William Shakespeare: King Henry IV Part I

ACT III. 1. Scene I. Bangor. A Room in the Archdeacon's House.

[Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Mortimer, and Glendower.]

MORT.
These promises are fair, the parties sure,
And our induction full of prosperous hope.

HOT.
Lord Mortimer,--and cousin Glendower,--Will you sit down?--
And uncle Worcester,--A plague upon it! I have forgot the map.

GLEND.
No, here it is.
Sit, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur;
For by that name as oft as Lancaster
Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale, and with
A rising sigh he wisheth you in Heaven.

HOT.
And you in Hell, as oft as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of.

GLEND.
I cannot blame him: at my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; ay, and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the Earth
Shaked like a coward.

HOT.
Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother's
cat had but kitten'd, though yourself had never been born.

GLEND.
I say the Earth did shake when I was born.

HOT.
And I say the Earth was not of my mind, if you suppose as
fearing you it shook.

GLEND.
The Heavens were all on fire, the Earth did tremble.

HOT.
O, then th' Earth shook to see the Heavens on fire,
And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming Earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam Earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth,
Our grandam Earth, having this distemperature,
In passion shook.