
Lord Hastings
481 With him, we may.
Lord Bardolph
482 Yea, marry, there 's the point:
483 But if without him we be thought too feeble,
484 My judgement is, we should not step too far
485 Till we had his assistance by the hand;
486 For in a theme so bloody-faced as this
487 Conjecture, expectation, and surmise
488 Of aids incertain should not be admitted.
Archbishop of York
489 'Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed
490 It was young Hotspur's case at Shrewsbury.
Lord Bardolph
491 It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope,
492 Eating the air on promise of supply,
493 Flattering himself in project of a power
494 Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts:
495 And so, with great imagination
496 Proper to madmen, led his powers to death
497 And winking leap'd into destruction.
Lord Hastings
498 But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt
499 To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.
Lord Bardolph
500 Yes, if this present quality of war,
501 Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot
502 Lives so in hope as in an early spring
503 We see the appearing buds; which to prove fruit,
504 Hope gives not so much warrant as despair
505 That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,
506 We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
507 And when we see the figure of the house,
508 Then we must rate the cost of the erection;
509 Which if we find outweighs ability,
510 What do we then but draw anew the model
511 In fewer offices, or at least desist
512 To build at all? Much more, in this great work,
513 Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down
514 And set another up, should we survey
515 The plot of situation and the model,
516 Consent upon a sure foundation,
517 Question surveyors, know our own estate,
518 How able such a work to undergo,
519 To weigh against his opposite; or else
520 We fortify in paper and in figures,
521 Using the names of men instead of men;
522 Like one that draws the model of a house
523 Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,
524 Gives o'er and leaves his part-created cost
525 A naked subject to the weeping clouds
526 And waste for churlish winter's tyranny.
Lord Hastings
527 Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth,
528 Should be still-born, and that we now possess'd
529 The utmost man of expectation,
530 I think we are a body strong enough,
531 Even as we are, to equal with the king.
Lord Bardolph
532 What, is the king but five and twenty thousand?
Lord Hastings
533 To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph.
534 For his divisions, as the times do brawl,
535 Are in three heads: one power against the French,
536 And one against Glendower; perforce a third
537 Must take up us: so is the unfirm king
538 In three divided; and his coffers sound
539 With hollow poverty and emptiness.
Archbishop of York
540 That he should draw his several strengths together
541 And come against us in full puissance,
542 Need not be dreaded.
Lord Hastings
543 If he should do so,
544 He leaves his back unarm'd, the French and Welsh
545 Baying him at the heels: never fear that.
Lord Bardolph
546 Who is it like should lead his forces hither?
Lord Hastings
547 The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland;
548 Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth:
549 But who is substituted 'gainst the French,
550 I have no certain notice.
Archbishop of York
551 Let us on,
552 And publish the occasion of our arms.
553 The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;
554 Their over-greedy love hath surfeited:
555 An habitation giddy and unsure
556 Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
557 O thou fond many, with what loud applause
558 Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
559 Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!
560 And being now trimm'd in thine own desires,
561 Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
562 That thou provokest thyself to cast him up.
563 So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
564 Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;
565 And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,
566 And howl'st to find it. What trust is in these times?
567 They that, when Richard lived, would have him die,
568 Are now become enamour'd on his grave:
569 Thou that threw'st dust upon his goodly head
570 When through proud London he came sighing on
571 After the admired heels of Bolingbroke,
572 Criest now "O earth, yield us that king again,
573 And take thou this!" O thoughts of men accursed!
574 Past and to come seems best; things present worst.
Lord Mowbray
575 Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?
Lord Hastings
576 We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 472archaic vocab
“power and puissance of the king”
'Puissance' (pronounced 'PYOO-iss-ance' in Elizabethan English, often two syllables in verse) means military strength or power — derived from Old French, closely related to modern 'puissant' (mighty). Mowbray asks whether the rebels have enough force to face the king's assembled armies 'with forehead bold,' meaning without flinching.
TLN 490historical topical
“young Hotspur's case at Shrewsbury”
Hotspur (Henry Percy) led the first Percy rebellion against Henry IV and was defeated and killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403. His fatal mistake — fighting before his ally Northumberland arrived with reinforcements — is exactly the cautionary tale Lord Bardolph raises here. This play begins in the immediate aftermath of Shrewsbury, where the rebels are now regrouping under the Archbishop of York.
historical The Battle of Shrewsbury (1403)
TLN 491rhetorical device
“lined himself with hope, Eating the air on promise of supply”
'Lined himself with hope' means he armored or stuffed himself with false confidence — 'lined' as in a coat lined with padding, but hollow. 'Eating the air' is a proverbial image for feeding on nothing, living on illusion: Hotspur gorged on the promise of troops that never came, the way a starving man might try to eat wind. The phrase comes from a French proverbial expression ('paitre de vent') meaning to sustain oneself on empty promises.
TLN 505rhetorical device
“When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model”
Lord Bardolph extends a single comparison — planning a rebellion is like planning a building — for twenty-two lines, one of the longest sustained metaphors in the play. 'Survey the plot' means measure the land; 'draw the model' means draft the architectural plan; 'rate the cost of the erection' means calculate expenses; 'offices' are rooms. If the money does not match the ambition, you build a smaller house — or nothing at all. The rebels, Bardolph argues, must do the same realistic accounting of their forces.
TLN 534historical topical
“his divisions, as the times do brawl, Are in three heads: one power against the French, And one against Glendower”
Hastings maps the strategic situation that gives the rebels their opening: Henry IV is fighting three separate wars at once. One English army holds the French border (the French under Charles VI were a perennial threat and had recently supported the Welsh revolt). A second fights Owain Glendower, the Welsh chieftain who had been in open rebellion since 1400. The third must now face the Archbishop's northern rising — so no single front can receive overwhelming force.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 553archaic vocab
“The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; Their over-greedy love hath surfeited”
'Surfeited' means made sick by excess — the same word used when someone overeats to the point of nausea. 'The vulgar heart' (TLN 556) means the heart of the common people: 'vulgar' here carries no insult beyond 'common' or 'ordinary' — from Latin vulgus (the crowd). The Archbishop's argument is that the people cheered Bolingbroke (now Henry IV) so extravagantly that they have made themselves ill on him, the way a person gorges on something and then cannot stand it.
TLN 557rhetorical device
“O thou fond many, with what loud applause Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke”
'Fond many' means the foolish multitude — 'fond' in Elizabethan English means foolish or infatuated, not affectionate. 'Beat heaven with blessing' means that the crowd's cheering was so loud it hammered the sky with noise. The Archbishop then calls the populace a 'beastly feeder' and a 'common dog,' building an extended image of the crowd as an animal that gorged itself on the idea of Bolingbroke, then 'cast him up' (vomited) and now howls to get back what it spat out.
TLN 563historical topical
“thou common dog, didst thou disgorge Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard”
The Archbishop recalls the London crowd's behaviour at the moment of Richard II's public humiliation in 1399: they pelted him with dirt ('threw'st dust upon his goodly head') as Bolingbroke led him through the streets a prisoner. The Archbishop — speaking as if directly to the crowd — reminds them that they cheered Richard's fall, and now they grieve for him. This eyewitness detail comes directly from historical sources and was shown on stage in Richard II.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 574rhetorical device
“Past and to come seems best; things present worst”
This single line is an aphorism — a tightly compressed general truth — delivered as the Archbishop's conclusion. Its form is a chiasmus: past and future flank 'best,' while 'present' stands alone as 'worst.' The observation is that people habitually idealize what they no longer have (Richard) and what they have not yet received (some better future), while resenting whatever they actually possess right now (Henry IV). It is a bitter summary of human political psychology: the crowd can never be content with the present.
TLN 576rhetorical device
“We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone”
Hastings ends the scene with a compact personification: Time is their lord, and they are its subjects — the same political word ('subjects') used for a king's obedient vassals. Because they serve Time, they must obey its command to leave now. The line draws an implicit contrast with the rebels' other lord, the king against whom they are marching: they may be rebels against Henry IV, but they are still subject to Time.