Now,
when the lords and barons of the realm
Perceived
Northumberland did lean to him,
The
more and less came in with cap and knee;
Met
him in boroughs, cities, villages,
Attended
him on the bridges, stood in the lanes,
Laid
gifts before him, proffer’d him their oaths,
Gave
him their heirs as pages, follow’d him
Even
at the heels in golden multitudes.
-Hotspur
King Henry The Fourth Part I Act IV,
Scene iii, Line 67
The speaker, Hotspur, is leading the revolt against Henry
and in this passage is talking to Henry’s emissary who has come to try to
hammer out a peace with Hotspur. Young Hotspur is pointing out that he and his
father, Northumberland, were key in helping Henry gain the throne from Richard
II. The ‘him’ in the second line refers to Henry.
So, that’s quite a bit of enough context. What I’d like to
briefly discuss is the phrase ‘cap and knee’. I’ve not seen this phrase before,
and based on the context I assumed it meant cap in hand and knee bent. That is
to say, showing subservience to. I looked it up in my Shakespeare glossary and
it said ‘sycophant, flattering, obsequious’. So, yeah, what I said. And I like
this phrase. I might even try adopting it. There might be a fair amount of use
for it in discussing Orange man’s entourage.
I decided to google it to see if there was any current usage
of this nature for the phrase. But when I googled ‘cap and knee’ can you guess
what I got? A whole lot of stuff about kneecaps and the various knee
replacement surgeries. So it looks like it’s going to take a bit of work to
bring ‘cap and knee’ in the meaning of ‘sycophant’ back into the vernacular.
Still, I’m up to the task.
Cap in Hand
I think that I was able to understand what 'cap and knee' meant because I was so familiar with the phrase 'cap in hand' (which, by the way and unlike 'cap and knee', is still in modern usage). And I'm very familiar with that phrase because it is the title of a song which you can listen to by clicking on the title above. Enjoy.
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