Act III, Scene III — Before the gates
The Governor and some citizens on the walls; the English forces below. Enter King Henry and his train.
KING HENRY. How yet resolves the governor of the town? This is the latest parle we will admit; Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves, Or like to men proud of destruction Defy us to our worst; for, as I am a soldier, A name that in my thoughts becomes me best, If I begin the battery once again, I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur Till in her ashes she lie buried. The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart, In liberty of bloody hand shall range With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants. What is it then to me, if impious War, Array’d in flames like to the prince of fiends, Do with his smirch’d complexion all fell feats Enlink’d to waste and desolation? What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career? We may as bootless spend our vain command Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil As send precepts to the leviathan To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur, Take pity of your town and of your people, Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command, Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy. If not, why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls; Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus’d Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid, Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d?
GOVERNOR. Our expectation hath this day an end. The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated, Returns us that his powers are yet not ready To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great King, We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy. Enter our gates; dispose of us and ours; For we no longer are defensible.
KING HENRY. Open your gates. Come, uncle Exeter, Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain, And fortify it strongly ’gainst the French. Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle, The winter coming on, and sickness growing Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais. Tonight in Harfleur will we be your guest; Tomorrow for the march are we addrest.
Flourish. The King and his train enter the town.
Act III, Scene IV — The French King’s palace
Enter Katharine and Alice, an old Gentlewoman.
KATHARINE. Alice, tu as été en Angleterre, et tu parles bien le langage.
ALICE. Un peu, madame.
KATHARINE. _Je te prie, m’enseignez; il faut que j’apprenne à parler. Comment appelez-vous la main en anglais?_
ALICE. La main? Elle est appelée de hand.
KATHARINE. De hand. Et les doigts?
ALICE. Les doigts? Ma foi, j’oublie les doigts; mais je me souviendrai. Les doigts? Je pense qu’ils sont appelés de fingres; oui, de fingres.
KATHARINE. La main, de hand; les doigts, de fingres. Je pense que je suis le bon écolier; j’ai gagné deux mots d’anglais vitement. Comment appelez-vous les ongles?
ALICE. Les ongles? Nous les appelons de nails.
KATHARINE. De nails. Écoutez; dites-moi, si je parle bien: de hand, de fingres, et de nails.
ALICE. C’est bien dit, madame; il est fort bon anglais.
KATHARINE. Dites-moi l’anglais pour le bras.
ALICE. De arm, madame.
KATHARINE. Et le coude?
ALICE. D’elbow.
KATHARINE. D’elbow. Je m’en fais la répétition de tous les mots que vous m’avez appris dès à présent.
ALICE. Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.
KATHARINE. Excusez-moi, Alice. Écoutez: d’hand, de fingres, de nails, d’arm, de bilbow.
ALICE. D’elbow, madame.
KATHARINE. O Seigneur Dieu, je m’en oublie! D’elbow. Comment appelez-vous le col?
ALICE. De nick, madame.
KATHARINE. De nick. Et le menton?
ALICE. De chin.
KATHARINE. De sin. Le col, de nick; le menton, de sin.
ALICE. Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en vérité, vous prononcez les mots aussi droit que les natifs d’Angleterre.
KATHARINE. Je ne doute point d’apprendre, par la grâce de Dieu, et en peu de temps.
ALICE. N’avez-vous pas déjà oublié ce que je vous ai enseigné?
KATHARINE. Non, je réciterai à vous promptement: d’hand, de fingres, de mails,—
ALICE. De nails, madame.
KATHARINE. De nails, de arm, de ilbow.
ALICE. Sauf votre honneur, de elbow.
KATHARINE. Ainsi dis-je, d’elbow, de nick, et de sin. Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?
ALICE. De foot, madame; et de coun.
KATHARINE. De foot et de coun! O Seigneur Dieu! ils sont les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d’honneur d’user. Je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde. Foh! le foot et le coun! Néanmoins, je réciterai une autre fois ma leçon ensemble: d’hand, de fingres, de nails, d’arm, d’elbow, de nick, de sin, de foot, de coun.
ALICE. Excellent, madame!
KATHARINE. C’est assez pour une fois. Allons-nous à dîner.
[Exeunt.]
Act III, Scene V — The same
Enter the King of France, the Dauphin, the Duke of Bourbon, the Constable of France and others.
FRENCH KING. ’Tis certain he hath pass’d the river Somme.
CONSTABLE. And if he be not fought withal, my lord, Let us not live in France; let us quit all And give our vineyards to a barbarous people.
DAUPHIN. O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us, The emptying of our fathers’ luxury, Our scions put in wild and savage stock, Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds, And overlook their grafters?
BOURBON. Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards! Mort de ma vie, if they march along Unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom, To buy a slobbery and a dirty farm In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.
CONSTABLE. Dieu de batailles, where have they this mettle? Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull, On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale, Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water, A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley-broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles Upon our houses’ thatch, whiles a more frosty people Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! Poor we may call them in their native lords.
DAUPHIN. By faith and honour, Our madams mock at us, and plainly say Our mettle is bred out, and they will give Their bodies to the lust of English youth To new-store France with bastard warriors.
BOURBON. They bid us to the English dancing-schools, And teach lavoltas high, and swift corantos; Saying our grace is only in our heels, And that we are most lofty runaways.
FRENCH KING. Where is Montjoy the herald? Speed him hence. Let him greet England with our sharp defiance. Up, princes! and, with spirit of honour edged More sharper than your swords, hie to the field! Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France; You Dukes of Orleans, Bourbon, and of Berry, Alençon, Brabant, Bar, and Burgundy; Jacques Chatillon, Rambures, Vaudemont, Beaumont, Grandpré, Roussi, and Fauconbridge, Foix, Lestrale, Boucicault, and Charolois; High dukes, great princes, barons, lords, and knights, For your great seats now quit you of great shames. Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur. Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon. Go down upon him, you have power enough, And in a captive chariot into Rouen Bring him our prisoner.
CONSTABLE. This becomes the great. Sorry am I his numbers are so few, His soldiers sick and famish’d in their march; For I am sure, when he shall see our army, He’ll drop his heart into the sink of fear And for achievement offer us his ransom.
FRENCH KING. Therefore, Lord Constable, haste on Montjoy, And let him say to England that we send To know what willing ransom he will give. Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Rouen.
DAUPHIN. Not so, I do beseech your Majesty.
FRENCH KING. Be patient, for you shall remain with us. Now forth, Lord Constable and princes all, And quickly bring us word of England’s fall.
[Exeunt.]
Act III, Scene VI — The English camp in Picardy
Enter Gower and Fluellen, meeting.
GOWER. How now, Captain Fluellen! come you from the bridge?
FLUELLEN. I assure you, there is very excellent services committed at the bridge.
GOWER. Is the Duke of Exeter safe?
FLUELLEN. The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and my living, and my uttermost power. He is not—God be praised and blessed!—any hurt in the world; but keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There is an anchient lieutenant there at the pridge, I think in my very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark Antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the world, but I did see him do as gallant service.
GOWER. What do you call him?
FLUELLEN. He is call’d Anchient Pistol.
GOWER. I know him not.
Enter Pistol.
FLUELLEN. Here is the man.
PISTOL. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours. The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.
FLUELLEN. Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at his hands.
PISTOL. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart, And of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel, That goddess blind, That stands upon the rolling restless stone—
FLUELLEN. By your patience, Anchient Pistol. Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore his eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation; and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it. Fortune is an excellent moral.
PISTOL. Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him; For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must ’a be,— A damned death! Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free, And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate. But Exeter hath given the doom of death For pax of little price. Therefore, go speak; the Duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord and vile reproach. Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.
FLUELLEN. Anchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.
PISTOL. Why then, rejoice therefore.
FLUELLEN. Certainly, anchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at; for if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke to use his good pleasure, and put him to execution; for discipline ought to be used.
PISTOL. Die and be damn’d! and fico for thy friendship!
FLUELLEN. It is well.
PISTOL. The fig of Spain.
[Exit.]
FLUELLEN. Very good.
GOWER. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal. I remember him now; a bawd, a cutpurse.
FLUELLEN. I’ll assure you, ’a uttered as prave words at the pridge as you shall see in a summer’s day. But it is very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve.
GOWER. Why, ’t is a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to the wars, to grace himself at his return into London under the form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great commanders’ names; and they will learn you by rote where services were done; at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgrac’d, what terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths: and what a beard of the general’s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will do among foaming bottles and ale-wash’d wits, is wonderful to be thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or else you may be marvellously mistook.
FLUELLEN. I tell you what, Captain Gower; I do perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the world he is. If I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind. [Drum heard.] Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with him from the pridge.
Drum and colours. Enter King Henry, Gloucester and his poor soldiers.
God bless your Majesty!
KING HENRY. How now, Fluellen! cam’st thou from the bridge?
FLUELLEN. Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of Exeter has very gallantly maintain’d the pridge. The French is gone off, look you; and there is gallant and most prave passages. Marry, th’ athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced to retire, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge. I can tell your Majesty, the Duke is a prave man.
KING HENRY. What men have you lost, Fluellen?
FLUELLEN. The perdition of the athversary hath been very great, reasonable great. Marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man. His face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’ fire; and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire’s out.
KING HENRY. We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing compell’d from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.
Tucket. Enter Montjoy.
MONTJOY. You know me by my habit.
KING HENRY. Well then I know thee. What shall I know of thee?
MONTJOY. My master’s mind.
KING HENRY. Unfold it.
MONTJOY. Thus says my King: Say thou to Harry of England: Though we seem’d dead, we did but sleep; advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him we could have rebuk’d him at Harfleur, but that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial. England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance. Bid him therefore consider of his ransom; which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested; which in weight to re-answer, his pettishness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our feet, but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add defiance; and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his followers, whose condemnation is pronounc’d. So far my King and master; so much my office.
KING HENRY. What is thy name? I know thy quality.
MONTJOY. Montjoy.
KING HENRY. Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back, And tell thy King I do not seek him now, But could be willing to march on to Calais Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth, Though ’tis no wisdom to confess so much Unto an enemy of craft and vantage, My people are with sickness much enfeebled, My numbers lessen’d, and those few I have Almost no better than so many French; Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald, I thought upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God, That I do brag thus! This your air of France Hath blown that vice in me. I must repent. Go therefore, tell thy master here I am; My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk, My army but a weak and sickly guard; Yet, God before, tell him we will come on, Though France himself and such another neighbour Stand in our way. There’s for thy labour, Montjoy. Go, bid thy master well advise himself. If we may pass, we will; if we be hind’red, We shall your tawny ground with your red blood Discolour; and so, Montjoy, fare you well. The sum of all our answer is but this: We would not seek a battle, as we are; Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it. So tell your master.
MONTJOY. I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.
[Exit.]
GLOUCESTER. I hope they will not come upon us now.
KING HENRY. We are in God’s hands, brother, not in theirs. March to the bridge; it now draws toward night. Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves, And on tomorrow bid them march away.
[Exeunt.]
Act III, Scene VII — The French camp, near Agincourt
Enter the Constable of France, the Lord Rambures, Orleans, Dauphin with others.
CONSTABLE. Tut! I have the best armour of the world. Would it were day!
ORLEANS. You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due.
CONSTABLE. It is the best horse of Europe.
ORLEANS. Will it never be morning?
DAUPHIN. My Lord of Orleans, and my Lord High Constable, you talk of horse and armour?
ORLEANS. You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.
DAUPHIN. What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ch’ha! He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk. He trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
ORLEANS. He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.
DAUPHIN. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus. He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him. He is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.
CONSTABLE. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.
DAUPHIN. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.
ORLEANS. No more, cousin.
DAUPHIN. Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey. It is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all. ’Tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign’s sovereign to ride on; and for the world, familiar to us and unknown, to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: “Wonder of nature,”—
ORLEANS. I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s mistress.
DAUPHIN. Then did they imitate that which I compos’d to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.
ORLEANS. Your mistress bears well.
DAUPHIN. Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular mistress.
CONSTABLE. Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back.
DAUPHIN. So perhaps did yours.
CONSTABLE. Mine was not bridled.
DAUPHIN. O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode, like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off, and in your strait strossers.
CONSTABLE. You have good judgment in horsemanship.
DAUPHIN. Be warn’d by me, then; they that ride so and ride not warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my mistress.
CONSTABLE. I had as lief have my mistress a jade.
DAUPHIN. I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his own hair.
CONSTABLE. I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to my mistress.
DAUPHIN. “Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier.” Thou mak’st use of anything.
CONSTABLE. Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose.
RAMBURES. My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent tonight, are those stars or suns upon it?
CONSTABLE. Stars, my lord.
DAUPHIN. Some of them will fall tomorrow, I hope.
CONSTABLE. And yet my sky shall not want.
DAUPHIN. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honour some were away.
CONSTABLE. Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted.
DAUPHIN. Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it never be day? I will trot tomorrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English faces.
CONSTABLE. I will not say so, for fear I should be fac’d out of my way. But I would it were morning; for I would fain be about the ears of the English.
RAMBURES. Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?
CONSTABLE. You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them.
DAUPHIN. ’Tis midnight; I’ll go arm myself.
[Exit.]
ORLEANS. The Dauphin longs for morning.
RAMBURES. He longs to eat the English.
CONSTABLE. I think he will eat all he kills.
ORLEANS. By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant prince.
CONSTABLE. Swear by her foot that she may tread out the oath.
ORLEANS. He is simply the most active gentleman of France.
CONSTABLE. Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.
ORLEANS. He never did harm, that I heard of.
CONSTABLE. Nor will do none tomorrow. He will keep that good name still.
ORLEANS. I know him to be valiant.
CONSTABLE. I was told that by one that knows him better than you.
ORLEANS. What’s he?
CONSTABLE. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he car’d not who knew it.
ORLEANS. He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.
CONSTABLE. By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but his lackey. ’Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.
ORLEANS. “Ill will never said well.”
CONSTABLE. I will cap that proverb with “There is flattery in friendship.”
ORLEANS. And I will take up that with “Give the devil his due.”
CONSTABLE. Well plac’d. There stands your friend for the devil; have at the very eye of that proverb with “A pox of the devil.”
ORLEANS. You are the better at proverbs, by how much “A fool’s bolt is soon shot.”
CONSTABLE. You have shot over.
ORLEANS. ’Tis not the first time you were overshot.
Enter a Messenger.
MESSENGER. My Lord High Constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents.
CONSTABLE. Who hath measur’d the ground?
MESSENGER. The Lord Grandpré.
CONSTABLE. A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day! Alas, poor Harry of England, he longs not for the dawning as we do.
ORLEANS. What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of England, to mope with his fat-brain’d followers so far out of his knowledge!
CONSTABLE. If the English had any apprehension, they would run away.
ORLEANS. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces.
RAMBURES. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures. Their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.
ORLEANS. Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads crush’d like rotten apples! You may as well say, that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
CONSTABLE. Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives; and then, give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.
ORLEANS. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.
CONSTABLE. Then shall we find tomorrow they have only stomachs to eat and none to fight. Now is it time to arm. Come, shall we about it?
ORLEANS. It is now two o’clock; but, let me see, by ten We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.
[Exeunt.]
Act IV
Enter Chorus.
CHORUS. Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fix’d sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other’s watch; Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation. The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, And the third hour of drowsy morning name. Proud of their numbers and secure in soul, The confident and over-lusty French Do the low-rated English play at dice; And chide the cripple tardy-gaited Night Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp So tediously away. The poor condemned English, Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires Sit patiently and inly ruminate The morning’s danger; and their gesture sad, Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats, Presented them unto the gazing moon So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold The royal captain of this ruin’d band Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, Let him cry, “Praise and glory on his head!” For forth he goes and visits all his host, Bids them good morrow with a modest smile, And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. Upon his royal face there is no note How dread an army hath enrounded him; Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour Unto the weary and all-watched night, But freshly looks, and over-bears attaint With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; That every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. A largess universal like the sun His liberal eye doth give to everyone, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night. And so our scene must to the battle fly, Where—O for pity!—we shall much disgrace With four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-dispos’d in brawl ridiculous, The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see, Minding true things by what their mock’ries be.
[Exit.]
Act IV, Scene I — The English camp at Agincourt
Enter King Henry, Bedford and Gloucester.
KING HENRY. Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger; The greater therefore should our courage be. Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty! There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out; For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers, Which is both healthful and good husbandry. Besides, they are our outward consciences, And preachers to us all, admonishing That we should dress us fairly for our end. Thus may we gather honey from the weed, And make a moral of the devil himself.
Enter Erpingham.
Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham: A good soft pillow for that good white head Were better than a churlish turf of France.
ERPINGHAM. Not so, my liege; this lodging likes me better, Since I may say, “Now lie I like a king.”
KING HENRY. ’Tis good for men to love their present pains Upon example; so the spirit is eased; And when the mind is quick’ned, out of doubt, The organs, though defunct and dead before, Break up their drowsy grave and newly move, With casted slough and fresh legerity. Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers both, Commend me to the princes in our camp; Do my good morrow to them, and anon Desire them all to my pavilion.
GLOUCESTER. We shall, my liege.
ERPINGHAM. Shall I attend your Grace?
KING HENRY. No, my good knight; Go with my brothers to my lords of England. I and my bosom must debate a while, And then I would no other company.
ERPINGHAM. The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!
[Exeunt all but King.]
KING HENRY. God-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak’st cheerfully.
Enter Pistol.
PISTOL. Qui vous là?
KING HENRY. A friend.
PISTOL. Discuss unto me; art thou officer? Or art thou base, common, and popular?
KING HENRY. I am a gentleman of a company.
PISTOL. Trail’st thou the puissant pike?
KING HENRY. Even so. What are you?
PISTOL. As good a gentleman as the Emperor.
KING HENRY. Then you are a better than the King.
PISTOL. The King’s a bawcock, and a heart of gold, A lad of life, an imp of fame; Of parents good, of fist most valiant. I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?
KING HENRY. Harry le Roy.
PISTOL. Le Roy! a Cornish name. Art thou of Cornish crew?
KING HENRY. No, I am a Welshman.
PISTOL. Know’st thou Fluellen?
KING HENRY. Yes.
PISTOL. Tell him I’ll knock his leek about his pate Upon Saint Davy’s day.
KING HENRY. Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest he knock that about yours.
PISTOL. Art thou his friend?
KING HENRY. And his kinsman too.
PISTOL. The fico for thee, then!
KING HENRY. I thank you. God be with you!
PISTOL. My name is Pistol call’d.
[Exit.]
KING HENRY. It sorts well with your fierceness.
Enter Fluellen and Gower.
GOWER. Captain Fluellen!
FLUELLEN. So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak lower. It is the greatest admiration in the universal world, when the true and anchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept. If you would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great, you shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle taddle nor pibble pabble in Pompey’s camp. I warrant you, you shall find the ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it, and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise.
GOWER. Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.
FLUELLEN. If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? In your own conscience, now?
GOWER. I will speak lower.
FLUELLEN. I pray you and beseech you that you will.
[Exeunt Gower and Fluellen.]
KING HENRY. Though it appear a little out of fashion, There is much care and valour in this Welshman.
Enter three soldiers, John Bates, Alexander Court and Michael Williams.
COURT. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder?
BATES. I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the approach of day.
WILLIAMS. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?
KING HENRY. A friend.
WILLIAMS. Under what captain serve you?
KING HENRY. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.
WILLIAMS. A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?
KING HENRY. Even as men wreck’d upon a sand, that look to be wash’d off the next tide.
BATES. He hath not told his thought to the King?
KING HENRY. No; nor it is not meet he should. For though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of fears as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are; yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.
BATES. He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as cold a night as ’tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.
KING HENRY. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King: I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.
BATES. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved.
KING HENRY. I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men’s minds. Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.
WILLIAMS. That’s more than we know.
BATES. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the King’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.
WILLIAMS. But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp’d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, “We died at such a place”; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
KING HENRY. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him; or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconcil’d iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation. But this is not so. The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of Peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here men are punish’d for before-breach of the King’s laws in now the King’s quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the King guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject’s duty is the King’s; but every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.
WILLIAMS. ’Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the King is not to answer for it.
BATES. I do not desire he should answer for me; and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.
KING HENRY. I myself heard the King say he would not be ransom’d.
WILLIAMS. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut, he may be ransom’d, and we ne’er the wiser.
KING HENRY. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
WILLIAMS. You pay him then. That’s a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and a private displeasure can do against a monarch! You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock’s feather. You’ll never trust his word after! Come, ’tis a foolish saying.
KING HENRY. Your reproof is something too round. I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.
WILLIAMS. Let it be a quarrel between us if you live.
KING HENRY. I embrace it.
WILLIAMS. How shall I know thee again?
KING HENRY. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet; then, if ever thou dar’st acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.
WILLIAMS. Here’s my glove; give me another of thine.
KING HENRY. There.
WILLIAMS. This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou come to me and say, after tomorrow, “This is my glove,” by this hand I will take thee a box on the ear.
KING HENRY. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.
WILLIAMS. Thou dar’st as well be hang’d.
KING HENRY. Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King’s company.
WILLIAMS. Keep thy word; fare thee well.
BATES. Be friends, you English fools, be friends. We have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to reckon.
KING HENRY. Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders; but it is no English treason to cut French crowns, and tomorrow the King himself will be a clipper.
[Exeunt soldiers.]
Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, Our children, and our sins lay on the King! We must bear all. O hard condition, Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel But his own wringing! What infinite heart’s ease Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy! And what have kings, that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? What are thy comings in? O Ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear’d Than they in fearing. What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison’d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy Ceremony give thee cure! Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose; I am a king that find thee, and I know ’Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running ’fore the King, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world, No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous Ceremony,— Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread, Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse, And follows so the ever-running year, With profitable labour, to his grave: And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country’s peace, Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
Enter Erpingham.
ERPINGHAM. My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence, Seek through your camp to find you.
KING HENRY. Good old knight, Collect them all together at my tent. I’ll be before thee.
ERPINGHAM. I shall do’t, my lord.
[Exit.]
KING HENRY. O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts. Possess them not with fear. Take from them now The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them. Not today, O Lord, O, not today, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown! I Richard’s body have interred new, And on it have bestow’d more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood. Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do; Though all that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after all, Imploring pardon.
Enter Gloucester.
GLOUCESTER. My liege!
KING HENRY. My brother Gloucester’s voice? Ay; I know thy errand, I will go with thee. The day, my friends, and all things stay for me.
[Exeunt.]
Act IV, Scene II — The French camp
Enter the Dauphin, Orleans, Rambures and others.
ORLEANS. The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords!
DAUPHIN. Monte à cheval! My horse, varlet! laquais, ha!
ORLEANS. O brave spirit!
DAUPHIN. Via, les eaux et terre!
ORLEANS. Rien puis? L’air et feu?
DAUPHIN. Cieux, cousin Orleans.
Enter Constable.
Now, my Lord Constable!
CONSTABLE. Hark, how our steeds for present service neigh!
DAUPHIN. Mount them, and make incision in their hides, That their hot blood may spin in English eyes, And dout them with superfluous courage, ha!
RAMBURES. What, will you have them weep our horses’ blood? How shall we, then, behold their natural tears?
Enter a Messenger.
MESSENGER. The English are embattl’d, you French peers.
CONSTABLE. To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse! Do but behold yon poor and starved band, And your fair show shall suck away their souls, Leaving them but the shales and husks of men. There is not work enough for all our hands; Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins To give each naked curtle-axe a stain, That our French gallants shall today draw out, And sheathe for lack of sport. Let us but blow on them, The vapour of our valour will o’erturn them. ’Tis positive ’gainst all exceptions, lords, That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants, Who in unnecessary action swarm About our squares of battle, were enough To purge this field of such a hilding foe, Though we upon this mountain’s basis by Took stand for idle speculation, But that our honours must not. What’s to say? A very little little let us do, And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound The tucket sonance and the note to mount; For our approach shall so much dare the field That England shall crouch down in fear and yield.
Enter Grandpré.
GRANDPRÉ. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France? Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones, Ill-favouredly become the morning field. Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose, And our air shakes them passing scornfully. Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar’d host, And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps; The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades Lob down their heads, drooping the hides and hips, The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes, And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit Lies foul with chew’d grass, still, and motionless; And their executors, the knavish crows, Fly o’er them, all impatient for their hour. Description cannot suit itself in words To demonstrate the life of such a battle, In life so lifeless as it shows itself.
CONSTABLE. They have said their prayers, and they stay for death.
DAUPHIN. Shall we go send them dinners and fresh suits And give their fasting horses provender, And after fight with them?
CONSTABLE. I stay but for my guard; on to the field! I will the banner from a trumpet take, And use it for my haste. Come, come, away! The sun is high, and we outwear the day.
[Exeunt.]
Act IV, Scene III — The English camp
Enter Gloucester, Bedford, Exeter, Erpingham, with all his host: Salisbury and Westmorland.
GLOUCESTER. Where is the King?
BEDFORD. The King himself is rode to view their battle.
WESTMORLAND. Of fighting men they have full three-score thousand.
EXETER. There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.
SALISBURY. God’s arm strike with us! ’tis a fearful odds. God be wi’ you, princes all; I’ll to my charge. If we no more meet till we meet in heaven, Then, joyfully, my noble Lord of Bedford, My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord Exeter, And my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu!
BEDFORD. Farewell, good Salisbury, and good luck go with thee!
EXETER. Farewell, kind lord; fight valiantly today! And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it, For thou art fram’d of the firm truth of valour.
[Exit Salisbury.]
BEDFORD. He is as full of valour as of kindness, Princely in both.
Enter the King.
WESTMORLAND. O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work today!
KING. What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmorland? No, my fair cousin. If we are mark’d to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires; But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart. His passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man’s company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is call’d the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say, “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.” Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say, “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.” Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember with advantages What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Enter Salisbury.
SALISBURY. My sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed. The French are bravely in their battles set, And will with all expedience charge on us.
KING HENRY. All things are ready, if our minds be so.
WESTMORLAND. Perish the man whose mind is backward now!
KING HENRY. Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz?
WESTMORLAND. God’s will! my liege, would you and I alone, Without more help, could fight this royal battle!
KING HENRY. Why, now thou hast unwish’d five thousand men, Which likes me better than to wish us one. You know your places. God be with you all!
Tucket. Enter Montjoy.
MONTJOY. Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry, If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound, Before thy most assured overthrow; For certainly thou art so near the gulf, Thou needs must be englutted. Besides, in mercy, The Constable desires thee thou wilt mind Thy followers of repentance; that their souls May make a peaceful and a sweet retire From off these fields, where, wretches, their poor bodies Must lie and fester.
KING HENRY. Who hath sent thee now?
MONTJOY. The Constable of France.
KING HENRY. I pray thee, bear my former answer back: Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones. Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus? The man that once did sell the lion’s skin While the beast liv’d, was kill’d with hunting him. A many of our bodies shall no doubt Find native graves, upon the which, I trust, Shall witness live in brass of this day’s work; And those that leave their valiant bones in France, Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, They shall be fam’d; for there the sun shall greet them, And draw their honours reeking up to heaven; Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France. Mark then abounding valour in our English, That being dead, like to the bullet’s grazing, Break out into a second course of mischief, Killing in relapse of mortality. Let me speak proudly: tell the Constable We are but warriors for the working-day. Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch’d With rainy marching in the painful field; There’s not a piece of feather in our host— Good argument, I hope, we will not fly— And time hath worn us into slovenry; But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim; And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night They’ll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck The gay new coats o’er the French soldiers’ heads And turn them out of service. If they do this— As, if God please, they shall,—my ransom then Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour. Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald. They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints; Which if they have as I will leave ’em them, Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.
MONTJOY. I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well; Thou never shalt hear herald any more.
[Exit.]
KING HENRY. I fear thou’lt once more come again for ransom.
Enter York.
YORK. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg The leading of the vaward.
KING HENRY. Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away; And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!
[Exeunt.]
Act IV, Scene IV — The field of battle
Alarum. Excursions. Enter Pistol, French Soldier and Boy.
PISTOL. Yield, cur!
FRENCH SOLDIER. Je pense que vous êtes le gentilhomme de bonne qualité.
PISTOL. Qualité? Caleno custore me! Art thou a gentleman? What is thy name? Discuss.
FRENCH SOLDIER. O Seigneur Dieu!
PISTOL. O, Signieur Dew should be a gentleman. Perpend my words, O Signieur Dew, and mark: O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox, Except, O signieur, thou do give to me Egregious ransom.
FRENCH SOLDIER. O, prenez miséricorde! Ayez pitié de moi!
PISTOL. Moy shall not serve; I will have forty moys, Or I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat In drops of crimson blood.
FRENCH SOLDIER. Est-il impossible d’échapper la force de ton bras?
PISTOL. Brass, cur! Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat, Offer’st me brass?
FRENCH SOLDIER. O pardonnez-moi!
PISTOL. Say’st thou me so? Is that a ton of moys? Come hither, boy; ask me this slave in French What is his name.
BOY. Écoutez. Comment êtes-vous appelé?
FRENCH SOLDIER. Monsieur le Fer.
BOY. He says his name is Master Fer.
PISTOL. Master Fer! I’ll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him. Discuss the same in French unto him.
BOY. I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.
PISTOL. Bid him prepare; for I will cut his throat.
FRENCH SOLDIER. Que dit-il, monsieur?
BOY. Il me commande à vous dire que vous faites vous prêt, car ce soldat ici est disposé tout à cette heure de couper votre gorge.
PISTOL. Owy, cuppele gorge, permafoy, Peasant, unless thou give me crowns, brave crowns; Or mangled shalt thou be by this my sword.
FRENCH SOLDIER. O, je vous supplie, pour l’amour de Dieu, me pardonner! Je suis le gentilhomme de bonne maison; gardez ma vie, et je vous donnerai deux cents écus.
PISTOL. What are his words?
BOY. He prays you to save his life. He is a gentleman of a good house; and for his ransom he will give you two hundred crowns.
PISTOL. Tell him my fury shall abate, and I The crowns will take.
FRENCH SOLDIER. Petit monsieur, que dit-il?
BOY. Encore qu’il est contre son jurement de pardonner aucun prisonnier; néanmoins, pour les écus que vous lui avez promis, il est content à vous donner la liberté, le franchisement.
FRENCH SOLDIER. Sur mes genoux je vous donne mille remerciements; et je m’estime heureux que je suis tombé entre les mains d’un chevalier, je pense, le plus brave, vaillant, et très distingué seigneur d’Angleterre.
PISTOL. Expound unto me, boy.
BOY. He gives you upon his knees, a thousand thanks; and he esteems himself happy that he hath fallen into the hands of one, as he thinks, the most brave, valorous, and thrice-worthy seigneur of England.
PISTOL. As I suck blood, I will some mercy show. Follow me!
BOY. Suivez-vous le grand capitaine.
[Exeunt Pistol and French Soldier.]
I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart; but the saying is true, “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.” Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring devil i’ the old play, that everyone may pare his nails with a wooden dagger; and they are both hang’d; and so would this be, if he durst steal anything adventurously. I must stay with the lackeys with the luggage of our camp. The French might have a good prey of us, if he knew of it; for there is none to guard it but boys.
[Exit.]
Act IV, Scene V — Another part of the field
Enter Constable, Orleans, Bourbon, Dauphin and Rambures.
CONSTABLE. O diable!
ORLEANS. O Seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!
DAUPHIN. Mort de ma vie! all is confounded, all! Reproach and everlasting shame Sits mocking in our plumes.
[A short alarum.]
O méchante Fortune! Do not run away.
CONSTABLE. Why, all our ranks are broke.
DAUPHIN. O perdurable shame! Let’s stab ourselves, Be these the wretches that we play’d at dice for?
ORLEANS. Is this the king we sent to for his ransom?
BOURBON. Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame! Let’s die in honour! Once more back again! And he that will not follow Bourbon now, Let him go hence, and with his cap in hand, Like a base pandar, hold the chamber door Whilst by a slave, no gentler than my dog, His fairest daughter is contaminated.
CONSTABLE. Disorder, that hath spoil’d us, friend us now! Let us on heaps go offer up our lives.
ORLEANS. We are enough yet living in the field To smother up the English in our throngs, If any order might be thought upon.
BOURBON. The devil take order now! I’ll to the throng. Let life be short, else shame will be too long.
[Exeunt.]
Act IV, Scene VI — Another part of the field
Alarum. Enter King Henry and his train, with prisoners.
KING HENRY. Well have we done, thrice valiant countrymen. But all’s not done; yet keep the French the field.
EXETER. The Duke of York commends him to your Majesty.
KING HENRY. Lives he, good uncle? Thrice within this hour I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting. From helmet to the spur all blood he was.
EXETER. In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie, Larding the plain; and by his bloody side, Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds, The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies. Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over, Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped, And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes That bloodily did yawn upon his face. He cries aloud, “Tarry, my cousin Suffolk! My soul shall thine keep company to heaven; Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast, As in this glorious and well-foughten field We kept together in our chivalry.” Upon these words I came and cheer’d him up. He smil’d me in the face, raught me his hand, And, with a feeble gripe, says, “Dear my lord, Commend my service to my sovereign.” So did he turn and over Suffolk’s neck He threw his wounded arm and kiss’d his lips; And so espous’d to death, with blood he seal’d A testament of noble-ending love. The pretty and sweet manner of it forc’d Those waters from me which I would have stopp’d; But I had not so much of man in me, And all my mother came into mine eyes And gave me up to tears.
KING HENRY. I blame you not; For, hearing this, I must perforce compound With mistful eyes, or they will issue too.
[Alarum.]
But hark! what new alarum is this same? The French have reinforc’d their scatter’d men. Then every soldier kill his prisoners; Give the word through.
[Exeunt.]
Act IV, Scene VII — Another part of the field
Enter Fluellen and Gower.
FLUELLEN. Kill the poys and the luggage! ’Tis expressly against the law of arms. ’Tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offer’t; in your conscience, now, is it not?
GOWER. ’Tis certain there’s not a boy left alive; and the cowardly rascals that ran from the battle ha’ done this slaughter. Besides, they have burned and carried away all that was in the King’s tent; wherefore the King, most worthily, hath caus’d every soldier to cut his prisoner’s throat. O, ’tis a gallant king!
FLUELLEN. Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you the town’s name where Alexander the Pig was born?
GOWER. Alexander the Great.
FLUELLEN. Why, I pray you, is not pig great? The pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations.
GOWER. I think Alexander the Great was born in Macedon. His father was called Philip of Macedon, as I take it.
FLUELLEN. I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is porn. I tell you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the ’orld, I warrant you sall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth; it is call’d Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both. If you mark Alexander’s life well, Harry of Monmouth’s life is come after it indifferent well; for there is figures in all things. Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend, Cleitus.
GOWER. Our King is not like him in that. He never kill’d any of his friends.
FLUELLEN. It is not well done, mark you now, to take the tales out of my mouth, ere it is made and finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of it. As Alexander kill’d his friend Cleitus, being in his ales and his cups; so also Harry Monmouth, being in his right wits and his good judgements, turn’d away the fat knight with the great belly doublet. He was full of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; I have forgot his name.
GOWER. Sir John Falstaff.
FLUELLEN. That is he. I’ll tell you there is good men porn at Monmouth.
GOWER. Here comes his Majesty.
Alarum. Enter King Henry and forces; Warwick, Gloucester, Exeter with prisoners. Flourish.
KING HENRY. I was not angry since I came to France Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald; Ride thou unto the horsemen on yond hill. If they will fight with us, bid them come down, Or void the field; they do offend our sight. If they’ll do neither, we will come to them, And make them skirr away, as swift as stones Enforced from the old Assyrian slings. Besides, we’ll cut the throats of those we have, And not a man of them that we shall take Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so.
Enter Montjoy.
EXETER. Here comes the herald of the French, my liege.
GLOUCESTER. His eyes are humbler than they us’d to be.
KING HENRY. How now! what means this, herald? Know’st thou not That I have fin’d these bones of mine for ransom? Com’st thou again for ransom?
MONTJOY. No, great King; I come to thee for charitable license, That we may wander o’er this bloody field To book our dead, and then to bury them; To sort our nobles from our common men. For many of our princes—woe the while!— Lie drown’d and soak’d in mercenary blood; So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs In blood of princes; and their wounded steeds Fret fetlock deep in gore, and with wild rage Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters, Killing them twice. O, give us leave, great King, To view the field in safety, and dispose Of their dead bodies!
KING HENRY. I tell thee truly, herald, I know not if the day be ours or no; For yet a many of your horsemen peer And gallop o’er the field.
MONTJOY. The day is yours.
KING HENRY. Praised be God, and not our strength, for it! What is this castle call’d that stands hard by?
MONTJOY. They call it Agincourt.
KING HENRY. Then call we this the field of Agincourt, Fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.
FLUELLEN. Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t please your Majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in France.
KING HENRY. They did, Fluellen.
FLUELLEN. Your Majesty says very true. If your Majesties is rememb’red of it, the Welshmen did good service in garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which, your Majesty know, to this hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do believe your Majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day.
KING HENRY. I wear it for a memorable honour; For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.
FLUELLEN. All the water in Wye cannot wash your Majesty’s Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that. Got pless it and preserve it, as long as it pleases His grace, and His majesty too!
KING HENRY. Thanks, good my countryman.
FLUELLEN. By Jeshu, I am your Majesty’s countryman, I care not who know it. I will confess it to all the ’orld. I need not be asham’d of your Majesty, praised be God, so long as your Majesty is an honest man.
KING HENRY. God keep me so!
Enter Williams.
Our heralds go with him; Bring me just notice of the numbers dead On both our parts. Call yonder fellow hither.
[Exeunt Heralds with Montjoy.]
EXETER. Soldier, you must come to the King.
KING HENRY. Soldier, why wear’st thou that glove in thy cap?
WILLIAMS. An’t please your Majesty, ’tis the gage of one that I should fight withal, if he be alive.
KING HENRY. An Englishman?
WILLIAMS. An’t please your Majesty, a rascal that swagger’d with me last night; who, if alive and ever dare to challenge this glove, I have sworn to take him a box o’ the ear; or if I can see my glove in his cap, which he swore, as he was a soldier, he would wear if alive, I will strike it out soundly.
KING HENRY. What think you, Captain Fluellen, is it fit this soldier keep his oath?
FLUELLEN. He is a craven and a villain else, an’t please your Majesty, in my conscience.
KING HENRY. It may be his enemy is a gentlemen of great sort, quite from the answer of his degree.
FLUELLEN. Though he be as good a gentleman as the devil is, as Lucifier and Belzebub himself, it is necessary, look your Grace, that he keep his vow and his oath. If he be perjur’d, see you now, his reputation is as arrant a villain and a Jacksauce, as ever his black shoe trod upon God’s ground and His earth, in my conscience, la!
KING HENRY. Then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meet’st the fellow.
WILLIAMS. So I will, my liege, as I live.
KING HENRY. Who serv’st thou under?
WILLIAMS. Under Captain Gower, my liege.
FLUELLEN. Gower is a good captain, and is good knowledge and literatured in the wars.
KING HENRY. Call him hither to me, soldier.
WILLIAMS. I will, my liege.
[Exit.]
KING HENRY. Here, Fluellen; wear thou this favour for me and stick it in thy cap. When Alençon and myself were down together, I pluck’d this glove from his helm. If any man challenge this, he is a friend to Alençon, and an enemy to our person. If thou encounter any such, apprehend him, an thou dost me love.
FLUELLEN. Your Grace does me as great honours as can be desir’d in the hearts of his subjects. I would fain see the man, that has but two legs, that shall find himself aggrief’d at this glove; that is all. But I would fain see it once, an please God of His grace that I might see.
KING HENRY. Know’st thou Gower?
FLUELLEN. He is my dear friend, an please you.
KING HENRY. Pray thee, go seek him, and bring him to my tent.
FLUELLEN. I will fetch him.
[Exit.]
KING HENRY. My Lord of Warwick, and my brother Gloucester, Follow Fluellen closely at the heels. The glove which I have given him for a favour May haply purchase him a box o’ the ear. It is the soldier’s; I by bargain should Wear it myself. Follow, good cousin Warwick. If that the soldier strike him, as I judge By his blunt bearing he will keep his word, Some sudden mischief may arise of it; For I do know Fluellen valiant And, touch’d with choler, hot as gunpowder, And quickly will return an injury. Follow, and see there be no harm between them. Go you with me, uncle of Exeter.
[Exeunt.]
Act IV, Scene VIII — Before King Henry’s pavilion
Enter Gower and Williams.
WILLIAMS. I warrant it is to knight you, Captain.
Enter Fluellen.
FLUELLEN. God’s will and his pleasure, captain, I beseech you now, come apace to the King. There is more good toward you peradventure than is in your knowledge to dream of.
WILLIAMS. Sir, know you this glove?
FLUELLEN. Know the glove! I know the glove is a glove.
WILLIAMS. I know this; and thus I challenge it.
[Strikes him.]
FLUELLEN. ’Sblood! an arrant traitor as any is in the universal world, or in France, or in England!
GOWER. How now, sir! you villain!
WILLIAMS. Do you think I’ll be forsworn?
FLUELLEN. Stand away, Captain Gower. I will give treason his payment into plows, I warrant you.
WILLIAMS. I am no traitor.
FLUELLEN. That’s a lie in thy throat. I charge you in his Majesty’s name, apprehend him; he’s a friend of the Duke Alençon’s.
Enter Warwick and Gloucester.
WARWICK. How now, how now! what’s the matter?
FLUELLEN. My lord of Warwick, here is—praised be God for it!—a most contagious treason come to light, look you, as you shall desire in a summer’s day. Here is his Majesty.
Enter King Henry and Exeter.
KING HENRY. How now! what’s the matter?
FLUELLEN. My liege, here is a villain and a traitor, that, look your Grace, has struck the glove which your Majesty is take out of the helmet of Alençon.
WILLIAMS. My liege, this was my glove; here is the fellow of it; and he that I gave it to in change promis’d to wear it in his cap. I promis’d to strike him, if he did. I met this man with my glove in his cap, and I have been as good as my word.
FLUELLEN. Your Majesty hear now, saving your Majesty’s manhood, what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is. I hope your Majesty is pear me testimony and witness, and will avouchment, that this is the glove of Alençon that your Majesty is give me; in your conscience, now?
KING HENRY. Give me thy glove, soldier. Look, here is the fellow of it. ’Twas I, indeed, thou promisedst to strike; And thou hast given me most bitter terms.
FLUELLEN. An it please your Majesty, let his neck answer for it, if there is any martial law in the world.
KING HENRY. How canst thou make me satisfaction?
WILLIAMS. All offences, my lord, come from the heart. Never came any from mine that might offend your Majesty.
KING HENRY. It was ourself thou didst abuse.
WILLIAMS. Your Majesty came not like yourself. You appear’d to me but as a common man; witness the night, your garments, your lowliness; and what your Highness suffer’d under that shape, I beseech you take it for your own fault and not mine; for had you been as I took you for, I made no offence; therefore, I beseech your Highness, pardon me.
KING HENRY. Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns, And give it to this fellow. Keep it, fellow; And wear it for an honour in thy cap Till I do challenge it. Give him his crowns; And, captain, you must needs be friends with him.
FLUELLEN. By this day and this light, the fellow has mettle enough in his belly. Hold, there is twelve pence for you; and I pray you to serve God, and keep you out of prawls, and prabbles, and quarrels, and dissensions, and, I warrant you, it is the better for you.
WILLIAMS. I will none of your money.
FLUELLEN. It is with a good will; I can tell you, it will serve you to mend your shoes. Come, wherefore should you be so pashful? Your shoes is not so good. ’Tis a good silling, I warrant you, or I will change it.
Enter an English Herald.
KING HENRY. Now, herald, are the dead numb’red?
HERALD. Here is the number of the slaught’red French.
KING HENRY. What prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle?
EXETER. Charles Duke of Orleans, nephew to the King; John Duke of Bourbon, and Lord Boucicault: Of other lords and barons, knights and squires, Full fifteen hundred, besides common men.
KING HENRY. This note doth tell me of ten thousand French That in the field lie slain; of princes, in this number, And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead One hundred twenty-six; added to these, Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen, Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which, Five hundred were but yesterday dubb’d knights; So that, in these ten thousand they have lost, There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries; The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires, And gentlemen of blood and quality. The names of those their nobles that lie dead: Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France; Jacques of Chatillon, Admiral of France; The master of the Crossbows, Lord Rambures; Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dauphin, John, Duke of Alençon, Anthony, Duke of Brabant, The brother to the Duke of Burgundy, And Edward, Duke of Bar; of lusty earls, Grandpré and Roussi, Fauconbridge and Foix, Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrale. Here was a royal fellowship of death! Where is the number of our English dead?
[Herald gives him another paper.]
Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire; None else of name; and of all other men But five and twenty.—O God, thy arm was here; And not to us, but to thy arm alone, Ascribe we all! When, without stratagem, But in plain shock and even play of battle, Was ever known so great and little loss On one part and on the other? Take it, God, For it is none but thine!
EXETER. ’Tis wonderful!
KING HENRY. Come, go we in procession to the village; And be it death proclaimed through our host To boast of this or take that praise from God Which is His only.
FLUELLEN. Is it not lawful, an please your Majesty, to tell how many is kill’d?
KING HENRY. Yes, Captain; but with this acknowledgment, That God fought for us.
FLUELLEN. Yes, my conscience, He did us great good.
KING HENRY. Do we all holy rites. Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum, The dead with charity enclos’d in clay, And then to Calais; and to England then, Where ne’er from France arriv’d more happy men.
[Exeunt.]
Act V
Enter Chorus.
CHORUS. Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story, That I may prompt them; and of such as have, I humbly pray them to admit the excuse Of time, of numbers, and due course of things, Which cannot in their huge and proper life Be here presented. Now we bear the King Toward Calais; grant him there; there seen, Heave him away upon your winged thoughts Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys, Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep-mouth’d sea, Which like a mighty whiffler ’fore the King Seems to prepare his way. So let him land, And solemnly see him set on to London. So swift a pace hath thought that even now You may imagine him upon Blackheath, Where that his lords desire him to have borne His bruised helmet and his bended sword Before him through the city. He forbids it, Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride; Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent Quite from himself to God. But now behold, In the quick forge and working-house of thought, How London doth pour out her citizens! The mayor and all his brethren in best sort, Like to the senators of th’ antique Rome, With the plebeians swarming at their heels, Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in; As, by a lower but loving likelihood, Were now the general of our gracious empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, How many would the peaceful city quit, To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause, Did they this Harry. Now in London place him; As yet the lamentation of the French Invites the King of England’s stay at home, The Emperor’s coming in behalf of France, To order peace between them;—and omit All the occurrences, whatever chanc’d, Till Harry’s back-return again to France. There must we bring him; and myself have play’d The interim, by rememb’ring you ’tis past. Then brook abridgement, and your eyes advance After your thoughts, straight back again to France.
[Exit.]
Act V, Scene I — France. The English camp
Enter Fluellen and Gower.
GOWER. Nay, that’s right; but why wear you your leek today? Saint Davy’s day is past.
FLUELLEN. There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things. I will tell you ass my friend, Captain Gower. The rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol, which you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a fellow, look you now, of no merits, he is come to me and prings me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek. It was in a place where I could not breed no contention with him; but I will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.
Enter Pistol.
GOWER. Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.
FLUELLEN. ’Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks. God pless you, Anchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!
PISTOL. Ha! art thou bedlam? Dost thou thirst, base Trojan, To have me fold up Parca’s fatal web? Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.
FLUELLEN. I peseech you heartily, scurfy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek. Because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections and your appetites and your digestions does not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.
PISTOL. Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.
FLUELLEN. There is one goat for you. [Strikes him.] Will you be so good, scald knave, as eat it?
PISTOL. Base Trojan, thou shalt die.
FLUELLEN. You say very true, scald knave, when God’s will is. I will desire you to live in the mean time, and eat your victuals. Come, there is sauce for it. [Strikes him.] You call’d me yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you today a squire of low degree. I pray you, fall to; if you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek.
GOWER. Enough, captain; you have astonish’d him.
FLUELLEN. I say, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will peat his pate four days. Bite, I pray you; it is good for your green wound and your ploody coxcomb.
PISTOL. Must I bite?
FLUELLEN. Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question too, and ambiguities.
PISTOL. By this leek, I will most horribly revenge. I eat and eat, I swear—
FLUELLEN. Eat, I pray you. Will you have some more sauce to your leek? There is not enough leek to swear by.
PISTOL. Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see I eat.
FLUELLEN. Much good do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at ’em; that is all.
PISTOL. Good.
FLUELLEN. Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate.
PISTOL. Me a groat!
FLUELLEN. Yes, verily and in truth you shall take it; or I have another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat.
PISTOL. I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.
FLUELLEN. If I owe you anything I will pay you in cudgels. You shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God be wi’ you, and keep you, and heal your pate.
[Exit.]
PISTOL. All hell shall stir for this.
GOWER. Go, go; you are a couterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel. You find it otherwise; and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition. Fare ye well.
[Exit.]
PISTOL. Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now? News have I, that my Doll is dead i’ the spital Of malady of France; And there my rendezvous is quite cut off. Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs Honour is cudgell’d. Well, bawd I’ll turn, And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand. To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal; And patches will I get unto these cudgell’d scars, And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.
[Exit.]
Act V, Scene II — France. A royal palace
Enter at one door, King Henry, Exeter, Bedford, Warwick, Gloucester, Westmorland, Clarence, Huntingdon and other Lords. At another, Queen Isabel, the French King, the Princess Katharine, Alice, and other Ladies; the Duke of Burgundy and other French.
KING HENRY. Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met! Unto our brother France, and to our sister, Health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes To our most fair and princely cousin Katharine; And, as a branch and member of this royalty, By whom this great assembly is contriv’d, We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy; And, princes French, and peers, health to you all!
FRENCH KING. Right joyous are we to behold your face, Most worthy brother England; fairly met! So are you, princes English, every one.
QUEEN ISABEL. So happy be the issue, brother England, Of this good day and of this gracious meeting As we are now glad to behold your eyes; Your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them Against the French that met them in their bent The fatal balls of murdering basilisks. The venom of such looks, we fairly hope, Have lost their quality; and that this day Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.
KING HENRY. To cry amen to that, thus we appear.
QUEEN ISABEL. You English princes all, I do salute you.
BURGUNDY. My duty to you both, on equal love, Great Kings of France and England! That I have labour’d, With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours, To bring your most imperial Majesties Unto this bar and royal interview, Your mightiness on both parts best can witness. Since then my office hath so far prevail’d That, face to face and royal eye to eye, You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me If I demand, before this royal view, What rub or what impediment there is, Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace, Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births, Should not in this best garden of the world, Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage? Alas, she hath from France too long been chas’d, And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps, Corrupting in it own fertility. Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach’d, Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair, Put forth disorder’d twigs; her fallow leas The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory, Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts That should deracinate such savagery; The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility; And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness. Even so our houses and ourselves and children Have lost, or do not learn for want of time, The sciences that should become our country; But grow like savages,—as soldiers will That nothing do but meditate on blood,— To swearing and stern looks, diffus’d attire, And everything that seems unnatural. Which to reduce into our former favour You are assembled; and my speech entreats That I may know the let, why gentle Peace Should not expel these inconveniences And bless us with her former qualities.
KING HENRY. If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace, Whose want gives growth to the imperfections Which you have cited, you must buy that peace With full accord to all our just demands; Whose tenours and particular effects You have enschedul’d briefly in your hands.
BURGUNDY. The King hath heard them; to the which as yet There is no answer made.
KING HENRY. Well, then, the peace, Which you before so urg’d, lies in his answer.
FRENCH KING. I have but with a cursorary eye O’erglanc’d the articles. Pleaseth your Grace To appoint some of your council presently To sit with us once more, with better heed To re-survey them, we will suddenly Pass our accept and peremptory answer.
KING HENRY. Brother, we shall. Go, uncle Exeter, And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloucester, Warwick, and Huntington, go with the King; And take with you free power to ratify, Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best Shall see advantageable for our dignity, Anything in or out of our demands, And we’ll consign thereto. Will you, fair sister, Go with the princes, or stay here with us?
QUEEN ISABEL. Our gracious brother, I will go with them. Haply a woman’s voice may do some good, When articles too nicely urg’d be stood on.
KING HENRY. Yet leave our cousin Katharine here with us: She is our capital demand, compris’d Within the fore-rank of our articles.
QUEEN ISABEL. She hath good leave.
[Exeunt all except Henry, Katharine and Alice.]
KING HENRY. Fair Katharine, and most fair, Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms Such as will enter at a lady’s ear And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?
KATHARINE. Your Majesty shall mock me; I cannot speak your England.
KING HENRY. O fair Katharine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?
KATHARINE. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell wat is “like me.”
KING HENRY. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.
KATHARINE. Que dit-il? Que je suis semblable à les anges?
ALICE. Oui, vraiment, sauf votre Grâce, ainsi dit-il.
KING HENRY. I said so, dear Katharine; and I must not blush to affirm it.
KATHARINE. O bon Dieu! les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies.
KING HENRY. What says she, fair one? That the tongues of men are full of deceits?
ALICE. Oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits: dat is de Princess.
KING HENRY. The Princess is the better Englishwoman. I’ faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am glad thou canst speak no better English; for if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say, “I love you”; then if you urge me farther than to say, “Do you in faith?” I wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i’ faith, do; and so clap hands and a bargain. How say you, lady?
KATHARINE. Sauf votre honneur, me understand well.
KING HENRY. Marry, if you would put me to verses, or to dance for your sake, Kate, why you undid me; for the one, I have neither words nor measure, and for the other I have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urg’d, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou liv’st, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places; for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater: a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curl’d pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or rather the sun and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what say’st thou then to my love? Speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.
KATHARINE. Is it possible dat I should love de enemy of France?
KING HENRY. No; it is not possible you should love the enemy of France, Kate; but, in loving me, you should love the friend of France; for I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it, I will have it all mine; and, Kate, when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine.
KATHARINE. I cannot tell wat is dat.
KING HENRY. No, Kate? I will tell thee in French; which I am sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook off. Je quand sur le possession de France, et quand vous avez le possession de moi,—let me see, what then? Saint Denis be my speed!—donc votre est France, et vous êtes mienne. It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French. I shall never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me.
KATHARINE. Sauf votre honneur, le français que vous parlez, il est meilleur que l’anglais lequel je parle.
KING HENRY. No, faith, is’t not, Kate; but thy speaking of my tongue, and I thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be granted to be much at one. But, Kate, dost thou understand thus much English: canst thou love me?
KATHARINE. I cannot tell.
KING HENRY. Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I’ll ask them. Come, I know thou lovest me; and at night, when you come into your closet, you’ll question this gentlewoman about me; and I know, Kate, you will to her dispraise those parts in me that you love with your heart. But, good Kate, mock me mercifully; the rather, gentle princess, because I love thee cruelly. If ever thou beest mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-breeder. Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard? Shall we not? What say’st thou, my fair flower-de-luce?
KATHARINE. I do not know dat.
KING HENRY. No; ’tis hereafter to know, but now to promise. Do but now promise, Kate, you will endeavour for your French part of such a boy; and for my English moiety, take the word of a king and a bachelor. How answer you, la plus belle Katherine du monde, mon très cher et divin déesse?
KATHARINE. Your Majestee ’ave fausse French enough to deceive de most sage demoiselle dat is en France.
KING HENRY. Now, fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true English, I love thee, Kate; by which honour I dare not swear thou lovest me; yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage. Now, beshrew my father’s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars when he got me; therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that, when I come to woo ladies, I fright them. But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear. My comfort is, that old age, that ill layer up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better; and therefore tell me, most fair Katharine, will you have me? Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress; take me by the hand, and say, Harry of England, I am thine; which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud, England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet is thine; who, though I speak it before his face, if he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows. Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music and thy English broken; therefore, queen of all, Katharine, break thy mind to me in broken English. Wilt thou have me?
KATHARINE. Dat is as it shall please le roi mon père.
KING HENRY. Nay, it will please him well, Kate; it shall please him, Kate.
KATHARINE. Den it sall also content me.
KING HENRY. Upon that I kiss your hand, and call you my queen.
KATHARINE. Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je ne veux point que vous abaissiez votre grandeur en baisant la main d’une—Notre Seigneur!—indigne serviteur. Excusez-moi, je vous supplie, mon très-puissant seigneur.
KING HENRY. Then I will kiss your lips, Kate.
KATHARINE. Les dames et demoiselles pour être baisées devant leurs noces, il n’est pas la coutume de France.
KING HENRY. Madame my interpreter, what says she?
ALICE. Dat it is not be de fashion pour les ladies of France,—I cannot tell wat is baiser en Anglish.
KING HENRY. To kiss.
ALICE. Your Majestee entend bettre que moi.
KING HENRY. It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say?
ALICE. Oui, vraiment.
KING HENRY. O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults, as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss; therefore, patiently and yielding. [Kissing her.] You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate; there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council; and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.
Enter the French Power and the English Lords.
BURGUNDY. God save your Majesty! My royal cousin, teach you our princess English?
KING HENRY. I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly I love her; and that is good English.
BURGUNDY. Is she not apt?
KING HENRY. Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of flattery about me, I cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in her, that he will appear in his true likeness.
BURGUNDY. Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you for that. If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle; if conjure up Love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked and blind. Can you blame her then, being a maid yet ros’d over with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were, my lord, a hard condition for a maid to consign to.
KING HENRY. Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces.
BURGUNDY. They are then excus’d, my lord, when they see not what they do.
KING HENRY. Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent winking.
BURGUNDY. I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will teach her to know my meaning; for maids, well summer’d and warm kept, are like flies at Bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their eyes; and then they will endure handling, which before would not abide looking on.
KING HENRY. This moral ties me over to time and a hot summer; and so I shall catch the fly, your cousin, in the latter end, and she must be blind too.
BURGUNDY. As love is, my lord, before it loves.
KING HENRY. It is so; and you may, some of you, thank love for my blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city for one fair French maid that stands in my way.
FRENCH KING. Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turn’d into a maid; for they are all girdled with maiden walls that no war hath entered.
KING HENRY. Shall Kate be my wife?
FRENCH KING. So please you.
KING HENRY. I am content, so the maiden cities you talk of may wait on her; so the maid that stood in the way for my wish shall show me the way to my will.
FRENCH KING. We have consented to all terms of reason.
KING HENRY. Is’t so, my lords of England?
WESTMORLAND. The king hath granted every article; His daughter first, and then in sequel all, According to their firm proposed natures.
EXETER. Only he hath not yet subscribed this: where your Majesty demands, that the King of France, having any occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name your Highness in this form and with this addition, in French, Notre très-cher fils Henri, Roi d’Angleterre, Héritier de France; and thus in Latin, Praeclarissimus filius noster Henricus, rex Angliae et haeres Franciae.
FRENCH KING. Nor this I have not, brother, so denied But our request shall make me let it pass.
KING HENRY. I pray you then, in love and dear alliance, Let that one article rank with the rest; And thereupon give me your daughter.
FRENCH KING. Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up Issue to me; that the contending kingdoms Of France and England, whose very shores look pale With envy of each other’s happiness, May cease their hatred; and this dear conjunction Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance His bleeding sword ’twixt England and fair France.
LORDS. Amen!
KING HENRY. Now, welcome, Kate; and bear me witness all, That here I kiss her as my sovereign queen.
[Flourish.]
QUEEN ISABEL. God, the best maker of all marriages, Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one! As man and wife, being two, are one in love, So be there ’twixt your kingdoms such a spousal, That never may ill office, or fell jealousy, Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage, Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms, To make divorce of their incorporate league; That English may as French, French Englishmen, Receive each other. God speak this Amen!
ALL. Amen!
KING HENRY. Prepare we for our marriage; on which day, My Lord of Burgundy, we’ll take your oath, And all the peers’, for surety of our leagues, Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me; And may our oaths well kept and prosperous be!
[Sennet. Exeunt.]
Epilogue
Enter Chorus.
CHORUS. Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen, Our bending author hath pursu’d the story, In little room confining mighty men, Mangling by starts the full course of their glory. Small time, but in that small most greatly lived This star of England. Fortune made his sword, By which the world’s best garden he achieved, And of it left his son imperial lord. Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown’d King Of France and England, did this king succeed; Whose state so many had the managing, That they lost France and made his England bleed: Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake, In your fair minds let this acceptance take.
[Exit.]
THE FIRST PART OF HENRY THE SIXTH
Dramatis Personæ
KING HENRY the Sixth DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, uncle to the King, and Protector DUKE OF BEDFORD, uncle to the King, and Regent of France DUKE OF EXETER, (Thomas Beaufort), great-uncle to the King BISHOP OF WINCHESTER (Henry Beaufort), great-uncle to the King, afterwards Cardinal DUKE OF SOMERSET (John Beaufort) RICHARD PLANTAGENET, son of Richard, late Earl of Cambridge, afterwards Duke of York EARL OF WARWICK EARL OF SALISBURY EARL OF SUFFOLK LORD TALBOT, afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury JOHN TALBOT, his son Edmund MORTIMER, Earl of March SIR JOHN FASTOLF SIR WILLIAM LUCY SIR WILLIAM GLANSDALE SIR THOMAS GARGRAVE MAYOR of London WOODVILLE, Lieutenant of the Tower VERNON, of the White-Rose or York faction BASSET, of the Red-Rose or Lancaster faction A LAWYER Mortimer’s JAILERS
CHARLES, Dauphin, and afterwards King of France REIGNIER, Duke of Anjou, and titular King of Naples DUKE OF BURGUNDY DUKE OF ALENÇON BASTARD OF ORLEANS Governor of Paris MASTER GUNNER of Orleans and BOY, his son General of the French forces in Bordeaux A French Sergeant. A Porter An old Shepherd, father to Joan la Pucelle
MARGARET, daughter to Reignier, afterwards married to King Henry COUNTESS OF AUVERGNE JOAN LA PUCELLE, commonly called Joan of Arc
Lords, Warders of the Tower, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants.
Fiends appearing to Joan la Pucelle
SCENE: Partly in England and partly in France
Act I, Scene I — Westminster Abbey
Dead March. Enter the funeral of King Henry the Fifth, attended on by the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France; the Duke of Gloucester, Protector; the Duke of Exeter, the Earl of Warwick, the Bishop of Winchester, the Duke of Somerset with Heralds, &c.
BEDFORD. Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! Comets, importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, And with them scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto Henry’s death: King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long! England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.
GLOUCESTER. England ne’er had a king until his time. Virtue he had, deserving to command; His brandish’d sword did blind men with his beams; His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings; His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire, More dazzled and drove back his enemies Than mid-day sun fierce bent against their faces. What should I say? His deeds exceed all speech. He ne’er lift up his hand but conquered.
EXETER. We mourn in black; why mourn we not in blood? Henry is dead and never shall revive. Upon a wooden coffin we attend, And Death’s dishonourable victory We with our stately presence glorify, Like captives bound to a triumphant car. What! Shall we curse the planets of mishap That plotted thus our glory’s overthrow? Or shall we think the subtle-witted French Conjurers and sorcerers, that, afraid of him, By magic verses have contriv’d his end?
WINCHESTER. He was a king bless’d of the King of kings; Unto the French the dreadful judgement-day So dreadful will not be as was his sight. The battles of the Lord of Hosts he fought: The Church’s prayers made him so prosperous.
GLOUCESTER. The Church! Where is it? Had not churchmen pray’d, His thread of life had not so soon decay’d. None do you like but an effeminate prince, Whom like a school-boy you may overawe.
WINCHESTER. Gloucester, whate’er we like, thou art Protector, And lookest to command the Prince and realm. Thy wife is proud; she holdeth thee in awe More than God or religious churchmen may.
GLOUCESTER. Name not religion, for thou lov’st the flesh, And ne’er throughout the year to church thou go’st, Except it be to pray against thy foes.
BEDFORD. Cease, cease these jars, and rest your minds in peace; Let’s to the altar; heralds, wait on us. Instead of gold, we’ll offer up our arms, Since arms avail not, now that Henry’s dead. Posterity, await for wretched years, When at their mothers’ moist eyes babes shall suck, Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears, And none but women left to wail the dead. Henry the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate: Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils, Combat with adverse planets in the heavens. A far more glorious star thy soul will make Than Julius Caesar or bright—
Enter a Messenger.
MESSENGER. My honourable lords, health to you all! Sad tidings bring I to you out of France, Of loss, of slaughter, and discomfiture: Guienne, Champaigne, Rheims, Rouen, Orleans, Paris, Guysors, Poictiers, are all quite lost.
BEDFORD. What say’st thou, man, before dead Henry’s corse? Speak softly, or the loss of those great towns Will make him burst his lead and rise from death.
GLOUCESTER. Is Paris lost? Is Rouen yielded up? If Henry were recall’d to life again, These news would cause him once more yield the ghost.
EXETER. How were they lost? What treachery was us’d?
MESSENGER. No treachery, but want of men and money. Amongst the soldiers this is muttered: That here you maintain several factions And whilst a field should be dispatch’d and fought, You are disputing of your generals. One would have lingering wars with little cost; Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings; A third thinks, without expense at all, By guileful fair words peace may be obtain’d. Awake, awake, English nobility! Let not sloth dim your honours new-begot. Cropp’d are the flower-de-luces in your arms; Of England’s coat one half is cut away.
[He exits.]
EXETER. Were our tears wanting to this funeral, These tidings would call forth their flowing tides.
BEDFORD. Me they concern; Regent I am of France. Give me my steeled coat. I’ll fight for France. Away with these disgraceful wailing robes! Wounds will I lend the French instead of eyes, To weep their intermissive miseries.
Enter to them another Messenger.
MESSENGER. Lords, view these letters full of bad mischance. France is revolted from the English quite, Except some petty towns of no import. The Dauphin Charles is crowned king in Rheims; The Bastard of Orleans with him is join’d; Reignier, Duke of Anjou, doth take his part; The Duke of Alençon flieth to his side.
[He exits.]
EXETER. The Dauphin crowned king! All fly to him! O, whither shall we fly from this reproach?
GLOUCESTER. We will not fly but to our enemies’ throats. Bedford, if thou be slack, I’ll fight it out.
BEDFORD. Gloucester, why doubt’st thou of my forwardness? An army have I muster’d in my thoughts, Wherewith already France is overrun.
Enter another Messenger.
MESSENGER. My gracious lords, to add to your laments, Wherewith you now bedew King Henry’s hearse, I must inform you of a dismal fight Betwixt the stout Lord Talbot and the French.
WINCHESTER. What! Wherein Talbot overcame, is’t so?
MESSENGER. O no, wherein Lord Talbot was o’erthrown. The circumstance I’ll tell you more at large. The tenth of August last this dreadful lord, Retiring from the siege of Orleans, Having full scarce six thousand in his troop, By three and twenty thousand of the French Was round encompassed and set upon. No leisure had he to enrank his men; He wanted pikes to set before his archers; Instead whereof sharp stakes pluck’d out of hedges They pitched in the ground confusedly To keep the horsemen off from breaking in. More than three hours the fight continued; Where valiant Talbot, above human thought, Enacted wonders with his sword and lance. Hundreds he sent to hell, and none durst stand him; Here, there, and everywhere, enrag’d he slew. The French exclaim’d the devil was in arms; All the whole army stood agaz’d on him. His soldiers, spying his undaunted spirit, “A Talbot! a Talbot!” cried out amain, And rush’d into the bowels of the battle. Here had the conquest fully been seal’d up If Sir John Fastolf had not play’d the coward. He, being in the vaward, plac’d behind With purpose to relieve and follow them, Cowardly fled, not having struck one stroke. Hence grew the general wrack and massacre. Enclosed were they with their enemies. A base Walloon, to win the Dauphin’s grace, Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back, Whom all France, with their chief assembled strength, Durst not presume to look once in the face.
BEDFORD. Is Talbot slain? Then I will slay myself, For living idly here, in pomp and ease, Whilst such a worthy leader, wanting aid, Unto his dastard foemen is betray’d.
MESSENGER. O no, he lives, but is took prisoner, And Lord Scales with him, and Lord Hungerford; Most of the rest slaughter’d or took likewise.
BEDFORD. His ransom there is none but I shall pay. I’ll hale the Dauphin headlong from his throne; His crown shall be the ransom of my friend; Four of their lords I’ll change for one of ours. Farewell, my masters; to my task will I; Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make To keep our great Saint George’s feast withal. Ten thousand soldiers with me I will take, Whose bloody deeds shall make all Europe quake.
MESSENGER. So you had need; for Orleans is besieg’d The English army is grown weak and faint; The Earl of Salisbury craveth supply And hardly keeps his men from mutiny, Since they, so few, watch such a multitude.
[He exits.]
EXETER. Remember, lords, your oaths to Henry sworn, Either to quell the Dauphin utterly, Or bring him in obedience to your yoke.
BEDFORD. I do remember it, and here take my leave To go about my preparation.
[Exit.]
GLOUCESTER. I’ll to the Tower with all the haste I can To view th’ artillery and munition; And then I will proclaim young Henry king.
[Exit.]
EXETER. To Eltham will I, where the young King is, Being ordain’d his special governor; And for his safety there I’ll best devise.
[Exit.]
WINCHESTER. Each hath his place and function to attend. I am left out; for me nothing remains. But long I will not be Jack out of office. The King from Eltham I intend to steal, And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.
[Exeunt.]