Friday Free Associating: A Quote

(I stole this idea from the Citizen Reader, the idea being to just post some of the chaff that is floating around in my head. As long as it’s book related, why shouldn’t I?)

For the last few days I’ve had this quote that I can’t get out of my brain. I keep saying it over and over to myself. It’s like having a song stuck in my head, only better:

Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him
Bootless home and weather-beaten back.

I just love everything about it: the alliteration, the meter, the bravado, and the final image of a broken man retreating. It’s Owen Glendower, bragging to Hotspur, in Henry IV (Part I). In Shakespeare’s time the word bootless also meant fruitless or unprofitable; thus the last line has a double meaning.

For the complete text of Henry IV (Part I), Act 3, Scene 1, click here.

For more information about Owen Glendower, a Welsh nobleman who lived in the 14th century, click here.

For information about the Young Shakespeare Players, who will be performing this play August 15-24, 2008, click here.