Henry IV, Part 2

Henry IV, Part 2 is a history play by William Shakespeare. It was first published as part of Shakespeare's First Folio and was written somewhere between 1597 and 1599. It is the third part of a tetralogy; it is preceded by Richard II and Henry IV, Part I and is succeeded by Henry V.

• From Rumour's tongues
  They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.
  • Rumour

• Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
  So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
  Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,
  And would have told him, half his Troy was burn'd.
  • Northumberland, scene i

• Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
  Hath but a losing office, and his tongue
  Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
  Remember’d tolling a departing friend.
  • Northumberland, scene i

• Let Heaven kiss earth! Now let not nature's hand
  Keep the wild flood confin'd! let order die!
  And let this world no longer be a stage,
  To feed contention in a lingering act.
  • Northumberland, scene i

• You cast the event of war, my noble lord,
  And summ'd the account of chance, before you said
  "Let us make head." It was your presurmise,
  That, in the dole of blows, your son might drop:
  You knew he walk'd o'er perils, on an edge,
  More likely to fall in than to get o'er;
  You were advised his flesh was capable
  Of wounds and scars and that his forward spirit
  Would lift him where most trade of danger ranged:
  Yet did you say "Go forth;" and none of this,
  Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
  The stiff-borne action: what hath then befallen,
  Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth,
  More than that being which was like to be?
  • Morton, scene i

• I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• A rascally yea-forsooth knave!
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• Since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.
  • Lord Chief Justice, scene ii

• We that are in the vaward of our youth.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• For my voice, — I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• It was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• I were better to be eaten to death with a rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• A good wit will make use of anything; I will turn diseases to commodity.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• Who lin'd himself with hope,
  Eating the air on promise of supply.
  • Bardolph, scene iii

• When we mean to build,
  We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
  And when we see the figure of the house,
  Then must we rate the cost of the erection. 1
  • Bardolph, scene iii

• An habitation giddy and unsure
  Hath he, that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
  • Archbishop of York, scene iii

• Past, and to come, seem best; things present, worst.
  • Archbishop of York, scene iii

• A poor lone woman.
  • Mistress Quickly, scene i

• I’ll tickle your catastrophe.
  • Falstaff, scene i

• He hath eaten me out of house and home.
  • Mistress Quickly, scene i

• Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun-week.
  • Mistress Quickly, scene i

• I do now remember the poor creature, small beer.
  • Prince Henry, scene ii

• Let the end try the man.
  • Prince Henry, scene ii

• Thus we play the fools with the time; and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds, and mock us.
  • Prince Henry, scene ii

• He was, indeed, the glass
  Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
  • Lady Percy, scene iii

• I beseek you now, aggravate your choler.
  • Mistress Quickly, scene iv

• O sleep! O gentle sleep!
  Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
  That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
  And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
  • King Henry IV, scene i

• Can'st thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
  To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
  And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
  With all appliances and means to boot,
  Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!
  'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown'.
  • King Henry IV, scene i

• Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?
  • Shallow, scene ii

• Accommodated; that is, when a man is, as they say, accommodated: or when a man is, — being, — whereby, — he may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing.
  • Bardolph, scene ii

• Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• We have heard the chimes at midnight.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• A man can die but once; — we owe God a death.
  • Feeble, scene ii

• I do remember him at Clement's-inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: when he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife.
  • Falstaff, scene ii

• We are ready to try our fortunes
  To the last man.
  • Mowbray, scene ii

• I may justly say, with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, — "I came, saw, and overcame."
  • Falstaff, scene iii

• He hath a tear for pity, and a hand
  Open as day, for melting charity.
  • King Henry IV, scene iv

• Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.
  • King Henry IV, scene iv

• Commit
  The oldest sins the newest kind of ways.
  • King Henry IV, scene iv

• A joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kick-shaws, tell William cook.
  • Shallow, scene i

• His cares are now all ended.
  • Warwick, scene ii

• Falstaff: What wind blew you hither, Pistol?
  Pistol: Not the ill wind which blows no man to good.
  • scene iii

• A foutra for the world, and worldlings base!
  I speak of Africa, and golden joys.
  • Pistol, scene iii

• Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die!
  • Pistol, scene iii

• Falstaff: My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
  King Henry V: I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
  How ill white hairs become a fool, and jester!
  • Scene v

• Henry IV, Part 2 quotes analyzed; study guide with themes, character analyses, literary devices, teacher resources