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Henry IV Part I

**PRINCE HAL** I know you all, and wi...

Overview

Character
Gender
Male
Playing Age
Young Adult
Style
Dramatic
Act/Scene
Act One, Scene Two
Time & Place
A messy private room inside the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap, London, during the early fifteenth century.
Length
Medium
Time Period
Classical
Show Type
Play
Age Guidance
Thirteen Plus (PG-13)

Context

Text

PRINCE HAL

I know you all, and will awhile uphold

The unyoked humour of your idleness:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work;

But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

So, when this loose behavior I throw off

And pay the debt I never promised,

By how much better than my word I am,

By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;

And like bright metal on a sullen ground,

My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,

Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes

Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;

Redeeming time when men think least I will.

William Shakespeare. Henry IV, Part One. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/1henryiv/1henryiv.1.2.html.

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