SCENE I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest. The Second part of King Henry the Fourth  Shakespeare homepage  |  Henry IV, part 2  | Act 4, Scene 1 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  SCENE I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest. 

 Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY, LORD HASTINGS, and others  ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  What is this forest call'd? 

 HASTINGS  'Tis Gaultree Forest, an't shall please your grace. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers forth 

 To know the numbers of our enemies. 

 HASTINGS  We have sent forth already. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  'Tis well done. 

 My friends and brethren in these great affairs, 

 I must acquaint you that I have received 

 New-dated letters from Northumberland; 

 Their cold intent, tenor and substance, thus: 

 Here doth he wish his person, with such powers 

 As might hold sortance with his quality, 

 The which he could not levy; whereupon 

 He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes, 

 To Scotland: and concludes in hearty prayers 

 That your attempts may overlive the hazard 

 And fearful melting of their opposite. 

 MOWBRAY  Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground 

 And dash themselves to pieces. 



 Enter a Messenger  HASTINGS  Now, what news? 

 Messenger  West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, 

 In goodly form comes on the enemy; 

 And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number 

 Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand. 

 MOWBRAY  The just proportion that we gave them out 

 Let us sway on and face them in the field. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  What well-appointed leader fronts us here? 



 Enter WESTMORELAND  MOWBRAY  I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland. 

 WESTMORELAND  Health and fair greeting from our general, 

 The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace: 

 What doth concern your coming? 

 WESTMORELAND  Then, my lord, 

 Unto your grace do I in chief address 

 The substance of my speech. If that rebellion 

 Came like itself, in base and abject routs, 

 Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags, 

 And countenanced by boys and beggary, 

 I say, if damn'd commotion so appear'd, 

 In his true, native and most proper shape, 

 You, reverend father, and these noble lords 

 Had not been here, to dress the ugly form 

 Of base and bloody insurrection 

 With your fair honours. You, lord archbishop, 

 Whose see is by a civil peace maintained, 

 Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd, 

 Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd, 

 Whose white investments figure innocence, 

 The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, 

 Wherefore do you so ill translate ourself 

 Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace, 

 Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war; 

 Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, 

 Your pens to lances and your tongue divine 

 To a trumpet and a point of war? 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  Wherefore do I this? so the question stands. 

 Briefly to this end: we are all diseased, 

 And with our surfeiting and wanton hours 

 Have brought ourselves into a burning fever, 

 And we must bleed for it; of which disease 

 Our late king, Richard, being infected, died. 

 But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland, 

 I take not on me here as a physician, 

 Nor do I as an enemy to peace 

 Troop in the throngs of military men; 

 But rather show awhile like fearful war, 

 To diet rank minds sick of happiness 

 And purge the obstructions which begin to stop 

 Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly. 

 I have in equal balance justly weigh'd 

 What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, 

 And find our griefs heavier than our offences. 

 We see which way the stream of time doth run, 

 And are enforced from our most quiet there 

 By the rough torrent of occasion; 

 And have the summary of all our griefs, 

 When time shall serve, to show in articles; 

 Which long ere this we offer'd to the king, 

 And might by no suit gain our audience: 

 When we are wrong'd and would unfold our griefs, 

 We are denied access unto his person 

 Even by those men that most have done us wrong. 

 The dangers of the days but newly gone, 

 Whose memory is written on the earth 

 With yet appearing blood, and the examples 

 Of every minute's instance, present now, 

 Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms, 

 Not to break peace or any branch of it, 

 But to establish here a peace indeed, 

 Concurring both in name and quality. 

 WESTMORELAND  When ever yet was your appeal denied? 

 Wherein have you been galled by the king? 

 What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you, 

 That you should seal this lawless bloody book 

 Of forged rebellion with a seal divine 

 And consecrate commotion's bitter edge? 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  My brother general, the commonwealth, 

 To brother born an household cruelty, 

 I make my quarrel in particular. 

 WESTMORELAND  There is no need of any such redress; 

 Or if there were, it not belongs to you. 

 MOWBRAY  Why not to him in part, and to us all 

 That feel the bruises of the days before, 

 And suffer the condition of these times 

 To lay a heavy and unequal hand 

 Upon our honours? 

 WESTMORELAND  O, my good Lord Mowbray, 

 Construe the times to their necessities, 

 And you shall say indeed, it is the time, 

 And not the king, that doth you injuries. 

 Yet for your part, it not appears to me 

 Either from the king or in the present time 

 That you should have an inch of any ground 

 To build a grief on: were you not restored 

 To all the Duke of Norfolk's signories, 

 Your noble and right well remember'd father's? 

 MOWBRAY  What thing, in honour, had my father lost, 

 That need to be revived and breathed in me? 

 The king that loved him, as the state stood then, 

 Was force perforce compell'd to banish him: 

 And then that Harry Bolingbroke and he, 

 Being mounted and both roused in their seats, 

 Their neighing coursers daring of the spur, 

 Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down, 

 Their eyes of fire sparking through sights of steel 

 And the loud trumpet blowing them together, 

 Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay'd 

 My father from the breast of Bolingbroke, 

 O when the king did throw his warder down, 

 His own life hung upon the staff he threw; 

 Then threw he down himself and all their lives 

 That by indictment and by dint of sword 

 Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke. 

 WESTMORELAND  You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what. 

 The Earl of Hereford was reputed then 

 In England the most valiant gentlemen: 

 Who knows on whom fortune would then have smiled? 

 But if your father had been victor there, 

 He ne'er had borne it out of Coventry: 

 For all the country in a general voice 

 Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love 

 Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on 

 And bless'd and graced indeed, more than the king. 

 But this is mere digression from my purpose. 

 Here come I from our princely general 

 To know your griefs; to tell you from his grace 

 That he will give you audience; and wherein 

 It shall appear that your demands are just, 

 You shall enjoy them, every thing set off 

 That might so much as think you enemies. 

 MOWBRAY  But he hath forced us to compel this offer; 

 And it proceeds from policy, not love. 

 WESTMORELAND  Mowbray, you overween to take it so; 

 This offer comes from mercy, not from fear: 

 For, lo! within a ken our army lies, 

 Upon mine honour, all too confident 

 To give admittance to a thought of fear. 

 Our battle is more full of names than yours, 

 Our men more perfect in the use of arms, 

 Our armour all as strong, our cause the best; 

 Then reason will our heart should be as good 

 Say you not then our offer is compell'd. 

 MOWBRAY  Well, by my will we shall admit no parley. 

 WESTMORELAND  That argues but the shame of your offence: 

 A rotten case abides no handling. 

 HASTINGS  Hath the Prince John a full commission, 

 In very ample virtue of his father, 

 To hear and absolutely to determine 

 Of what conditions we shall stand upon? 

 WESTMORELAND  That is intended in the general's name: 

 I muse you make so slight a question. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule, 

 For this contains our general grievances: 

 Each several article herein redress'd, 

 All members of our cause, both here and hence, 

 That are insinew'd to this action, 

 Acquitted by a true substantial form 

 And present execution of our wills 

 To us and to our purposes confined, 

 We come within our awful banks again 

 And knit our powers to the arm of peace. 

 WESTMORELAND  This will I show the general. Please you, lords, 

 In sight of both our battles we may meet; 

 And either end in peace, which God so frame! 

 Or to the place of difference call the swords 

 Which must decide it. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  My lord, we will do so. 



 Exit WESTMORELAND  MOWBRAY  There is a thing within my bosom tells me 

 That no conditions of our peace can stand. 

 HASTINGS  Fear you not that: if we can make our peace 

 Upon such large terms and so absolute 

 As our conditions shall consist upon, 

 Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains. 

 MOWBRAY  Yea, but our valuation shall be such 

 That every slight and false-derived cause, 

 Yea, every idle, nice and wanton reason 

 Shall to the king taste of this action; 

 That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love, 

 We shall be winnow'd with so rough a wind 

 That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff 

 And good from bad find no partition. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  No, no, my lord. Note this; the king is weary 

 Of dainty and such picking grievances: 

 For he hath found to end one doubt by death 

 Revives two greater in the heirs of life, 

 And therefore will he wipe his tables clean 

 And keep no tell-tale to his memory 

 That may repeat and history his loss 

 To new remembrance; for full well he knows 

 He cannot so precisely weed this land 

 As his misdoubts present occasion: 

 His foes are so enrooted with his friends 

 That, plucking to unfix an enemy, 

 He doth unfasten so and shake a friend: 

 So that 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. 

 HASTINGS  Besides, the king hath wasted all his rods 

 On late offenders, that he now doth lack 

 The very instruments of chastisement: 

 So that his power, like to a fangless lion, 

 May offer, but not hold. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  'Tis very true: 

 And therefore be assured, my good lord marshal, 

 If we do now make our atonement well, 

 Our peace will, like a broken limb united, 

 Grow stronger for the breaking. 

 MOWBRAY  Be it so. 

 Here is return'd my Lord of Westmoreland. 



 Re-enter WESTMORELAND  WESTMORELAND  The prince is here at hand: pleaseth your lordship 

 To meet his grace just distance 'tween our armies. 

 MOWBRAY  Your grace of York, in God's name then, set forward. 

 ARCHBISHOP OF YORK  Before, and greet his grace: my lord, we come. 



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