Context: Prince Henry, eventually King Henry V, and Poins, Peto, Falstaff, and others have plotted to rob some travelers at Gadshill. Prince Hal has agreed to this plot only because Poins has convinced him that the two of them can rob the robbers and thereby cause much merriment. In the actual robbing, Poins steals Falstaff's horse, and Falstaff must therefore carry his great hulk up the hill on his own two feet. As he labors up, Falstaff curses Prince Hal, as he has done innumerable times in the past. His speech is typical of the insults he tosses at Hal and which Hal returns:

Context: Harry Percy, called Hotspur, in company with Mortimer and Glendower, is in rebellion against Henry IV. Just as the plot is hatching, Percy is at his home in Warkworth Castle with his wife Kate. As the scene opens, Percy is reading a letter, in which the writer offers excuses for not joining the power against the King. Hotspur curses the man's cowardice in passages intermixed with sections of the letter, as this excerpt demonstrates: