EARL OF WORCESTER	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.

NORTHUMBERLAND	My lord.--

KING HENRY IV	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 frontier of a servant brow.
	You have good leave to leave us: when we need
	Your use and counsel, we shall send for you.

	[Exit Worcester]

	You were about to speak.

	[To North]

NORTHUMBERLAND	Yea, my good lord.
	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 misprison
	Is guilty of this fault and not my son.

HOTSPUR	My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
	But I remember, when the fight was done,
	When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
	Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
	Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd,
	Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap'd
	Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home;
	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 snuff; and still he smiled 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; amongst the rest, demanded
	My prisoners in your majesty's behalf.
	I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
	To be so pester'd with a popinjay,
	Out of my grief 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
	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,
	This 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.

SIR WALTER BLUNT	The circumstance consider'd, good my lord,
	Whate'er Lord Harry Percy then had said
	To such a person and in such a place,
	At such a time, with all the rest retold,
	May reasonably die and never rise
	To do him wrong or any way impeach
	What then he said, so he unsay it now.

KING HENRY IV	Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,
	But with proviso and exception,
	That we at our own charge shall ransom straight
	His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer;
	Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray'd
	The lives of those that he did lead to fight
	Against that 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 but treason? and indent 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.

HOTSPUR	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,