Act 4, Scene 1

Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest.

[Enter the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, Hastings, and others.]
Archbishop of York
1656 What is this forest call'd?
Lord Hastings
1657 'Tis Gaultree Forest, an 't shall please your grace.
Archbishop of York
1658 Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth
1659 To know the numbers of our enemies.
Lord Hastings
1660 We have sent forth already.
Archbishop of York
1661 'Tis well done.
1662 My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
1663 I must acquaint you that I have received
1664 New-dated letters from Northumberland;
1665 Their cold intent, tenour and substance, thus:
1666 Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
1667 As might hold sortance with his quality,
1668 The which he could not levy; whereupon
1669 He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes,
1670 To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers
1671 That your attempts may overlive the hazard
1672 And fearful meeting of their opposite.
Lord Mowbray
1673 Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground
1674 And dash themselves to pieces.
[Enter a Messenger.]
Lord Hastings
1675 Now, what news?
Messenger
1676 West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,
1677 In goodly form comes on the enemy;
1678 And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number
1679 Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.
Lord Mowbray
1680 The just proportion that we gave them out.
1681 Let us sway on and face them in the field.
Archbishop of York
1682 What well-appointed leader fronts us here?
[Enter Westmoreland.]
Lord Mowbray
1683 I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.
Earl of Westmoreland
1684 Health and fair greeting from our general,
1685 The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.
Archbishop of York
1686 Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace:
1687 What doth concern your coming?
Earl of Westmoreland
1688 Then, my lord,
1689 Unto your grace do I in chief address
1690 The substance of my speech. If that rebellion
1691 Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
1692 Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,
1693 And countenanced by boys and beggary,
1694 I say, if damn'd commotion so appear'd,
1695 In his true, native, and most proper shape,
1696 You, reverend father, and these noble lords
1697 Had not been here, to dress the ugly form
1698 Of base and bloody insurrection
1699 With your fair honours. You, lord archbishop,
1700 Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd,
1701 Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd,
1702 Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd,
1703 Whose white investments figure innocence,
1704 The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,
1705 Wherefore you do so ill translate yourself
1706 Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace,
1707 Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war;
1708 Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
1709 Your pens to lances and your tongue divine
1710 To a loud trumpet and a point of war?
Archbishop of York
1711 Wherefore do I this? so the question stands.
1712 Briefly to this end: we are all diseased,
1713 And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
1714 Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
1715 And we must bleed for it; of which disease
1716 Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
1717 But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,
1718 I take not on me here as a physician,
1719 Nor do I as an enemy to peace
1720 Troop in the throngs of military men;
1721 But rather show awhile like fearful war,
1722 To diet rank minds sick of happiness,
1723 And purge the obstructions which begin to stop
1724 Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.
1725 I have in equal balance justly weigh'd
1726 What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
1727 And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
1728 We see which way the stream of time doth run,
1729 And are enforced from our most quiet there
1730 By the rough torrent of occasion;
1731 And have the summary of all our griefs,
1732 When time shall serve, to show in articles;
1733 Which long ere this we offer'd to the king,
1734 And might by no suit gain our audience:
1735 When we are wrong'd and would unfold our griefs,
1736 We are denied access unto his person
1737 Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
1738 The dangers of the days but newly gone,
1739 Whose memory is written on the earth
1740 With yet appearing blood, and the examples
1741 Of every minute's instance, present now,
1742 Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms,
1743 Not to break peace or any branch of it,
1744 But to establish here a peace indeed,
1745 Concurring, both in name and quality.
Earl of Westmoreland
1746 When ever yet was your appeal denied?
1747 Wherein have you been galled by the king?
1748 What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you,
1749 That you should seal this lawless bloody book
1750 Of forged rebellion with a seal divine
1751 And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?
Archbishop of York
1752 My brother general, the commonwealth,
1753 To brother born an household cruelty,
1754 I make my quarrel in particular.
Earl of Westmoreland
1755 There is no need of any such redress;
1756 Or if there were, it not belongs to you.
Lord Mowbray
1757 Why not to him in part, and to us all
1758 That feel the bruises of the days before,
1759 And suffer the condition of these times
1760 To lay a heavy and unequal hand
1761 Upon our honours?
Earl of Westmoreland
1762 O, my good Lord Mowbray,
1763 Construe the times to their necessities,
1764 And you shall say indeed, it is the time,
1765 And not the king, that doth you injuries.
1766 Yet for your part, it not appears to me
1767 Either from the king or in the present time
1768 That you should have an inch of any ground
1769 To build a grief on: were you not restored
1770 To all the Duke of Norfolk's signories,
1771 Your noble and right well rememb'red father's?
Lord Mowbray
1772 What thing, in honour, had my father lost,
1773 That need to be revived and breathed in me?
1774 The king that loved him, as the state stood then,
1775 Was force perforce compell'd to banish him:
1776 And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,
1777 Being mounted and both roused in their seats,
1778 Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,
1779 Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,
1780 Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,
1781 And the loud trumpet blowing them together,
1782 Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay'd
1783 My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,
1784 O, when the king did throw his warder down,
1785 His own life hung upon the staff he threw;
1786 Then threw he down himself and all their lives
1787 That by indictment and by dint of sword
1788 Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.
Earl of Westmoreland
1789 You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.
1790 The Earl of Hereford was reputed then
1791 In England the most valiant gentleman:
1792 Who knows on whom fortune would then have smiled?
1793 But if your father had been victor there,
1794 He ne'er had borne it out of Coventry:
1795 For all the country in a general voice
1796 Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love
1797 Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on
1798 And bless'd and graced indeed, more than the king.
1799 But this is mere digression from my purpose.
1800 Here come I from our princely general
1801 To know your griefs; to tell you from his grace
1802 That he will give you audience; and wherein
1803 It shall appear that your demands are just,
1804 You shall enjoy them, everything set off
1805 That might so much as think you enemies.
Lord Mowbray
1806 But he hath forc'd us to compel this offer;
1807 And it proceeds from policy, not love.
Earl of Westmoreland
1808 Mowbray, you overween to take it so;
1809 This offer comes from mercy, not from fear:
1810 For, lo! within a ken our army lies,
1811 Upon mine honour, all too confident
1812 To give admittance to a thought of fear.
1813 Our battle is more full of names than yours,
1814 Our men more perfect in the use of arms,
1815 Our armour all as strong, our cause the best;
1816 Then reason will our hearts should be as good:
1817 Say you not then our offer is compell'd.
Lord Mowbray
1818 Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.
Earl of Westmoreland
1819 That argues but the shame of your offence:
1820 A rotten case abides no handling.
Lord Hastings
1821 Hath the Prince John a full commission,
1822 In very ample virtue of his father,
1823 To hear and absolutely to determine
1824 Of what conditions we shall stand upon?
Earl of Westmoreland
1825 That is intended in the general's name:
1826 I muse you make so slight a question.
Archbishop of York
1827 Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule,
1828 For this contains our general grievances:
1829 Each several article herein redress'd,
1830 All members of our cause, both here and hence,
1831 That are insinew'd to this action,
1832 Acquitted by a true substantial form
1833 And present execution of our wills
1834 To us and to our purposes confined,
1835 We come within our awful banks again
1836 And knit our powers to the arm of peace.
Earl of Westmoreland
1837 This will I show the general. Please you, lords,
1838 In sight of both our battles we may meet;
1839 And either end in peace, which God so frame!
1840 Or to the place of difference call the swords
1841 Which must decide it.
Archbishop of York
1842 My lord, we will do so.
[Exit Westmoreland.]
Lord Mowbray
1843 There is a thing within my bosom tells me
1844 That no conditions of our peace can stand.
Lord Hastings
1845 Fear you not that: if we can make our peace
1846 Upon such large terms and so absolute
1847 As our conditions shall consist upon,
1848 Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.
Lord Mowbray
1849 Yea, but our valuation shall be such
1850 That every slight and false-derived cause,
1851 Yea, every idle, nice and wanton reason
1852 Shall to the king taste of this action;
1853 That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love,
1854 We shall be winnow'd with so rough a wind
1855 That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff
1856 And good from bad find no partition.
Archbishop of York
1857 No, no, my lord. Note this; the king is weary
1858 Of dainty and such picking grievances:
1859 For he hath found to end one doubt by death
1860 Revives two greater in the heirs of life,
1861 And therefore will he wipe his tables clean
1862 And keep no tell-tale to his memory
1863 That may repeat and history his loss
1864 To new remembrance; for full well he knows
1865 He cannot so precisely weed this land
1866 As his misdoubts present occasion:
1867 His foes are so enrooted with his friends
1868 That, plucking to unfix an enemy,
1869 He doth unfasten so and shake a friend:
1870 So that this land, like an offensive wife
1871 That hath enraged him on to offer strokes,
1872 As he is striking, holds his infant up
1873 And hangs resolved correction in the arm
1874 That was uprear'd to execution.
Lord Hastings
1875 Besides, the king hath wasted all his rods
1876 On late offenders, that he now doth lack
1877 The very instruments of chastisement:
1878 So that his power, like to a fangless lion,
1879 May offer, but not hold.
Archbishop of York
1880 'Tis very true:
1881 And therefore be assured, my good lord marshal,
1882 If we do now make our atonement well,
1883 Our peace will, like a broken limb united,
1884 Grow stronger for the breaking.
Lord Mowbray
1885 Be it so.
1886 Here is return'd my Lord of Westmoreland.
[Re-enter Westmoreland.]
Earl of Westmoreland
1887 The prince is here at hand: pleaseth your lordship
1888 To meet his grace just distance 'tween our armies.
Lord Mowbray
1889 Your grace of York, in God's name then, set forward.
Archbishop of York
1890 Before, and greet his grace: my lord, we come.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1664historical topical
“New-dated letters from Northumberland”
The Archbishop has just received freshly-written letters from Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who was supposed to join the rebellion with troops. 'New-dated' means recently written, underlining the urgency of the news. The letter's 'cold intent, tenour and substance' — its cold-blooded content and its legal-document 'tenor' (the exact wording) — is that Northumberland is withdrawing to Scotland and sending prayers instead of soldiers.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1667archaic vocab
“hold sortance with his quality”
'Sortance' means suitability or correspondence — Northumberland wished to be present 'with such powers as might hold sortance with his quality,' meaning with forces appropriate to a man of his rank and reputation. He could not raise them, so he fled instead. The word is rare; Shakespeare uses it only here.
TLN 1669archaic vocab
“retired, to ripe his growing fortunes, To Scotland”
'Ripe' is used as a transitive verb meaning to ripen or mature — Northumberland has withdrawn to Scotland to let his prospects grow stronger before he acts again. The construction 'to ripe' sounds odd to modern ears; in Shakespeare's English 'ripe' could mean both the adjective ('fully grown') and the verb ('to bring to ripeness').
TLN 1673rhetorical device
“hopes we have in him touch ground And dash themselves to pieces”
Mowbray uses a nautical metaphor: their hopes in Northumberland have 'touch'd ground' — run aground on a shoal — and 'dash'd themselves to pieces,' like a ship wrecked on rocks. The two verbs move from grounding to shattering in one motion, vividly compressing the feeling of a plan collapsing the moment its foundation gives way.
TLN 1691historical topical
“base and abject routs, Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags, And countenanced by boys and beggary”
Westmoreland is describing what a 'proper' rebellion would look like: lawless mobs ('routs') of the poor and desperate, led by reckless young men and flanked by vagrants. 'Routs' are disorderly crowds or mobs, not organized armies. His point is that the Archbishop's rebellion, whatever its social composition on the ground, has been given a false dignity by the Church's blessing — it does not look like this kind of rabble uprising, but it is one.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 1700historical topical
“Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd”
A 'see' is a bishop's or archbishop's seat of authority — the diocese and its revenues. Westmoreland's point is that the Archbishop's entire institutional power (his see, his lands, his income) depends on the stable civil order that rebellion destroys. Richard Scroop held the archbishopric of York, one of the two great northern English sees.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1703archaic vocab
“Whose white investments figure innocence”
'Investments' here means vestments — the official liturgical robes worn by a churchman, often white or bright-colored. 'Figure' means represent or symbolize. Westmoreland is pressing the Archbishop: your white robes are supposed to embody innocence; how can you then lead an army? The word 'investments' preserves the Latin root investire (to clothe); a bishop was 'invested' — literally dressed — into his office.
TLN 1708rhetorical device
“Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, Your pens to lances and your tongue divine To a loud trumpet”
This is a sustained antithesis — a rhetorical list of opposites — transforming every instrument of the Archbishop's clerical life into its martial equivalent: books into graves, ink into blood, pens into lances, his preaching voice into a war-trumpet. Each pair is a translation ('translate yourself' was the word Westmoreland just used above) of the sacred into the violent.
TLN 1712rhetorical device
“we are all diseased, And with our surfeiting and wanton hours Have brought ourselves into a burning fever, And we must bleed for it”
The Archbishop defends the rebellion through an extended medical metaphor: the state is sick from excess ('surfeiting and wanton hours'), has developed a fever, and 'must bleed for it' — meaning be bled by a physician, which was then standard treatment. Bleeding involved cutting a vein to draw off corrupted humors. The nation is the patient, and the rebellion is the remedy, not the disease.
TLN 1722archaic vocab
“diet rank minds sick of happiness, And purge the obstructions which begin to stop Our very veins of life”
'Diet' here is a verb meaning to regulate, correct, or prescribe a course of treatment — medical usage surviving from the four-humors theory. 'Rank' means swollen, overgrown, or inflamed with excess (like 'rank' weeds). 'Sick of happiness' means made ill by too much prosperity and ease — the political equivalent of a rich man's gout. 'Purge' is also medical: to clear blockages from the body's channels. The Archbishop extends the doctor-patient metaphor from the previous lines.
TLN 1748archaic vocab
“What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you”
'Suborn'd' means bribed or secretly induced — a legal term for corrupting a witness or official. 'Grate' means to rasp or chafe, here used figuratively for harassment or persistent offense. Westmoreland asks: what nobleman has been secretly paid to persecute you? The rhetorical thrust is skeptical — he is denying the Archbishop has any genuine grievance.
TLN 1749rhetorical device
“seal this lawless bloody book Of forged rebellion with a seal divine And consecrate commotion's bitter edge”
Westmoreland uses a legal metaphor to attack the Archbishop's role: a 'seal divine' is an ecclesiastical seal authenticating a document. He accuses the Archbishop of using his official seal of the Church to authenticate ('seal') a 'forged' — fraudulent — book of rebellion, and of 'consecrating' (making holy) the sharp edge of a sword. To consecrate commotion's bitter edge is to bless the violence of rebellion with the Archbishop's sacred authority.
TLN 1752syntax grammar
“My brother general, the commonwealth, To brother born an household cruelty, I make my quarrel in particular”
This is the Archbishop's compressed, difficult answer to Westmoreland's demand for a grievance. Unpacked, it runs: 'My general brother [i.e. the whole commonwealth, which is like a brother to all] — and to that brother, born to endure a household cruelty (an oppression from within its own family) — I make a personal cause of.' He is saying the general wound to the nation is also his private quarrel. The elliptical syntax, with the subject cut short, has troubled editors since the seventeenth century.
TLN 1763archaic vocab
“Construe the times to their necessities”
'Construe' in Shakespeare's time had two related meanings: to parse or translate (especially Latin text, as schoolboys did), and to interpret or understand. Westmoreland tells Mowbray to 'read' the times correctly — to parse current events as products of necessity, not of the king's malice. The word choice hints at the schoolroom: the times must be studied and translated like a difficult text, not simply reacted to.
TLN 1776historical topical
“Henry Bolingbroke and he, Being mounted and both roused in their seats, Their neighing coursers daring of the spur”
Mowbray recalls the judicial duel between his father (Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk) and Henry Bolingbroke at Coventry in 1398 — staged in full in the opening act of Richard II. Both men were armed, mounted on warhorses ('coursers'), visors lowered ('beavers down'), lances couched ('armed staves in charge'), on the brink of fighting when Richard II threw down his staff ('warder') to halt the combat and banished both men instead.
historical Trial by combat and the gage
TLN 1784historical topical
“when the king did throw his warder down, His own life hung upon the staff he threw”
A 'warder' was the marshal's or king's baton of office. Throwing it down between the combatants in a trial-by-combat instantly stopped the fight — it was the sovereign's signal to halt proceedings. Mowbray's paradox is that Richard, by throwing down his warder to prevent a fight that might have exposed his own guilt (he was implicated in the murder of Gloucester, the cause of the quarrel), threw away his own political life with it: 'his own life hung upon the staff he threw.'
historical Trial by combat and the gage
TLN 1808archaic vocab
“Mowbray, you overween to take it so”
'Overween' means to be arrogantly or presumptuously confident — to overreach in your assumptions. Westmoreland is telling Mowbray he is too proud, or too suspicious, to read the royal offer correctly. The word carries a sense of willful self-flattery: you think so highly of your own judgment that you mistake mercy for policy.
TLN 1813historical topical
“Our battle is more full of names than yours”
'Battle' here means the army (a Middle English military usage, not a reference to fighting). 'Full of names' means full of notable noblemen — named peers whose rank and reputation give the force prestige and authority. Westmoreland is boasting that Prince John's army contains more high-ranking lords than the rebels' force. The count of nobles on each side was militarily and politically significant: it indicated both military strength and political legitimacy.
TLN 1831archaic vocab
“That are insinew'd to this action”
'Insinew'd' means sinewed-in, bound by sinews or tendons — firmly attached, like muscles to bone. The Archbishop is describing all those 'members' of his cause, wherever they are ('both here and hence'), who are physically connected to the rebellion as tendons connect limb to body. The unusual word emphasizes organic, bodily commitment rather than mere political allegiance.
TLN 1835archaic vocab
“We come within our awful banks again And knit our powers to the arm of peace”
'Awful' here means law-abiding, awe-inspiring in their proper order, or reverential — keeping to the banks that the law has set, like a river staying within its channel. 'Awful banks' are the proper, orderly boundaries of lawful conduct. The Archbishop is saying: once their grievances are redressed, they will return to their proper places within the political order. 'Knit our powers to the arm of peace' means join their strength to the cause of peace, as soldiers might be 'knit' into a body.
TLN 1854rhetorical device
“winnow'd with so rough a wind That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff And good from bad find no partition”
Mowbray uses an agricultural metaphor: to 'winnow' grain is to throw it against the wind so that the light empty husks (chaff) blow away while the heavy full grain falls into the pile. He fears the royal scrutiny after the peace will be so hostile that even their genuine, substantial ('corn') grievances will be blown away as worthless ('chaff'), indistinguishable from empty ones. 'Good from bad find no partition' means the king will make no distinction between the innocent and the guilty among them.
TLN 1870rhetorical device
“this land, like an offensive wife That hath enraged him on to offer strokes, As he is striking, holds his infant up And hangs resolved correction in the arm That was uprear'd to execution”
The Archbishop uses a domestic simile: England is like a wife who has infuriated her husband until he raises his arm to beat her, but then holds up their baby so his arm 'hangs' — hesitates — in mid-air, unable to strike. 'Resolved correction' means punishment that was firmly decided upon; 'uprear'd to execution' means raised to carry out the blow. The king cannot destroy England any more than a man can strike an infant he also loves. This explains why Henry IV cannot simply kill all his enemies.
TLN 1878rhetorical device
“his power, like to a fangless lion, May offer, but not hold”
Hastings extends the argument with a simile: the king's power is like a lion with no fangs — it can lunge or threaten ('offer') but cannot grip and hold its prey. A 'fangless lion' is an animal stripped of its most dangerous attribute. Hastings says the king has exhausted his means of punishment on previous offenders and now lacks the instruments of chastisement to enforce anything.
TLN 1883rhetorical device
“our peace will, like a broken limb united, Grow stronger for the breaking”
The Archbishop closes the rebels' debate with a medical proverb: a broken bone that heals grows stronger at the break than it was before, because the new bone laid down in healing is denser. The comparison argues that peace after civil war — a 'broken limb united' — will be more durable than peace that was never tested. The simile returns to the body-as-state imagery running through the whole scene.