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The commonwealth is sick of their own choice.
Their over-greedy love hath surfeited.
An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond many, with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke
Before he was what thou wouldst have him be.
And being now trimmed in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him
That thou provok’st thyself to cast him up.
So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up
And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these times?
(Act 1, scene 3, lines 91–105)
The Archbishop of York utters these lines in act 1, scene 3, where he complains about the people of England to his fellow rebel leaders, Lords Hastings and Mowbray. The Archbishop claims that the people of England “hath surfeited” themselves with their “over-greedy love” of the new king. Now the commonwealth, which he calls a “beastly feeder,” has grown “so full of [Henry IV]” that it’s ready to “cast him up.” Continuing with his gruesome image, the Archbishop envisions the kingdom as a dog eating its own vomit: “So, so, thou common do, didst thou disgorge / Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard, / And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up / And howl’st to find it.” As disgusting as it is, this image derives from a common biblical proverb that, as the head of the Catholic Church, the Archbishop would know well: “The dog is returned to his own vomit” (2 Peter 2:22). His evident disgust with the people of England registers a more general distaste for the chaos and confusion of “these times.”
The imagery the Archbishop uses to express his frustration in this passage is significant for the way it introduces the play’s motif of gluttony, which is often accompanied by references to vomit. In a less portentous register, characters frequently make fun of Falstaff for his gluttony. For instance, Mistress Quickly complains, “He hath eaten me out of house and home. He hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his” (2.1.76–77). In what might be an inadvertent suggestion of vomit, the hostess then says: “But I will have some of it out again” (2.1.78). Falstaff also references gluttony in his oblique allusion to Jesus’s parable of Lazarus and the rich man: “Let him be damned like the glutton!” (1.2.35; see also Luke 16:19–31). Ironically, Falstaff implicitly casts himself not as the wealthy glutton but as the poor man who eats his crumbs. These and other references to gluttony symbolize the self-destructive and sinful nature of the commonwealth at large.
