Page 677 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

The circumstance considered, good my lord, [70]
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 [75]
What then he said, so he unsay it now.

KING
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; [80]
Who, on my soul, hath willfully betrayed
The lives of those that he did lead to fight

Against that great magician, damned Glendower,
Whose daughter, as we hear, that Earl of March
Hath lately married. Shall our coffers, then, [85]

Be emptied to redeem a traitor home?
Shall we buy 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 [90]

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 [95]
Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,
Those mouthèd wounds, which valiantly he took
When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank,

In single opposition hand to hand,
He did confound the best part of an hour [100]
In changing hardiment with great Glendower.
Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink,

Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood;