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When the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed, Fresh as a bridegroom.... He was perfumèd like a milliner; And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box. And still he smiled and talked; And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

When the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed, Fresh as a bridegroom.... He was perfumèd like a milliner; And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box. And still he smiled and talked; And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

Approximate author period: c. 1590 AD · renaissance

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
William Shakespeare
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1590 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1564–1616)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
My Commonplace Book (third English edition,1921) (1921 AD)

Page 167 · printed citation: Shakespeare (1 Henry IV., i. 3). · compiler notes excluded

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William Shakespeare: Historical painted portrait

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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