Act IV, Scene IV — Westminster. The Jerusalem Chamber
Enter the King, Warwick, Thomas Duke of Clarence and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and others.
KING. Now, lords, if God doth give successful end To this debate that bleedeth at our doors, We will our youth lead on to higher fields And draw no swords but what are sanctified. Our navy is address’d, our power collected, Our substitutes in absence well invested, And everything lies level to our wish. Only we want a little personal strength; And pause us till these rebels now afoot Come underneath the yoke of government.
WARWICK. Both which we doubt not but your Majesty Shall soon enjoy.
KING. Humphrey, my son of Gloucester, Where is the Prince your brother?
GLOUCESTER. I think he’s gone to hunt, my lord, at Windsor.
KING. And how accompanied?
GLOUCESTER. I do not know, my lord.
KING. Is not his brother Thomas of Clarence with him?
GLOUCESTER. No, my good lord, he is in presence here.
CLARENCE. What would my lord and father?
KING. Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of Clarence. How chance thou art not with the Prince thy brother? He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas. Thou hast a better place in his affection Than all thy brothers. Cherish it, my boy, And noble offices thou mayst effect Of mediation, after I am dead, Between his greatness and thy other brethren. Therefore omit him not, blunt not his love, Nor lose the good advantage of his grace By seeming cold or careless of his will; For he is gracious, if he be observed, He hath a tear for pity, and a hand Open as day for melting charity: Yet notwithstanding, being incensed, he’s flint, As humorous as winter, and as sudden As flaws congealed in the spring of day. His temper therefore must be well observed. Chide him for faults, and do it reverently, When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth; But, being moody, give him time and scope, Till that his passions, like a whale on ground, Confound themselves with working. Learn this, Thomas, And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends, A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in, That the united vessel of their blood, Mingled with venom of suggestion— As, force perforce, the age will pour it in— Shall never leak, though it do work as strong As aconitum or rash gunpowder.
CLARENCE. I shall observe him with all care and love.
KING. Why art thou not at Windsor with him, Thomas?
CLARENCE. He is not there today; he dines in London.
KING. And how accompanied? Canst thou tell that?
CLARENCE. With Poins, and other his continual followers.
KING. Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds, And he, the noble image of my youth, Is overspread with them; therefore my grief Stretches itself beyond the hour of death. The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape In forms imaginary th’ unguided days And rotten times that you shall look upon When I am sleeping with my ancestors. For when his headstrong riot hath no curb, When rage and hot blood are his counsellors, When means and lavish manners meet together, O, with what wings shall his affections fly Towards fronting peril and opposed decay!
WARWICK. My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite. The prince but studies his companions Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language, ’Tis needful that the most immodest word Be looked upon and learned; which once attained, Your Highness knows, comes to no further use But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms, The Prince will, in the perfectness of time, Cast off his followers, and their memory Shall as a pattern or a measure live, By which his Grace must mete the lives of other, Turning past evils to advantages.
KING. ’Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb In the dead carrion.
Enter Westmoreland.
Who’s here? Westmoreland?
WESTMORELAND. Health to my sovereign, and new happiness Added to that that I am to deliver! Prince John your son doth kiss your Grace’s hand. Mowbray, the Bishop Scroop, Hastings and all Are brought to the correction of your law. There is not now a rebel’s sword unsheathed, But Peace puts forth her olive everywhere. The manner how this action hath been borne Here at more leisure may your Highness read, With every course in his particular.
KING. O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird, Which ever in the haunch of winter sings The lifting up of day.
Enter Harcourt.
Look, here’s more news.
HARCOURT. From enemies heaven keep your Majesty; And when they stand against you, may they fall As those that I am come to tell you of! The Earl Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph, With a great power of English and of Scots, Are by the shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown. The manner and true order of the fight This packet, please it you, contains at large.
KING. And wherefore should these good news make me sick? Will Fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters? She either gives a stomach and no food— Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast And takes away the stomach—such are the rich, That have abundance and enjoy it not. I should rejoice now at this happy news, And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy. O me! Come near me, now I am much ill.
GLOUCESTER. Comfort, your Majesty!
CLARENCE. O my royal father!
WESTMORELAND. My sovereign lord, cheer up yourself, look up.
WARWICK. Be patient, princes; you do know these fits Are with his Highness very ordinary. Stand from him, give him air; he’ll straight be well.
CLARENCE. No, no, he cannot long hold out these pangs. Th’ incessant care and labour of his mind Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in So thin that life looks through and will break out.
GLOUCESTER. The people fear me, for they do observe Unfather’d heirs and loathly births of nature. The seasons change their manners, as the year Had found some months asleep and leap’d them over.
CLARENCE. The river hath thrice flow’d, no ebb between, And the old folk, time’s doting chronicles, Say it did so a little time before That our great-grandsire, Edward, sick’d and died.
WARWICK. Speak lower, princes, for the King recovers.
GLOUCESTER. This apoplexy will certain be his end.
KING. I pray you take me up, and bear me hence Into some other chamber: softly, pray.
[Exeunt.]
Act IV, Scene V — Another chamber
The King lying on a bed. Clarence, Gloucester, Warwick and others in attendance.
KING. Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends, Unless some dull and favourable hand Will whisper music to my weary spirit.
WARWICK. Call for the music in the other room.
KING. Set me the crown upon my pillow here.
CLARENCE. His eye is hollow, and he changes much.
WARWICK. Less noise, less noise!
Enter Prince Henry.
PRINCE. Who saw the Duke of Clarence?
CLARENCE. I am here, brother, full of heaviness.
PRINCE. How now, rain within doors, and none abroad? How doth the King?
GLOUCESTER. Exceeding ill.
PRINCE. Heard he the good news yet? Tell it him.
GLOUCESTER. He alt’red much upon the hearing it.
PRINCE. If he be sick with joy, he’ll recover without physic.
WARWICK. Not so much noise, my lords. Sweet prince, speak low; The King your father is disposed to sleep.
CLARENCE. Let us withdraw into the other room.
WARWICK. Will’t please your Grace to go along with us?
PRINCE. No, I will sit and watch here by the King.
[Exeunt all but the Prince.]
Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, Being so troublesome a bedfellow? O polish’d perturbation! golden care! That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now; Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet As he whose brow with homely biggen bound Snores out the watch of night. O majesty! When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit Like a rich armour worn in heat of day, That scald’st with safety. By his gates of breath There lies a downy feather which stirs not: Did he suspire, that light and weightless down Perforce must move. My gracious lord, my father! This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep That from this golden rigol hath divorced So many English kings. Thy due from me Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood, Which nature, love, and filial tenderness, Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously. My due from thee is this imperial crown, Which, as immediate from thy place and blood, Derives itself to me. Lo, where it sits, Which God shall guard; and put the world’s whole strength Into one giant arm, it shall not force This lineal honour from me. This from thee Will I to mine leave, as ’tis left to me.
[Exit.]
KING. Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!
Enter Warwick, Gloucester, Clarence and the rest.
CLARENCE. Doth the King call?
WARWICK. What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?
KING. Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?
CLARENCE. We left the Prince my brother here, my liege, Who undertook to sit and watch by you.
KING. The Prince of Wales! Where is he? Let me see him. He is not here.
WARWICK. This door is open, he is gone this way.
GLOUCESTER. He came not through the chamber where we stay’d.
KING. Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?
WARWICK. When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.
KING. The Prince hath ta’en it hence. Go seek him out. Is he so hasty that he doth suppose My sleep my death? Find him, my Lord of Warwick, chide him hither.
[Exit Warwick.]
This part of his conjoins with my disease, And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are, How quickly nature falls into revolt When gold becomes her object! For this the foolish over-careful fathers Have broke their sleep with thoughts, Their brains with care, their bones with industry; For this they have engrossed and piled up The canker’d heaps of strange-achieved gold; For this they have been thoughtful to invest Their sons with arts and martial exercises; When, like the bee, tolling from every flower The virtuous sweets, Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey, We bring it to the hive; and like the bees, Are murdered for our pains. This bitter taste Yields his engrossments to the ending father.
Enter Warwick.
Now where is he that will not stay so long Till his friend sickness hath determin’d me?
WARWICK. My lord, I found the Prince in the next room, Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks, With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow That tyranny, which never quaff’d but blood, Would, by beholding him, have wash’d his knife With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.
KING. But wherefore did he take away the crown?
Enter Prince Henry.
Lo where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry. Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.
[Exeunt Warwick and the rest.]
PRINCE. I never thought to hear you speak again.
KING. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. I stay too long by thee, I weary thee. Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth! Thou seek’st the greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little, for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling with so weak a wind That it will quickly drop. My day is dim. Thou hast stolen that which after some few hours Were thine without offence, and at my death Thou hast seal’d up my expectation. Thy life did manifest thou loved’st me not, And thou wilt have me die assured of it. Thou hid’st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart, To stab at half an hour of my life. What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour? Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself, And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear That thou art crowned, not that I am dead. Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head, Only compound me with forgotten dust. Give that which gave thee life unto the worms. Pluck down my officers, break my decrees; For now a time is come to mock at form. Harry the Fifth is crown’d. Up, vanity! Down, royal state! All you sage counsellors, hence! And to the English court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness! Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum. Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit The oldest sins the newest kind of ways? Be happy, he will trouble you no more. England shall double gild his treble guilt, England shall give him office, honour, might, For the fifth Harry from curb’d license plucks The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent. O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows! When that my care could not withhold thy riots, What wilt thou do when riot is thy care? O, thou wilt be a wilderness again, Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!
PRINCE. O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears, The moist impediments unto my speech, I had forestall’d this dear and deep rebuke Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard The course of it so far. There is your crown; And He that wears the crown immortally Long guard it yours! If I affect it more Than as your honour and as your renown, Let me no more from this obedience rise, Which my most inward true and duteous spirit Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending. God witness with me, when I here came in, And found no course of breath within your Majesty, How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign, O, let me in my present wildness die And never live to show th’ incredulous world The noble change that I have purposed! Coming to look on you, thinking you dead, And dead almost, my liege, to think you were, I spake unto this crown as having sense, And thus upbraided it: “The care on thee depending Hath fed upon the body of my father; Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold. Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, Preserving life in med’cine potable; But thou, most fine, most honour’d, most renown’d, Hast eat thy bearer up.” Thus, my most royal liege, Accusing it, I put it on my head, To try with it, as with an enemy That had before my face murder’d my father, The quarrel of a true inheritor. But if it did infect my blood with joy, Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride, If any rebel or vain spirit of mine Did with the least affection of a welcome Give entertainment to the might of it, Let God for ever keep it from my head And make me as the poorest vassal is That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!
KING. O my son, God put it in thy mind to take it hence, That thou mightst win the more thy father’s love, Pleading so wisely in excuse of it! Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed, And hear, I think, the very latest counsel That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son, By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways I met this crown, and I myself know well How troublesome it sat upon my head. To thee it shall descend with better quiet, Better opinion, better confirmation, For all the soil of the achievement goes With me into the earth. It seem’d in me But as an honour snatch’d with boisterous hand, And I had many living to upbraid My gain of it by their assistances, Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed, Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears Thou seest with peril I have answered; For all my reign hath been but as a scene Acting that argument. And now my death Changes the mood, for what in me was purchased, Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort; So thou the garland wear’st successively. Yet though thou stand’st more sure than I could do, Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green; And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends, Have but their stings and teeth newly ta’en out; By whose fell working I was first advanced And by whose power I well might lodge a fear To be again displaced; which to avoid, I cut them off, and had a purpose now To lead out many to the Holy Land, Lest rest and lying still might make them look Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry, Be it thy course to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, May waste the memory of the former days. More would I, but my lungs are wasted so That strength of speech is utterly denied me. How I came by the crown, O God, forgive, And grant it may with thee in true peace live!
PRINCE. My gracious liege, You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me; Then plain and right must my possession be, Which I with more than with a common pain ’Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.
Enter Lord John of Lancaster and others.
KING. Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.
LANCASTER. Health, peace, and happiness to my royal father!
KING. Thou bring’st me happiness and peace, son John, But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown From this bare wither’d trunk. Upon thy sight My worldly business makes a period. Where is my Lord of Warwick?
PRINCE. My Lord of Warwick!
Enter Warwick and others.
KING. Doth any name particular belong Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?
WARWICK. ’Tis call’d Jerusalem, my noble lord.
KING. Laud be to God! Even there my life must end. It hath been prophesied to me many years, I should not die but in Jerusalem, Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land. But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie; In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
[Exeunt.]
Act V, Scene I — Gloucestershire. Shallow’s house
Enter Shallow, Falstaff, Bardolph and Page.
SHALLOW. By cock and pie, sir, you shall not away tonight. What, Davy, I say!
FALSTAFF. You must excuse me, Master Robert Shallow.
SHALLOW. I will not excuse you, you shall not be excused. Excuses shall not be admitted, there is no excuse shall serve, you shall not be excused. Why, Davy!
Enter Davy.
DAVY. Here, sir.
SHALLOW. Davy, Davy, Davy, Davy, let me see, Davy, let me see, Davy, let me see. Yea, marry, William cook, bid him come hither. Sir John, you shall not be excused.
DAVY. Marry, sir, thus: those precepts cannot be served; and again, sir—shall we sow the hade land with wheat?
SHALLOW. With red wheat, Davy. But for William cook, are there no young pigeons?
DAVY. Yes, sir. Here is now the smith’s note for shoeing and plough-irons.
SHALLOW. Let it be cast and paid. Sir John, you shall not be excused.
DAVY. Now, sir, a new link to the bucket must needs be had. And, sir, do you mean to stop any of William’s wages, about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley fair?
SHALLOW. He shall answer it. Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William cook.
DAVY. Doth the man of war stay all night, sir?
SHALLOW. Yea, Davy, I will use him well: a friend i’ th’ court is better than a penny in purse. Use his men well, Davy, for they are arrant knaves, and will backbite.
DAVY. No worse than they are backbitten, sir, for they have marvellous foul linen.
SHALLOW. Well conceited, Davy. About thy business, Davy.
DAVY. I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Woncot against Clement Perkes o’ th’ hill.
SHALLOW. There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor. That Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.
DAVY. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir, but yet, God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friend’s request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. I have served your worship truly, sir, this eight years; and if I cannot once or twice in a quarter bear out a knave against an honest man, I have but a very little credit with your worship. The knave is mine honest friend, sir; therefore I beseech your worship let him be countenanced.
SHALLOW. Go to; I say he shall have no wrong. Look about, Davy.
[Exit Davy.]
Where are you, Sir John? Come, come, come, off with your boots. Give me your hand, Master Bardolph.
BARDOLPH. I am glad to see your worship.
SHALLOW. I thank thee with all my heart, kind Master Bardolph; and welcome, my tall fellow [to the Page]. Come, Sir John.
FALSTAFF. I’ll follow you, good Master Robert Shallow.
[Exit Shallow.]
Bardolph, look to our horses.
[Exeunt Bardolph and Page.]
If I were sawed into quantities, I should make four dozen of such bearded hermits’ staves as Master Shallow. It is a wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of his men’s spirits and his. They, by observing of him, do bear themselves like foolish justices: he, by conversing with them, is turned into a justice-like serving-man. Their spirits are so married in conjunction with the participation of society that they flock together in consent, like so many wild-geese. If I had a suit to Master Shallow, I would humour his men with the imputation of being near their master: if to his men, I would curry with Master Shallow that no man could better command his servants. It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another. Therefore let men take heed of their company. I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep Prince Harry in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions, which is four terms, or two actions, and he shall laugh without intervallums. O, it is much that a lie with a slight oath and a jest with a sad brow will do with a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders! O, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up!
SHALLOW. [Within.] Sir John!
FALSTAFF. I come, Master Shallow, I come, Master Shallow.
[Exit.]
Act V, Scene II — Westminster. The palace
Enter Warwick and the Lord Chief Justice, meeting.
WARWICK. How now, my Lord Chief Justice, whither away?
CHIEF JUSTICE. How doth the King?
WARWICK. Exceeding well. His cares are now all ended.
CHIEF JUSTICE. I hope, not dead.
WARWICK. He’s walk’d the way of nature, And to our purposes he lives no more.
CHIEF JUSTICE. I would his Majesty had call’d me with him. The service that I truly did his life Hath left me open to all injuries.
WARWICK. Indeed I think the young King loves you not.
CHIEF JUSTICE. I know he doth not, and do arm myself To welcome the condition of the time, Which cannot look more hideously upon me Than I have drawn it in my fantasy.
Enter Lancaster, Clarence, Gloucester and others.
WARWICK. Here comes the heavy issue of dead Harry. O that the living Harry had the temper Of he the worst of these three gentlemen! How many nobles then should hold their places, That must strike sail to spirits of vile sort!
CHIEF JUSTICE. O God, I fear all will be overturn’d.
LANCASTER. Good morrow, cousin Warwick, good morrow.
GLOUCESTER & CLARENCE. Good morrow, cousin.
LANCASTER. We meet like men that had forgot to speak.
WARWICK. We do remember, but our argument Is all too heavy to admit much talk.
LANCASTER. Well, peace be with him that hath made us heavy!
CHIEF JUSTICE. Peace be with us, lest we be heavier!
GLOUCESTER. O, good my lord, you have lost a friend indeed; And I dare swear you borrow not that face Of seeming sorrow; it is sure your own.
LANCASTER. Though no man be assured what grace to find, You stand in coldest expectation. I am the sorrier; would ’twere otherwise.
CLARENCE. Well, you must now speak Sir John Falstaff fair, Which swims against your stream of quality.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Sweet Princes, what I did I did in honour, Led by th’ impartial conduct of my soul; And never shall you see that I will beg A ragged and forestall’d remission. If truth and upright innocency fail me, I’ll to the King my master that is dead, And tell him who hath sent me after him.
WARWICK. Here comes the Prince.
Enter King Henry the Fifth, attended.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Good morrow, and God save your Majesty!
KING. This new and gorgeous garment, majesty, Sits not so easy on me as you think. Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear. This is the English, not the Turkish court; Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, But Harry Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers, For, by my faith, it very well becomes you. Sorrow so royally in you appears That I will deeply put the fashion on And wear it in my heart. Why then, be sad; But entertain no more of it, good brothers, Than a joint burden laid upon us all. For me, by heaven, I bid you be assured, I’ll be your father and your brother too; Let me but bear your love, I’ll bear your cares. Yet weep that Harry’s dead, and so will I; But Harry lives, that shall convert those tears By number into hours of happiness.
PRINCES. We hope no otherwise from your Majesty.
KING. You all look strangely on me. And you most; You are, I think, assured I love you not.
CHIEF JUSTICE. I am assured, if I be measured rightly, Your Majesty hath no just cause to hate me.
KING. No? How might a prince of my great hopes forget So great indignities you laid upon me? What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison Th’ immediate heir of England? Was this easy? May this be wash’d in Lethe and forgotten?
CHIEF JUSTICE. I then did use the person of your father; The image of his power lay then in me; And in the administration of his law, Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth, Your Highness pleased to forget my place, The majesty and power of law and justice, The image of the King whom I presented, And struck me in my very seat of judgement; Whereon, as an offender to your father, I gave bold way to my authority And did commit you. If the deed were ill, Be you contented, wearing now the garland, To have a son set your decrees at nought? To pluck down justice from your awful bench? To trip the course of law and blunt the sword That guards the peace and safety of your person? Nay more, to spurn at your most royal image, And mock your workings in a second body? Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours; Be now the father and propose a son, Hear your own dignity so much profaned, See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted, Behold yourself so by a son disdain’d, And then imagine me taking your part And in your power soft silencing your son. After this cold considerance, sentence me; And, as you are a king, speak in your state What I have done that misbecame my place, My person, or my liege’s sovereignty.
KING. You are right, justice, and you weigh this well. Therefore still bear the balance and the sword. And I do wish your honours may increase Till you do live to see a son of mine Offend you and obey you, as I did. So shall I live to speak my father’s words: “Happy am I, that have a man so bold That dares do justice on my proper son; And not less happy, having such a son That would deliver up his greatness so Into the hands of justice.” You did commit me, For which I do commit into your hand Th’ unstained sword that you have used to bear, With this remembrance: that you use the same With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit As you have done ’gainst me. There is my hand. You shall be as a father to my youth, My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear, And I will stoop and humble my intents To your well-practised wise directions. And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you, My father is gone wild into his grave, For in his tomb lie my affections; And with his spirit sadly I survive To mock the expectation of the world, To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down After my seeming. The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow’d in vanity till now. Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea, Where it shall mingle with the state of floods, And flow henceforth in formal majesty. Now call we our high court of parliament, And let us choose such limbs of noble counsel That the great body of our state may go In equal rank with the best-govern’d nation; That war, or peace, or both at once, may be As things acquainted and familiar to us; In which you, father, shall have foremost hand. Our coronation done, we will accite, As I before remember’d, all our state: And, God consigning to my good intents, No prince nor peer shall have just cause to say, God shorten Harry’s happy life one day!
[Exeunt.]
Act V, Scene III — Gloucestershire. Shallow’s orchard
Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Silence, Davy, Bardolph and the Page.
SHALLOW. Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year’s pippin of mine own graffing, with a dish of caraways, and so forth. Come, cousin Silence. And then to bed.
FALSTAFF. Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich.
SHALLOW. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John. Marry, good air. Spread, Davy, spread, Davy. Well said, Davy.
FALSTAFF. This Davy serves you for good uses; he is your serving-man and your husband.
SHALLOW. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet, Sir John. By the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper. A good varlet. Now sit down, now sit down. Come, cousin.
SILENCE. Ah, sirrah! quoth-a, we shall [Singing.]
_Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer, And praise God for the merry year, When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily._
FALSTAFF. There’s a merry heart! Good Master Silence, I’ll give you a health for that anon.
SHALLOW. Give Master Bardolph some wine, Davy.
DAVY. Sweet sir, sit. I’ll be with you anon. Most sweet sir, sit. Master page, good master page, sit. Proface! What you want in meat, we’ll have in drink, but you must bear; the heart’s all.
[Exit.]
SHALLOW. Be merry, Master Bardolph, and, my little soldier there, be merry.
SILENCE. [Singing.]
_Be merry, be merry, my wife has all, For women are shrews, both short and tall. ’Tis merry in hall when beards wag all, And welcome merry Shrove-tide. Be merry, be merry._
FALSTAFF. I did not think Master Silence had been a man of this mettle.
SILENCE. Who, I? I have been merry twice and once ere now.
Enter Davy.
DAVY. [To Bardolph.] There’s a dish of leather-coats for you.
SHALLOW. Davy!
DAVY. Your worship? I’ll be with you straight. [To Bardolph] A cup of wine, sir?
SILENCE. [Singing.]
_A cup of wine that’s brisk and fine, And drink unto thee, leman mine, And a merry heart lives long-a._
FALSTAFF. Well said, Master Silence.
SILENCE. An we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet o’ th’ night.
FALSTAFF. Health and long life to you, Master Silence.
SILENCE. [Singing.]
_Fill the cup, and let it come, I’ll pledge you a mile to th’ bottom._
SHALLOW. Honest Bardolph, welcome! If thou want’st anything and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart. Welcome, my little tiny thief, [to the Page] and welcome indeed too. I’ll drink to Master Bardolph, and to all the cabileros about London.
DAVY. I hope to see London once ere I die.
BARDOLPH. An I might see you there, Davy,—
SHALLOW. By the mass, you’ll crack a quart together, ha! will you not, Master Bardolph?
BARDOLPH. Yea, sir, in a pottle-pot.
SHALLOW. By God’s liggens, I thank thee. The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that. He will not out, he. ’Tis true bred.
BARDOLPH. And I’ll stick by him, sir.
SHALLOW. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing! Be merry.
[Knocking within.]
Look who’s at door there, ho! Who knocks?
[Exit Davy.]
FALSTAFF. [To Silence, seeing him take off a bumper.] Why, now you have done me right.
SILENCE. [Singing.]
_Do me right, And dub me knight: Samingo._
Is’t not so?
FALSTAFF. ’Tis so.
SILENCE. Is’t so? Why then, say an old man can do somewhat.
Enter Davy.
DAVY. An’t please your worship, there’s one Pistol come from the court with news.
FALSTAFF. From the court? Let him come in.
Enter Pistol.
How now, Pistol?
PISTOL. Sir John, God save you!
FALSTAFF. What wind blew you hither, Pistol?
PISTOL. Not the ill wind which blows no man to good. Sweet knight, thou art now one of the greatest men in this realm.
SILENCE. By’r lady, I think he be, but goodman Puff of Barson.
PISTOL. Puff! Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base! Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend, And helter-skelter have I rode to thee, And tidings do I bring and lucky joys, And golden times, and happy news of price.
FALSTAFF. I pray thee now, deliver them like a man of this world.
PISTOL. A foutre for the world and worldlings base! I speak of Africa and golden joys.
FALSTAFF. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news? Let King Cophetua know the truth thereof.
SILENCE. [Singing.] And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John.
PISTOL. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons? And shall good news be baffled? Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies’ lap.
SHALLOW. Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding.
PISTOL. Why then, lament therefor.
SHALLOW. Give me pardon, sir. If, sir, you come with news from the court, I take it there’s but two ways, either to utter them, or conceal them. I am, sir, under the King, in some authority.
PISTOL. Under which king, Besonian? Speak, or die.
SHALLOW. Under King Harry.
PISTOL. Harry the Fourth, or Fifth?
SHALLOW. Harry the Fourth.
PISTOL. A foutre for thine office! Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is King; Harry the Fifth’s the man. I speak the truth. When Pistol lies, do this, and fig me, like The bragging Spaniard.
FALSTAFF. What, is the old King dead?
PISTOL. As nail in door. The things I speak are just.
FALSTAFF. Away, Bardolph, saddle my horse. Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, ’tis thine. Pistol, I will double-charge thee with dignities.
BARDOLPH. O joyful day! I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.
PISTOL. What! I do bring good news.
FALSTAFF. Carry Master Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow, be what thou wilt; I am Fortune’s steward! Get on thy boots, we’ll ride all night. O sweet Pistol! Away, Bardolph!
[Exit Bardolph.]
Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master Shallow. I know the young King is sick for me. Let us take any man’s horses. The laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are they that have been my friends, and woe to my Lord Chief Justice!
PISTOL. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! “Where is the life that late I led?” say they: Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days!
[Exeunt.]
Act V, Scene IV — London. A street
Enter Beadles, dragging in Hostess Quickly and Doll Tearsheet.
HOSTESS. No, thou arrant knave. I would to God that I might die, that I might have thee hanged. Thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint.
FIRST BEADLE. The constables have delivered her over to me, and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her. There hath been a man or two lately killed about her.
DOLL. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie! Come on, I’ll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal, an the child I now go with do miscarry, thou wert better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain.
HOSTESS. O the Lord, that Sir John were come! He would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!
FIRST BEADLE. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me, for the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you.
DOLL. I’ll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you bluebottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not swinged, I’ll forswear half-kirtles.
FIRST BEADLE. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come.
HOSTESS. O God, that right should thus overcome might! Well, of sufferance comes ease.
DOLL. Come, you rogue, come, bring me to a justice.
HOSTESS. Ay, come, you starved bloodhound.
DOLL. Goodman death, goodman bones!
HOSTESS. Thou atomy, thou!
DOLL. Come, you thin thing, come, you rascal!
FIRST BEADLE. Very well.
[Exeunt.]
Act V, Scene V — A public place near Westminster Abbey
Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.
FIRST GROOM. More rushes, more rushes.
SECOND GROOM. The trumpets have sounded twice.
FIRST GROOM. ’Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the coronation. Dispatch, dispatch.
[Exeunt.]
Trumpets sound, and the King and his train pass over the stage. Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph and Page.
FALSTAFF. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow. I will make the King do you grace. I will leer upon him as he comes by, and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.
PISTOL. God bless thy lungs, good knight!
FALSTAFF. Come here, Pistol, stand behind me. O, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. But ’tis no matter, this poor show doth better. This doth infer the zeal I had to see him.
SHALLOW. It doth so.
FALSTAFF. It shows my earnestness of affection—
SHALLOW. It doth so.
FALSTAFF. My devotion—
SHALLOW. It doth, it doth, it doth.
FALSTAFF. As it were, to ride day and night, and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me—
SHALLOW. It is best, certain.
FALSTAFF. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.
PISTOL. ’Tis semper idem, for obsque hoc nihil est; ’tis all in every part.
SHALLOW. ’Tis so, indeed.
PISTOL. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, And make thee rage. Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts, Is in base durance and contagious prison, Haled thither By most mechanical and dirty hand. Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake, For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.
FALSTAFF. I will deliver her.
[Shouts within. The trumpets sound.]
PISTOL. There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.
Enter the King and his train, the Lord Chief Justice among them.
FALSTAFF. God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal!
PISTOL. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!
FALSTAFF. God save thee, my sweet boy!
KING. My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak?
FALSTAFF. My King! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
KING. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester! I have long dreamt of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane; But, being awaked, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men. Reply not to me with a fool-born jest. Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn’d away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots. Till then I banish thee, on pain of death, As I have done the rest of my misleaders, Not to come near our person by ten mile. For competence of life I will allow you, That lack of means enforce you not to evils. And, as we hear you do reform yourselves, We will, according to your strengths and qualities, Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform’d the tenor of our word. Set on.
[Exeunt King with his train.]
FALSTAFF. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.
SHALLOW. Yea, marry, Sir John, which I beseech you to let me have home with me.
FALSTAFF. That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.
SHALLOW. I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.
FALSTAFF. Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that you heard was but a colour.
SHALLOW. A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.
FALSTAFF. Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be sent for soon at night.
Enter the Lord Chief Justice and Prince John, Officers with them.
CHIEF JUSTICE. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet. Take all his company along with him.
FALSTAFF. My lord, my lord,—
CHIEF JUSTICE. I cannot now speak. I will hear you soon. Take them away.
PISTOL. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.
[Exeunt all but Prince John and the Lord Chief Justice.]
LANCASTER. I like this fair proceeding of the King’s. He hath intent his wonted followers Shall all be very well provided for, But all are banish’d till their conversations Appear more wise and modest to the world.
CHIEF JUSTICE. And so they are.
LANCASTER. The King hath call’d his parliament, my lord.
CHIEF JUSTICE. He hath.
LANCASTER. I will lay odds that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords and native fire As far as France. I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the King. Come, will you hence?
[Exeunt.]
Epilogue
First my fear; then my curtsy; last my speech. My fear is your displeasure; my curtsy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me, for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies. Bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.
If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? And yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.
One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France; where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night.
THE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE FIFTH
Dramatis Personæ
KING HENRY V. DUKE OF CLARENCE, brother to the King. DUKE OF BEDFORD, brother to the King. DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, brother to the King. DUKE OF EXETER, uncle to the King. DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the King. EARL OF SALISBURY. EARL OF HUNTINGDON. EARL OF WESTMORLAND. EARL OF WARWICK. ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. BISHOP OF ELY. EARL OF CAMBRIDGE. LORD SCROOP. SIR THOMAS GREY. SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, officer in King Henry’s army. GOWER, officer in King Henry’s army. FLUELLEN, officer in King Henry’s army. MACMORRIS, officer in King Henry’s army. JAMY, officer in King Henry’s army. BATES, soldier in the same. COURT, soldier in the same. WILLIAMS, soldier in the same. PISTOL. NYM. BARDOLPH. BOY. A Herald.
CHARLES VI, king of France. LEWIS, the Dauphin. DUKE OF BERRY. DUKE OF BRITTANY. DUKE OF BURGUNDY. DUKE OF ORLEANS. DUKE OF BOURBON. The Constable of France. RAMBURES, French Lord. GRANDPRÉ, French Lord. Governor of Harfleur MONTJOY, a French herald. Ambassadors to the King of England.
ISABEL, queen of France. KATHARINE, daughter to Charles and Isabel. ALICE, a lady attending on her. HOSTESS of a tavern in Eastcheap, formerly Mistress Nell Quickly, and now married to Pistol.
CHORUS.
Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, and Attendants.
SCENE: England; afterwards France.
Prologue
Enter Chorus.
CHORUS. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels, Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dar’d On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million, And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confin’d two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder; Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts. Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance. Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth. For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass: for the which supply, Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
[Exit.]
Act I, Scene I — London. An ante-chamber in the King’s palace
Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely.
CANTERBURY. My lord, I’ll tell you, that self bill is urg’d Which in the eleventh year of the last king’s reign Was like, and had indeed against us passed But that the scambling and unquiet time Did push it out of farther question.
ELY. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
CANTERBURY. It must be thought on. If it pass against us, We lose the better half of our possession: For all the temporal lands, which men devout By testament have given to the Church, Would they strip from us; being valu’d thus: As much as would maintain, to the King’s honour, Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights, Six thousand and two hundred good esquires; And, to relief of lazars and weak age, Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil, A hundred almshouses right well supplied; And to the coffers of the King beside, A thousand pounds by th’ year. Thus runs the bill.
ELY. This would drink deep.
CANTERBURY. ’Twould drink the cup and all.
ELY. But what prevention?
CANTERBURY. The King is full of grace and fair regard.
ELY. And a true lover of the holy Church.
CANTERBURY. The courses of his youth promis’d it not. The breath no sooner left his father’s body But that his wildness, mortified in him, Seemed to die too; yea, at that very moment Consideration like an angel came And whipped th’ offending Adam out of him, Leaving his body as a paradise T’ envelope and contain celestial spirits. Never was such a sudden scholar made, Never came reformation in a flood With such a heady currance scouring faults, Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, As in this king.
ELY. We are blessed in the change.
CANTERBURY. Hear him but reason in divinity And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire the King were made a prelate; Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say it hath been all in all his study; List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music; Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences; So that the art and practic part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric: Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it, Since his addiction was to courses vain, His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow, His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports, And never noted in him any study, Any retirement, any sequestration From open haunts and popularity.
ELY. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighboured by fruit of baser quality; And so the Prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness, which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.
CANTERBURY. It must be so, for miracles are ceased, And therefore we must needs admit the means How things are perfected.
ELY. But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill Urged by the Commons? Doth his Majesty Incline to it, or no?
CANTERBURY. He seems indifferent, Or rather swaying more upon our part Than cherishing th’ exhibitors against us; For I have made an offer to his Majesty, Upon our spiritual convocation And in regard of causes now in hand, Which I have opened to his Grace at large, As touching France, to give a greater sum Than ever at one time the clergy yet Did to his predecessors part withal.
ELY. How did this offer seem received, my lord?
CANTERBURY. With good acceptance of his Majesty; Save that there was not time enough to hear, As I perceived his Grace would fain have done, The severals and unhidden passages Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms, And generally to the crown and seat of France, Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.
ELY. What was th’ impediment that broke this off?
CANTERBURY. The French ambassador upon that instant Craved audience; and the hour, I think, is come To give him hearing. Is it four o’clock?
ELY. It is.
CANTERBURY. Then go we in, to know his embassy, Which I could with a ready guess declare Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.
ELY. I’ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.
[Exeunt.]
Act I, Scene II — The same. The presence chamber
Enter King Henry, Gloucester, Bedford, Clarence, Warwick, Westmorland, Exeter and Attendants.
KING HENRY. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?
EXETER. Not here in presence.
KING HENRY. Send for him, good uncle.
WESTMORLAND. Shall we call in th’ ambassador, my liege?
KING HENRY. Not yet, my cousin. We would be resolved, Before we hear him, of some things of weight That task our thoughts concerning us and France.
Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely.
CANTERBURY. God and his angels guard your sacred throne And make you long become it!
KING HENRY. Sure, we thank you. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed And justly and religiously unfold Why the law Salic that they have in France Or should or should not bar us in our claim. And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, Or nicely charge your understanding soul With opening titles miscreate, whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth; For God doth know how many now in health Shall drop their blood in approbation Of what your reverence shall incite us to. Therefore take heed how you impawn our person, How you awake our sleeping sword of war. We charge you in the name of God, take heed; For never two such kingdoms did contend Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops Are every one a woe, a sore complaint ’Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords That makes such waste in brief mortality. Under this conjuration speak, my lord, For we will hear, note, and believe in heart That what you speak is in your conscience washed As pure as sin with baptism.
CANTERBURY. Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers, That owe yourselves, your lives, and services To this imperial throne. There is no bar To make against your Highness’ claim to France But this, which they produce from Pharamond: In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant, “No woman shall succeed in Salic land;” Which Salic land the French unjustly gloze To be the realm of France, and Pharamond The founder of this law and female bar. Yet their own authors faithfully affirm That the land Salic is in Germany, Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe; Where Charles the Great, having subdu’d the Saxons, There left behind and settled certain French; Who, holding in disdain the German women For some dishonest manners of their life, Establish’d then this law, to wit, no female Should be inheritrix in Salic land; Which Salic, as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Sala, Is at this day in Germany call’d Meissen. Then doth it well appear the Salic law Was not devised for the realm of France; Nor did the French possess the Salic land Until four hundred one and twenty years After defunction of King Pharamond, Idly suppos’d the founder of this law, Who died within the year of our redemption Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great Subdu’d the Saxons, and did seat the French Beyond the river Sala, in the year Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say, King Pepin, which deposed Childeric, Did, as heir general, being descended Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair, Make claim and title to the crown of France. Hugh Capet also, who usurp’d the crown Of Charles the Duke of Lorraine, sole heir male Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great, To find his title with some shows of truth, Though, in pure truth, it was corrupt and naught, Convey’d himself as the heir to the Lady Lingare, Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son To Lewis the Emperor, and Lewis the son Of Charles the Great. Also, King Lewis the Tenth, Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet, Could not keep quiet in his conscience, Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother, Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare, Daughter to Charles, the foresaid Duke of Lorraine; By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great Was re-united to the crown of France. So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun, King Pepin’s title and Hugh Capet’s claim, King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear To hold in right and title of the female. So do the kings of France unto this day, Howbeit they would hold up this Salic law To bar your Highness claiming from the female, And rather choose to hide them in a net Than amply to imbar their crooked titles Usurp’d from you and your progenitors.
KING HENRY. May I with right and conscience make this claim?
CANTERBURY. The sin upon my head, dread sovereign! For in the Book of Numbers is it writ, “When the man dies, let the inheritance Descend unto the daughter.” Gracious lord, Stand for your own! Unwind your bloody flag! Look back into your mighty ancestors! Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb, From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit, And your great-uncle’s, Edward the Black Prince, Who on the French ground play’d a tragedy, Making defeat on the full power of France, Whiles his most mighty father on a hill Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp Forage in blood of French nobility. O noble English, that could entertain With half their forces the full pride of France And let another half stand laughing by, All out of work and cold for action!
ELY. Awake remembrance of these valiant dead, And with your puissant arm renew their feats. You are their heir; you sit upon their throne; The blood and courage that renowned them Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege Is in the very May-morn of his youth, Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.
EXETER. Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth Do all expect that you should rouse yourself, As did the former lions of your blood.
WESTMORLAND. They know your Grace hath cause and means and might; So hath your Highness. Never King of England Had nobles richer, and more loyal subjects, Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England And lie pavilion’d in the fields of France.
CANTERBURY. O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege, With blood and sword and fire to win your right; In aid whereof we of the spiritualty Will raise your Highness such a mighty sum As never did the clergy at one time Bring in to any of your ancestors.
KING HENRY. We must not only arm to invade the French, But lay down our proportions to defend Against the Scot, who will make road upon us With all advantages.
CANTERBURY. They of those marches, gracious sovereign, Shall be a wall sufficient to defend Our inland from the pilfering borderers.
KING HENRY. We do not mean the coursing snatchers only, But fear the main intendment of the Scot, Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us; For you shall read that my great-grandfather Never went with his forces into France But that the Scot on his unfurnish’d kingdom Came pouring, like the tide into a breach, With ample and brim fullness of his force, Galling the gleaned land with hot assays, Girdling with grievous siege castles and towns; That England, being empty of defence, Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighbourhood.
CANTERBURY. She hath been then more fear’d than harm’d, my liege; For hear her but exampl’d by herself: When all her chivalry hath been in France, And she a mourning widow of her nobles, She hath herself not only well defended But taken and impounded as a stray The King of Scots; whom she did send to France To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings, And make her chronicle as rich with praise As is the ooze and bottom of the sea With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.
WESTMORLAND. But there’s a saying very old and true, “If that you will France win, Then with Scotland first begin.” For once the eagle England being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs, Playing the mouse in absence of the cat, To tear and havoc more than she can eat.
EXETER. It follows then the cat must stay at home; Yet that is but a crush’d necessity, Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries, And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves. While that the armed hand doth fight abroad, The advised head defends itself at home; For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music.
CANTERBURY. Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion, To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience; for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts, Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds, Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o’er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone. I this infer, That many things, having full reference To one consent, may work contrariously. As many arrows, loosed several ways, Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town; As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; As many lines close in the dial’s centre; So many a thousand actions, once afoot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege! Divide your happy England into four, Whereof take you one quarter into France, And you withal shall make all Gallia shake. If we, with thrice such powers left at home, Cannot defend our own doors from the dog, Let us be worried and our nation lose The name of hardiness and policy.
KING HENRY. Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.
[Exeunt some Attendants.]
Now are we well resolv’d; and, by God’s help, And yours, the noble sinews of our power, France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe, Or break it all to pieces. Or there we’ll sit, Ruling in large and ample empery O’er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms, Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, Tombless, with no remembrance over them. Either our history shall with full mouth Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave, Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth, Not worshipp’d with a waxen epitaph.
Enter Ambassadors of France.
Now are we well prepar’d to know the pleasure Of our fair cousin Dauphin; for we hear Your greeting is from him, not from the King.
FIRST AMBASSADOR. May’t please your Majesty to give us leave Freely to render what we have in charge, Or shall we sparingly show you far off The Dauphin’s meaning and our embassy?
KING HENRY. We are no tyrant, but a Christian king, Unto whose grace our passion is as subject As is our wretches fett’red in our prisons; Therefore with frank and with uncurbed plainness Tell us the Dauphin’s mind.
AMBASSADOR. Thus, then, in few. Your Highness, lately sending into France, Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third. In answer of which claim, the prince our master Says that you savour too much of your youth, And bids you be advis’d there’s nought in France That can be with a nimble galliard won. You cannot revel into dukedoms there. He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit, This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this, Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
KING HENRY. What treasure, uncle?
EXETER. Tennis-balls, my liege.
KING HENRY. We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have match’d our rackets to these balls, We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard. Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler That all the courts of France will be disturb’d With chaces. And we understand him well, How he comes o’er us with our wilder days, Not measuring what use we made of them. We never valu’d this poor seat of England; And therefore, living hence, did give ourself To barbarous licence; as ’tis ever common That men are merriest when they are from home. But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state, Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness When I do rouse me in my throne of France. For that I have laid by my majesty And plodded like a man for working days, But I will rise there with so full a glory That I will dazzle all the eyes of France, Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us. And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his Hath turn’d his balls to gun-stones, and his soul Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands, Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down; And some are yet ungotten and unborn That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn. But this lies all within the will of God, To whom I do appeal; and in whose name Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on To venge me as I may, and to put forth My rightful hand in a well-hallow’d cause. So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin His jest will savour but of shallow wit, When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.— Convey them with safe conduct.—Fare you well.
[Exeunt Ambassadors.]
EXETER. This was a merry message.
KING HENRY. We hope to make the sender blush at it. Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour That may give furtherance to our expedition; For we have now no thought in us but France, Save those to God, that run before our business. Therefore, let our proportions for these wars Be soon collected, and all things thought upon That may with reasonable swiftness add More feathers to our wings; for, God before, We’ll chide this Dauphin at his father’s door. Therefore let every man now task his thought, That this fair action may on foot be brought.
[Exeunt.]
Act II
Flourish. Enter Chorus.
CHORUS. Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies. Now thrive the armourers, and honour’s thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man. They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, Following the mirror of all Christian kings, With winged heels, as English Mercuries. For now sits Expectation in the air, And hides a sword from hilts unto the point With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets, Promis’d to Harry and his followers. The French, advis’d by good intelligence Of this most dreadful preparation, Shake in their fear, and with pale policy Seek to divert the English purposes. O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural! But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men, One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second, Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third, Sir Thomas Grey, knight of Northumberland, Have, for the gilt of France,—O guilt indeed!— Confirm’d conspiracy with fearful France; And by their hands this grace of kings must die, If hell and treason hold their promises, Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton. Linger your patience on, and we’ll digest The abuse of distance, force a play. The sum is paid; the traitors are agreed; The King is set from London; and the scene Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton. There is the playhouse now, there must you sit; And thence to France shall we convey you safe, And bring you back, charming the narrow seas To give you gentle pass; for, if we may, We’ll not offend one stomach with our play. But, till the King come forth, and not till then, Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.
[Exit.]
Act II, Scene I — London. A street
Enter Corporal Nym and Lieutenant Bardolph.
BARDOLPH. Well met, Corporal Nym.
NYM. Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.
BARDOLPH. What, are Ancient Pistol and you friends yet?
NYM. For my part, I care not. I say little; but when time shall serve, there shall be smiles; but that shall be as it may. I dare not fight, but I will wink and hold out mine iron. It is a simple one, but what though? It will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man’s sword will; and there’s an end.
BARDOLPH. I will bestow a breakfast to make you friends; and we’ll be all three sworn brothers to France. Let it be so, good Corporal Nym.
NYM. Faith, I will live so long as I may, that’s the certain of it; and when I cannot live any longer, I will do as I may. That is my rest, that is the rendezvous of it.
BARDOLPH. It is certain, corporal, that he is married to Nell Quickly; and certainly she did you wrong, for you were troth-plight to her.
NYM. I cannot tell. Things must be as they may. Men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say knives have edges. It must be as it may. Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I cannot tell.
Enter Pistol and Hostess.
BARDOLPH. Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife. Good Corporal, be patient here. How now, mine host Pistol!
PISTOL. Base tike, call’st thou me host? Now, by this hand, I swear I scorn the term; Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers.
HOSTESS. No, by my troth, not long; for we cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of their needles, but it will be thought we keep a bawdy house straight. [Nym and Pistol draw.] O well a day, Lady, if he be not drawn now! We shall see wilful adultery and murder committed.
BARDOLPH. Good Lieutenant! good corporal! offer nothing here.
NYM. Pish!
PISTOL. Pish for thee, Iceland dog! thou prick-ear’d cur of Iceland!
HOSTESS. Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour, and put up your sword.
NYM. Will you shog off? I would have you solus.
PISTOL. Solus, egregious dog! O viper vile! The solus in thy most mervailous face; The solus in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the solus in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol’s cock is up, And flashing fire will follow.
NYM. I am not Barbason; you cannot conjure me. I have an humour to knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms. If you would walk off, I would prick your guts a little, in good terms, as I may; and that’s the humour of it.
PISTOL. O braggart vile and damned furious wight! The grave doth gape, and doting death is near, Therefore exhale.
BARDOLPH. Hear me, hear me what I say. He that strikes the first stroke I’ll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.
[Draws.]
PISTOL. An oath of mickle might; and fury shall abate. Give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give. Thy spirits are most tall.
NYM. I will cut thy throat, one time or other, in fair terms: that is the humour of it.
PISTOL. “Couple a gorge!” That is the word. I thee defy again. O hound of Crete, think’st thou my spouse to get? No! to the spital go, And from the powdering tub of infamy Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind, Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse. I have, and I will hold, the quondam Quickly For the only she; and pauca, there’s enough. Go to.
Enter the Boy.
BOY. Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master, and you, hostess. He is very sick, and would to bed. Good Bardolph, put thy face between his sheets, and do the office of a warming-pan. Faith, he’s very ill.
BARDOLPH. Away, you rogue!
HOSTESS. By my troth, he’ll yield the crow a pudding one of these days. The King has kill’d his heart. Good husband, come home presently.
[Exeunt Hostess and Boy.]
BARDOLPH. Come, shall I make you two friends? We must to France together; why the devil should we keep knives to cut one another’s throats?
PISTOL. Let floods o’erswell, and fiends for food howl on!
NYM. You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting?
PISTOL. Base is the slave that pays.
NYM. That now I will have: that’s the humour of it.
PISTOL. As manhood shall compound. Push home.
[They draw.]
BARDOLPH. By this sword, he that makes the first thrust, I’ll kill him; by this sword, I will.
PISTOL. Sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course.
BARDOLPH. Corporal Nym, and thou wilt be friends, be friends; an thou wilt not, why, then, be enemies with me too. Prithee, put up.
NYM. I shall have my eight shillings I won from you at betting?
PISTOL. A noble shalt thou have, and present pay; And liquor likewise will I give to thee, And friendship shall combine, and brotherhood. I’ll live by Nym, and Nym shall live by me. Is not this just? For I shall sutler be Unto the camp, and profits will accrue. Give me thy hand.
NYM. I shall have my noble?
PISTOL. In cash most justly paid.
NYM. Well, then, that’s the humour of’t.
Enter Hostess.
HOSTESS. As ever you come of women, come in quickly to Sir John. Ah, poor heart! he is so shak’d of a burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him.
NYM. The King hath run bad humours on the knight; that’s the even of it.
PISTOL. Nym, thou hast spoke the right. His heart is fracted and corroborate.
NYM. The King is a good king; but it must be as it may; he passes some humours and careers.
PISTOL. Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins, we will live.
[Exeunt.]
Act II, Scene II — Southampton. A council-chamber
Enter Exeter, Bedford and Westmorland.
BEDFORD. ’Fore God, his Grace is bold, to trust these traitors.
EXETER. They shall be apprehended by and by.
WESTMORLAND. How smooth and even they do bear themselves! As if allegiance in their bosoms sat Crowned with faith and constant loyalty.
BEDFORD. The King hath note of all that they intend, By interception which they dream not of.
EXETER. Nay, but the man that was his bed-fellow, Whom he hath dull’d and cloy’d with gracious favours, That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell His sovereign’s life to death and treachery.
Trumpets sound. Enter King Henry, Scroop, Cambridge and Grey.
KING HENRY. Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard. My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham, And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts. Think you not that the powers we bear with us Will cut their passage through the force of France, Doing the execution and the act For which we have in head assembled them?
SCROOP. No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.
KING HENRY. I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded We carry not a heart with us from hence That grows not in a fair consent with ours, Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish Success and conquest to attend on us.
CAMBRIDGE. Never was monarch better fear’d and lov’d Than is your Majesty. There’s not, I think, a subject That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness Under the sweet shade of your government.
GREY. True; those that were your father’s enemies Have steep’d their galls in honey, and do serve you With hearts create of duty and of zeal.
KING HENRY. We therefore have great cause of thankfulness, And shall forget the office of our hand Sooner than quittance of desert and merit According to the weight and worthiness.
SCROOP. So service shall with steeled sinews toil, And labour shall refresh itself with hope, To do your Grace incessant services.
KING HENRY. We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter, Enlarge the man committed yesterday, That rail’d against our person. We consider It was excess of wine that set him on, And on his more advice we pardon him.
SCROOP. That’s mercy, but too much security. Let him be punish’d, sovereign, lest example Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.
KING HENRY. O, let us yet be merciful.
CAMBRIDGE. So may your Highness, and yet punish too.
GREY. Sir, You show great mercy if you give him life After the taste of much correction.
KING HENRY. Alas, your too much love and care of me Are heavy orisons ’gainst this poor wretch! If little faults, proceeding on distemper, Shall not be wink’d at, how shall we stretch our eye When capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d, and digested, Appear before us? We’ll yet enlarge that man, Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care And tender preservation of our person, Would have him punish’d. And now to our French causes. Who are the late commissioners?
CAMBRIDGE. I one, my lord. Your Highness bade me ask for it today.
SCROOP. So did you me, my liege.
GREY. And I, my royal sovereign.
KING HENRY. Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours; There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight, Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours. Read them, and know I know your worthiness. My Lord of Westmorland, and uncle Exeter, We will aboard tonight.—Why, how now, gentlemen! What see you in those papers that you lose So much complexion?—Look ye, how they change! Their cheeks are paper.—Why, what read you there, That have so cowarded and chas’d your blood Out of appearance?
CAMBRIDGE. I do confess my fault, And do submit me to your Highness’ mercy.
GREY, SCROOP. To which we all appeal.
KING HENRY. The mercy that was quick in us but late, By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d. You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy, For your own reasons turn into your bosoms, As dogs upon their masters, worrying you. See you, my princes and my noble peers, These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here, You know how apt our love was to accord To furnish him with an appertinents Belonging to his honour; and this man Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir’d And sworn unto the practices of France To kill us here in Hampton; to the which This knight, no less for bounty bound to us Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop? thou cruel, Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature! Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, That knew’st the very bottom of my soul, That almost mightst have coin’d me into gold, Wouldst thou have practis’d on me for thy use,— May it be possible that foreign hire Could out of thee extract one spark of evil That might annoy my finger? ’Tis so strange, That, though the truth of it stands off as gross As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it. Treason and murder ever kept together, As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose, Working so grossly in a natural cause That admiration did not whoop at them; But thou, ’gainst all proportion, didst bring in Wonder to wait on treason and on murder; And whatsoever cunning fiend it was That wrought upon thee so preposterously Hath got the voice in hell for excellence; And other devils that suggest by treasons Do botch and bungle up damnation With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch’d From glist’ring semblances of piety. But he that temper’d thee bade thee stand up, Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason, Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor. If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus Should with his lion gait walk the whole world, He might return to vasty Tartar back, And tell the legions, “I can never win A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.” O, how hast thou with jealousy infected The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful? Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned? Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family? Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious? Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet, Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger, Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood, Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement, Not working with the eye without the ear, And but in purged judgement trusting neither? Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem. And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot To mark the full-fraught man and best indued With some suspicion. I will weep for thee; For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like Another fall of man. Their faults are open. Arrest them to the answer of the law; And God acquit them of their practices!
EXETER. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard Earl of Cambridge. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord Scroop of Masham. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland.
SCROOP. Our purposes God justly hath discover’d, And I repent my fault more than my death, Which I beseech your Highness to forgive, Although my body pay the price of it.
CAMBRIDGE. For me, the gold of France did not seduce, Although I did admit it as a motive The sooner to effect what I intended. But God be thanked for prevention, Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice, Beseeching God and you to pardon me.
GREY. Never did faithful subject more rejoice At the discovery of most dangerous treason Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself, Prevented from a damned enterprise. My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.
KING HENRY. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence. You have conspir’d against our royal person, Join’d with an enemy proclaim’d, and from his coffers Received the golden earnest of our death; Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter, His princes and his peers to servitude, His subjects to oppression and contempt, And his whole kingdom into desolation. Touching our person seek we no revenge; But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender, Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence, Poor miserable wretches, to your death, The taste whereof God of his mercy give You patience to endure, and true repentance Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence.
[Exeunt Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, guarded.]
Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof Shall be to you, as us, like glorious. We doubt not of a fair and lucky war, Since God so graciously hath brought to light This dangerous treason lurking in our way To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now But every rub is smoothed on our way. Then forth, dear countrymen! Let us deliver Our puissance into the hand of God, Putting it straight in expedition. Cheerly to sea! The signs of war advance! No king of England, if not king of France!
[Flourish. Exeunt.]
Act II, Scene III — London. Before a tavern
Enter Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, Boy and Hostess.
HOSTESS. Prithee, honey, sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines.
PISTOL. No; for my manly heart doth yearn. Bardolph, be blithe; Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins; Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we must yearn therefore.
BARDOLPH. Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is, either in heaven or in hell!
HOSTESS. Nay, sure, he’s not in hell. He’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom. ’A made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child. ’A parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o’ the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled of green fields. “How now, Sir John!” quoth I; “what, man! be o’ good cheer.” So ’a cried out, “God, God, God!” three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him ’a should not think of God; I hop’d there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So ’a bade me lay more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone. Then I felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.
NYM. They say he cried out of sack.
HOSTESS. Ay, that ’a did.
BARDOLPH. And of women.
HOSTESS. Nay, that ’a did not.
BOY. Yes, that ’a did; and said they were devils incarnate.
HOSTESS. ’A could never abide carnation; ’twas a colour he never liked.
BOY. ’A said once, the devil would have him about women.
HOSTESS. ’A did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic, and talk’d of the whore of Babylon.
BOY. Do you not remember, ’a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph’s nose, and ’a said it was a black soul burning in hell-fire?
BARDOLPH. Well, the fuel is gone that maintain’d that fire. That’s all the riches I got in his service.
NYM. Shall we shog? The King will be gone from Southampton.
PISTOL. Come, let’s away. My love, give me thy lips. Look to my chattels and my movables. Let senses rule; the word is “Pitch and Pay.” Trust none; For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck; Therefore, Caveto be thy counsellor. Go, clear thy crystals. Yoke-fellows in arms, Let us to France; like horse-leeches, my boys, To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!
BOY. And that’s but unwholesome food, they say.
PISTOL. Touch her soft mouth, and march.
BARDOLPH. Farewell, hostess.
[Kissing her.]
NYM. I cannot kiss; that is the humour of it; but, adieu.
PISTOL. Let housewifery appear. Keep close, I thee command.
HOSTESS. Farewell; adieu.
[Exeunt.]
Act II, Scene IV — France. The King’s palace
Flourish. Enter the French King, the Dauphin, the Dukes of Berry and Brittany, the Constable and others.
FRENCH KING. Thus comes the English with full power upon us, And more than carefully it us concerns To answer royally in our defences. Therefore the Dukes of Berry and of Brittany, Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth, And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch, To line and new repair our towns of war With men of courage and with means defendant; For England his approaches makes as fierce As waters to the sucking of a gulf. It fits us then to be as provident As fears may teach us out of late examples Left by the fatal and neglected English Upon our fields.
DAUPHIN. My most redoubted father, It is most meet we arm us ’gainst the foe; For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom, Though war nor no known quarrel were in question, But that defences, musters, preparations, Should be maintain’d, assembled, and collected, As were a war in expectation. Therefore, I say, ’tis meet we all go forth To view the sick and feeble parts of France. And let us do it with no show of fear; No, with no more than if we heard that England Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance; For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d, Her sceptre so fantastically borne By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, That fear attends her not.
CONSTABLE. O peace, Prince Dauphin! You are too much mistaken in this king. Question your Grace the late ambassadors With what great state he heard their embassy, How well supplied with noble counsellors, How modest in exception, and withal How terrible in constant resolution, And you shall find his vanities forespent Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus, Covering discretion with a coat of folly; As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots That shall first spring and be most delicate.
DAUPHIN. Well, ’tis not so, my Lord High Constable; But though we think it so, it is no matter. In cases of defence ’tis best to weigh The enemy more mighty than he seems, So the proportions of defence are fill’d; Which, of a weak and niggardly projection, Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting A little cloth.
FRENCH KING. Think we King Harry strong; And, Princes, look you strongly arm to meet him. The kindred of him hath been flesh’d upon us; And he is bred out of that bloody strain That haunted us in our familiar paths. Witness our too much memorable shame When Cressy battle fatally was struck, And all our princes captiv’d by the hand Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales; Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing, Up in the air, crown’d with the golden sun, Saw his heroical seed, and smil’d to see him, Mangle the work of nature and deface The patterns that by God and by French fathers Had twenty years been made. This is a stem Of that victorious stock; and let us fear The native mightiness and fate of him.
Enter a Messenger.
MESSENGER. Ambassadors from Harry King of England Do crave admittance to your Majesty.
FRENCH KING. We’ll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.
[Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords.]
You see this chase is hotly follow’d, friends.
DAUPHIN. Turn head and stop pursuit; for coward dogs Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten Runs far before them. Good my sovereign, Take up the English short, and let them know Of what a monarchy you are the head. Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin As self-neglecting.
Enter Exeter.
FRENCH KING. From our brother of England?
EXETER. From him; and thus he greets your Majesty: He wills you, in the name of God Almighty, That you divest yourself, and lay apart The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven, By law of nature and of nations, ’longs To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown And all wide-stretched honours that pertain By custom and the ordinance of times Unto the crown of France. That you may know ’Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim Pick’d from the worm-holes of long-vanish’d days, Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak’d, He sends you this most memorable line, In every branch truly demonstrative; Willing you overlook this pedigree; And when you find him evenly deriv’d From his most fam’d of famous ancestors, Edward the Third, he bids you then resign Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held From him, the native and true challenger.
FRENCH KING. Or else what follows?
EXETER. Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it. Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove, That, if requiring fail, he will compel; And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord, Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy On the poor souls for whom this hungry war Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries, The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans, For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers, That shall be swallowed in this controversy. This is his claim, his threat’ning, and my message; Unless the Dauphin be in presence here, To whom expressly I bring greeting too.
FRENCH KING. For us, we will consider of this further. Tomorrow shall you bear our full intent Back to our brother of England.
DAUPHIN. For the Dauphin, I stand here for him. What to him from England?
EXETER. Scorn and defiance. Slight regard, contempt, And anything that may not misbecome The mighty sender, doth he prize you at. Thus says my king: an if your father’s Highness Do not, in grant of all demands at large, Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his Majesty, He’ll call you to so hot an answer of it That caves and womby vaultages of France Shall chide your trespass and return your mock In second accent of his ordinance.
DAUPHIN. Say, if my father render fair return, It is against my will; for I desire Nothing but odds with England. To that end, As matching to his youth and vanity, I did present him with the Paris balls.
EXETER. He’ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it, Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe; And, be assur’d, you’ll find a difference, As we his subjects have in wonder found, Between the promise of his greener days And these he masters now. Now he weighs time Even to the utmost grain. That you shall read In your own losses, if he stay in France.
FRENCH KING. Tomorrow shall you know our mind at full.
[Flourish.]
EXETER. Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king Come here himself to question our delay; For he is footed in this land already.
FRENCH KING. You shall be soon dispatch’d with fair conditions. A night is but small breath and little pause To answer matters of this consequence.
[Exeunt.]
Act III
Flourish. Enter Chorus.
CHORUS. Thus with imagin’d wing our swift scene flies, In motion of no less celerity Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen The well-appointed king at Hampton pier Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning. Play with your fancies; and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give To sounds confus’d; behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow’d sea, Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think You stand upon the rivage and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing; For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, And leave your England, as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, Either past or not arriv’d to pith and puissance. For who is he, whose chin is but enrich’d With one appearing hair, that will not follow These cull’d and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege; Behold the ordnance on their carriages, With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back, Tells Harry that the King doth offer him Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry, Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms. The offer likes not; and the nimble gunner With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
[Alarum, and chambers go off.]
And down goes all before them. Still be kind, And eke out our performance with your mind.
[Exit.]
Act III, Scene I — France. Before Harfleur
Alarum. Enter King Henry, Exeter, Bedford, Gloucester and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders.
KING HENRY. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it As fearfully as does a galled rock O’erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English, Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof! Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought, And sheath’d their swords for lack of argument. Dishonour not your mothers; now attest That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you. Be copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here The mettle of your pasture; let us swear That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not; For there is none of you so mean and base, That hath not noble lustre in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot! Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry, “God for Harry! England and Saint George!”
[Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off.]
Act III, Scene II — The same
Enter Nym, Bardolph, Pistol and Boy.
BARDOLPH. On, on, on, on, on! To the breach, to the breach!
NYM. Pray thee, corporal, stay. The knocks are too hot; and, for mine own part, I have not a case of lives. The humour of it is too hot; that is the very plain-song of it.
PISTOL. The plain-song is most just, for humours do abound. Knocks go and come; God’s vassals drop and die; And sword and shield, In bloody field, Doth win immortal fame.
BOY. Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.
PISTOL. And I. If wishes would prevail with me, My purpose should not fail with me, But thither would I hie.
BOY. As duly, But not as truly, As bird doth sing on bough.
Enter Fluellen.
FLUELLEN. Up to the breach, you dogs! Avaunt, you cullions!
[Driving them forward.]
PISTOL. Be merciful, great Duke, to men of mould. Abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage, Abate thy rage, great Duke! Good bawcock, bate thy rage; use lenity, sweet chuck!
NYM. These be good humours! Your honour wins bad humours.
[Exeunt all but Boy.]
BOY. As young as I am, I have observ’d these three swashers. I am boy to them all three; but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-liver’d and red-fac’d; by the means whereof ’a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof ’a breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men; and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest ’a should be thought a coward. But his few bad words are match’d with as few good deeds; for ’a never broke any man’s head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three half-pence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men’s pockets as their gloves or their handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another’s pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them, and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.
[Exit.]
Enter Gower and Fluellen.
GOWER. Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the mines. The Duke of Gloucester would speak with you.
FLUELLEN. To the mines! Tell you the Duke, it is not so good to come to the mines; for, look you, the mines is not according to the disciplines of the war. The concavities of it is not sufficient; for, look you, the athversary, you may discuss unto the Duke, look you, is digt himself four yard under the countermines. By Cheshu, I think ’a will plow up all, if there is not better directions.
GOWER. The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of the siege is given, is altogether directed by an Irishman, a very valiant gentleman, i’ faith.
FLUELLEN. It is Captain Macmorris, is it not?
GOWER. I think it be.
FLUELLEN. By Cheshu, he is an ass, as in the world. I will verify as much in his beard. He has no more directions in the true disciplines of the wars, look you, of the Roman disciplines, than is a puppy-dog.
Enter Macmorris and Captain Jamy.
GOWER. Here ’a comes; and the Scots captain, Captain Jamy, with him.
FLUELLEN. Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous gentleman, that is certain; and of great expedition and knowledge in the anchient wars, upon my particular knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu, he will maintain his argument as well as any military man in the world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the Romans.
JAMY. I say gud-day, Captain Fluellen.
FLUELLEN. God-den to your worship, good Captain James.
GOWER. How now, Captain Macmorris! have you quit the mines? Have the pioneers given o’er?
MACMORRIS. By Chrish, la! ’tish ill done! The work ish give over, the trompet sound the retreat. By my hand I swear, and my father’s soul, the work ish ill done; it ish give over. I would have blowed up the town, so Chrish save me, la! in an hour. O, ’tish ill done, ’tish ill done; by my hand, ’tish ill done!
FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will you voutsafe me, look you, a few disputations with you, as partly touching or concerning the disciplines of the war, the Roman wars, in the way of argument, look you, and friendly communication; partly to satisfy my opinion, and partly for the satisfaction, look you, of my mind, as touching the direction of the military discipline; that is the point.
JAMY. It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captains bath: and I sall quit you with gud leve, as I may pick occasion; that sall I, marry.
MACMORRIS. It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me. The day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the King, and the Dukes. It is no time to discourse. The town is beseech’d, and the trumpet call us to the breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing. ’Tis shame for us all. So God sa’ me, ’tis shame to stand still; it is shame, by my hand; and there is throats to be cut, and works to be done; and there ish nothing done, so Chrish sa’ me, la!
JAMY. By the mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves to slomber, I’ll de gud service, or I’ll lig i’ the grund for it; ay, or go to death; and I’ll pay’t as valorously as I may, that sall I suerly do, that is the breff and the long. Marry, I wad full fain heard some question ’tween you tway.
FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation—
MACMORRIS. Of my nation! What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal? What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?
FLUELLEN. Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant, Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think you do not use me with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look you, being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of war, and in the derivation of my birth, and in other particularities.
MACMORRIS. I do not know you so good a man as myself. So Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.
GOWER. Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.
JAMY. Ah! that’s a foul fault.
[A parley sounded.]
GOWER. The town sounds a parley.
FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, when there is more better opportunity to be required, look you, I will be so bold as to tell you I know the disciplines of war; and there is an end.
[Exeunt.]