World of Education/World of Education.iso/world_p/pcshx10d.zip/PCSHX10D.EXE/HV

Text File | 1991-10-09 | 166KB | 4,122 lines

 HV.

                   King Henry the Fifth


DRAMATIS PERSONAE

CHORUS

KING HENRY V of England, claimant to the French throne
Duke of GLOUCESTER      }
Duke of CLARENCE        }  his brothers
Duke of EXETER, his uncle
Duke of YORK
SALISBURY
WESTMORELAND
WARWICK
Archbishop of CANTERBURY
Bishop of ELY
Richard, Earl of CAMBRIDGE      }
Henry, Lord SCROOP of Masham    }
Sir Thomas GREY                 }  traitors
Sir Thomas ERPINGHAM
John BATES
Alexander COURT
Michael WILLIAMS
Captain GOWER, an Englishman
Captain FLUELLEN, a Welshman
Captain MACMORRIS, an Irishman
Captain JAMY, a Scot
PISTOL
NIM
BARDOLPH
BOY, formerly Falstaff's page
HOSTESS, formerly Mistress Quickly, now Pistol's wife
HERALD

KING CHARLES VI of France
ISABEL, his wife and queen
Lewis the DAUPHIN, their son and heir
CATHERINE, their daughter
The CONSTABLE of France
Duke of BOURBON         }
Duke of ORLEANS         }    French noblemen at Agincourt
Lord RAMBURES           }
Lord GRANDPRE           }
Duke of BURGUNDY
MONTJOY, the French Herald
GOVERNOR of Harfleur
ALICE, an old gentlewoman
French AMBASSADORS to England

0.1

PROLOGUE


                Enter Chorus as Prologue
CHORUS
    O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
    The brightest heaven of invention:
    A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
    And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
    Then should the warlike Harry, like himself     5
    Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
    Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
    Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
    The flat unraised spirits that hath dared
    On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth     10
    So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold
    The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
    Within this wooden O the very casques
    That did affright the air at Agincourt?
    O pardon: since a crooked figure may     15
    Attest in little place a million,
    And let us, ciphers to this great account,
    On your imaginary forces work.
    Suppose within the girdle of these walls
    Are now confined two mighty monarchies     20
    Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
    The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
    Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
    Into a thousand parts divide one man,
    And make imaginary puissance     25
    Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them,
    Printing their proud hoofs i'th' receiving earth,
    For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
    Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times,
    Turning th'accomplishment of many years     30
    Into an hourglass - for the which supply,
    Admit me Chorus to this history,
    Who Prologue-like your humble patience pray
    Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
                Exit

ACT I  Henry V

1.1
                Enter Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop
                of Ely
CANTERBURY
    My lord, I'll tell you. That self bill is urged
    Which in th'eleventh year of the last king's reign
    Was like, and had indeed against us passed,
    But that the scrambling and unquiet time
    Did push it out of farther question     5
ELY
    But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
CANTERBURY
    It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
    We lose the better half of our possession,
    For all the temporal lands which men devout
    By testament have given to the Church     10
    Would they strip from us - being valued thus:
    As much as would maintain, to the King's honour,
    Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
    Six thousand and two hundred good esquires,
    And, to relief of lazars and weak age     15
    Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,
    A hundred almshouses right well supplied,
    And to the coffers of the King beside
    A thousand pounds by th' year. Thus runs the bill.
ELY
    This would drink deep       20
CANTERBURY
    'Twould drink the cup and all.
ELY
    But what prevention?
CANTERBURY
    The King is full of grace and fair regard.
ELY
    And a true lover of the holy Church.
CANTERBURY
    The courses of his youth promised it not     25
    The breath no sooner left his father's body
    But that his wildness, mortified in him,
    Seemed to die too. Yea, at that very moment
    Consideration like an angel came
    And whipped th'offending Adam out of him     30
    Leaving his body as a paradise
    T'envelop and contain celestial spirits.
    Never was such a sudden scholar made,
    Never came reformation in a flood
    With such a heady currance scouring faults     35
    Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
    So soon did lose his seat - and all at once -
    As in this king.
ELY
    We are blessed in the change.
CANTERBURY
    Hear him but reason in divinity
    And, all-admiring, with an inward wish     40
    You would desire the King were made a prelate,
    Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
    You would say it hath been all-in-all his study,
    List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
    A fearful battle rendered you in music     45
    Turn him to any cause of policy,
    The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
    Familiar as his garter - that when he speaks,
    The air, a chartered libertine, is still,
    And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears     50
    To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences:
    So that the art and practic part of life
    Must be the mistress to this theoric.
    Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,
    Since his addiction was to courses vain     55
    His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow,
    His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports,
    And never noted in him any study,
    Any retirement, any sequestration
    From open haunts and popularity     60
ELY
    The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
    And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
    Neighboured by fruit of baser quality,
    And so the Prince obscured his contemplation
    Under the veil of wildness - which, no doubt     65
    Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
    Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.
CANTERBURY
    It must be so, for miracles are ceased,
    And therefore we must needs admit the means
    How things are perfected.
ELY
    But, my good lord           70
    How now for mitigation of this bill
    Urged by the Commons? Doth his majesty
    Incline to it, or no?
CANTERBURY
    He seems indifferent,
    Or rather swaying more upon our part
    Than cherishing th'exhibitors against us     75
    For I have made an offer to his majesty,
    Upon our spiritual convocation
    And in regard of causes now in hand,
    Which I have opened to his grace at large:
    As touching France, to give a greater sum     80
    Than ever at one time the clergy yet
    Did to his predecessors part withal.
ELY
    How did this offer seem received, my lord?
CANTERBURY
    With good acceptance of his majesty,
    Save that there was not time enough to hear     85
    As I perceived his grace would fain have done,
    The severals and unhidden passages
    Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms,
    And generally to the crown and seat of France,
    Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather     90
ELY
    What was th'impediment that broke this off?
CANTERBURY
    The French ambassador upon that instant
    Craved audience - and the hour I think is come
    To give him hearing. Is it four o'clock?
ELY
    It is                       95
CANTERBURY
    Then go we in, to know his embassy -
    Which I could with a ready guess declare
    Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.
ELY
    I'll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.
                Exeunt


1.2
                Enter King Harry, the Dukes of Gloucester,
                Clarence, and Exeter, and the Earls of Warwick
                and Westmoreland
KING HENRY
    Where is my gracious lord of Canterbury?
EXETER
    Not here in presence.
KING HENRY
    Send for him, good uncle.
WESTMORELAND
    Shall we call in th'ambassador, my liege?
KING HENRY
    Not yet, my cousin. We would be resolved,
    Before we hear him, of some things of weight     5
    That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.
                Enter Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop
                of Ely
CANTERBURY
    God and his angels guard your sacred throne,
    And make you long become it.
KING HENRY
    Sure we thank you.
    My learned lord, we pray you to proceed,
    And justly and religiously unfold     10
    Why the law Salic that they have in France
    Or should or should not bar us in our claim.
    And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,
    That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,
    Or nicely charge your understanding soul     15
    With opening titles miscreate, whose right
    Suits not in native colours with the truth,
    For God doth know how many now in health
    Shall drop their blood in approbation
    Of what your reverence shall incite us to     20
    Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
    How you awake our sleeping sword of war,
    We charge you in the name of God take heed.
    For never two such kingdoms did contend
    Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops     25
    Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
    'Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords
    That makes such waste in brief mortality.
    Under this conjuration speak, my lord,
    For we will hear, note, and believe in heart     30
    That what you speak is in your conscience washed
    As pure as sin with baptism.
CANTERBURY
    Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers
    That owe your selves, your lives, and services
    To this imperial throne. There is no bar     35
    To make against your highness' claim to France
    But this, which they produce from Pharamond:
    `In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant' -
    `No woman shall succeed in Salic land' -
    Which `Salic land' the French unjustly gloss     40
    To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
    The founder of this law and female bar.
    Yet their own authors faithfully affirm
    That the land Salic is in Germany,
    Between the floods of Saale and of Elbe     45
    Where, Charles the Great having subdued the Saxons,
    There left behind and settled certain French
    Who, holding in disdain the German women
    For some dishonest manners of their life,
    Established there this law: to wit, no female     50
    Should be inheritrix in Salic land -
    Which Salic, as I said, 'twixt Elbe and Saale,
    Is at this day in Germany called Meissen.
    Then doth it well appear the Salic Law
    Was not devised for the realm of France     55
    Nor did the French possess the Salic land
    Until four hundred one-and-twenty years
    After defunction of King Pharamond,
    Idly supposed the founder of this law,
    Who died within the year of our redemption     60
    Four hundred twenty-six, and Charles the Great
    Subdued the Saxons, and did seat the French
    Beyond the river Saale, in the year
    Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,
    King Pepin, which deposed Childeric     65
    Did, as heir general - being descended
    Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clotaire -
    Make claim and title to the crown of France.
    Hugh Capet also - who usurped the crown
    Of Charles the Duke of Lorraine, sole heir male     70
    Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great -
    To fine his title with some shows of truth,
    Though in pure truth it was corrupt and naught,
    Conveyed himself as heir to th' Lady Lingard,
    Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son     75
    To Louis the Emperor, and Louis the son
    Of Charles the Great. Also, King Louis the Ninth,
    Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,
    Could not keep quiet in his conscience,
    Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied     80
    That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother,
    Was lineal of the Lady Ermengarde,
    Daughter to Charles, the foresaid Duke of Lorraine,
    By the which marriage, the line of Charles the Great
    Was reunited to the crown of France     85
    So that, as clear as is the summer's sun,
    King Pepin's title and Hugh Capet's claim,
    King Louis his satisfaction, all appear
    To hold in right and title of the female,
    So do the kings of France unto this day     90
    Howbeit they would hold up this Salic Law
    To bar your highness claiming from the female,
    And rather choose to hide them in a net
    Than amply to embar their crooked titles,
    Usurped from you and your progenitors     95
KING HENRY
    May I with right and conscience make this claim?
CANTERBURY
    The sin upon my head, dread sovereign.
    For in the Book of Numbers is it writ,
    `When the son dies, let the inheritance
    Descend unto the daughter.' Gracious lord     100
    Stand for your own, unwind your bloody flag,
    Look back into your mighty ancestors.
    Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire's tomb,
    From whom you claim, invoke his warlike spirit,
    And your great-uncle's, Edward the Black Prince     105
    Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
    Making defeat on the full power of France,
    Whiles his most mighty father on a hill
    Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp
    Forage in blood of French nobility     110
    O noble English, that could entertain
    With half their forces the full pride of France,
    And let another half stand laughing by,
    All out of work, and cold for action.
ELY
    Awake remembrance of those valiant dead     115
    And with your puissant arm renew their feats.
    You are their heir, you sit upon their throne,
    The blood and courage that renowned them
    Runs in your veins - and my thrice-puissant liege
    Is in the very May-morn of his youth     120
    Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.
EXETER
    Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth
    Do all expect that you should rouse yourself
    As did the former lions of your blood.
WESTMORELAND
    They know your grace hath cause, and means and might   125
    So hath your highness. Never king of England
    Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,
    Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England
    And lie pavilioned in the fields of France.
CANTERBURY
    O let their bodies follow, my dear liege     130
    With blood and sword and fire, to win your right.
    In aid whereof, we of the spiritualty
    Will raise your highness such a mighty sum
    As never did the clergy at one time
    Bring in to any of your ancestors     135
KING HENRY
    We must not only arm t'invade the French,
    But lay down our proportions to defend
    Against the Scot, who will make raid upon us
    With all advantages.
CANTERBURY
    They of those marches, gracious sovereign     140
    Shall be a wall sufficient to defend
    Our inland from the pilfering borderers.
KING HENRY
    We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,
    But fear the main intendment of the Scot,
    Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us     145
    For you shall read that my great-grandfather
    Never unmasked his power unto France
    But that the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom
    Came pouring like the tide into a breach
    With ample and brim fullness of his force     150
    Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,
    Girding with grievous siege castles and towns,
    That England, being empty of defence,
    Hath shook and trembled at the bruit thereof.
CANTERBURY
    She hath been then more feared than harmed, my liege   155
    For hear her but exampled by herself:
    When all her chivalry hath been in France
    And she a mourning widow of her nobles,
    She hath herself not only well defended
    But taken and impounded as a stray     160
    The King of Scots, whom she did send to France
    To fill King Edward's fame with prisoner kings
    And make your chronicle as rich with praise
    As is the ooze and bottom of the sea
    With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries     165
A LORD
    But there's a saying very old and true:
    `If that you will France win,
    Then with Scotland first begin.'
    For once the eagle England being in prey,
    To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot     170
    Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,
    Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,
    To 'tame and havoc more than she can eat.
EXETER
    It follows then the cat must stay at home.
    Yet that is but a crushed necessity     175
    Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries
    And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.
    While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,
    Th'advised head defends itself at home.
    For government, though high and low and lower     180
    Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
    Congreeing in a full and natural close,
    Like music.
CANTERBURY
    True. Therefore doth heaven divide
    The state of man in divers functions,
    Setting endeavour in continual motion     185
    To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
    Obedience. For so work the honey-bees,
    Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
    The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
    They have a king, and officers of sorts     190
    Where some like magistrates correct at home,
    Others like merchants venture trade abroad,
    Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,
    Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
    Which pillage they with merry march bring home     195
    To the tent royal of their emperor,
    Who busied in his majesty surveys
    The singing masons building roofs of gold,
    The civil citizens lading up the honey,
    The poor mechanic porters crowding in     200
    Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
    The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum
    Delivering o'er to executors pale
    The lazy yawning drone. I this infer:
    That many things, having full reference     205
    To one consent, may work contrariously.
    As many arrows, loosed several ways,
    Fly to one mark, as many ways meet in one town,
    As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea,
    As many lines close in the dial's centre     210
    So may a thousand actions once afoot
    End in one purpose, and be all well borne
    Without defect. Therefore to France, my liege.
    Divide your happy England into four,
    Whereof take you one quarter into France     215
    And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.
    If we with thrice such powers left at home
    Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,
    Let us be worried, and our nation lose
    The name of hardiness and policy     220
KING HENRY
    Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.
                Exit one or more
    Now are we well resolved, and by God's help
    And yours, the noble sinews of our power,
    France being ours we'll bend it to our awe,
    Or break it all to pieces. Or there we'll sit     225
    Ruling in large and ample empery
    O'er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms,
    Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,
    Tombless, with no remembrance over them.
    Either our history shall with full mouth     230
    Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
    Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
    Not worshipped with a waxen epitaph.
                Enter Ambassadors of France, with a tun
    Now are we well prepared to know the pleasure
    Of our fair cousin Dauphin, for we hear     235
    Your greeting is from him, not from the King.
AMBASSADOR
    May't please your majesty to give us leave
    Freely to render what we have in charge,
    Or shall we sparingly show you far off
    The Dauphin's meaning and our embassy     240
KING HENRY
    We are no tyrant, but a Christian king,
    Unto whose grace our passion is as subject
    As is our wretches fettered in our prisons.
    Therefore with frank and with uncurbed plainness
    Tell us the Dauphin's mind.
AMBASSADOR
    Thus then in few            245
    Your highness lately sending into France
    Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right
    Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third.
    In answer of which claim, the Prince our master
    Says that you savour too much of your youth     250
    And bids you be advised, there's naught in France
    That can be with a nimble galliard won:
    You cannot revel into dukedoms there.
    He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,
    This tun of treasure, and in lieu of this     255
    Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim
    Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
KING HENRY
    What treasure, uncle?
EXETER    (opening the tun)
    Tennis balls, my liege.
KING HENRY
    We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us.
    His present and your pains we thank you for     260
    When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
    We will in France, by God's grace, play a set
    Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
    Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
    That all the courts of France will be disturbed     265
    With chases. And we understand him well,
    How he comes o'er us with our wilder days,
    Not measuring what use we made of them.
    We never valued this poor seat of England,
    And therefore, living hence, did give ourself     270
    To barbarous licence - as 'tis ever common
    That men are merriest when they are from home.
    But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,
    Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness
    When I do rouse me in my throne of France     275
    For that have I laid by my majesty
    And plodded like a man for working days,
    But I will rise there with so full a glory
    That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,
    Yea strike the Dauphin blind to look on us     280
    And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his
    Hath turned his balls to gunstones, and his soul
    Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
    That shall fly from them - for many a thousand widows
    Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands     285
    Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down,
    Ay, some are yet ungotten and unborn
    That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn.
    But this lies all within the will of God,
    To whom I do appeal, and in whose name     290
    Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on
    To venge me as I may, and to put forth
    My rightful hand in a well-hallowed cause.
    So get you hence in peace. And tell the Dauphin
    His jest will savour but of shallow wit     295
    When thousands weep more than did laugh at it. -
    Convey them with safe conduct. - Fare you well.
                Exeunt Ambassadors
EXETER
    This was a merry message.
KING HENRY
    We hope to make the sender blush at it.
    Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour     300
    That may give furth'rance to our expedition,
    For we have now no thought in us but France,
    Save those to God, that run before our business.
    Therefore let our proportions for these wars
    Be soon collected, and all things thought upon     305
    That may with reasonable swiftness add
    More feathers to our wings, for, God before,
    We'll chide this Dauphin at his father's door.
    Therefore let every man now task his thought,
    That this fair action may on foot be brought     310
                Flourish. Exeunt

ACT II  Henry V

2.1
                Enter Corporal Nim and Lieutenant Bardolph
BARDOLPH
    Well met, Corporal Nim.
NIM
    Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.
BARDOLPH
    What, are Ensign Pistol and you friends yet?
NIM
    For my part, I care not. I say little, but when time
    shall serve, there shall be smiles - but that shall be as   5
    it may. I dare not fight, but I will wink and hold out
    mine iron. It is a simple one, but what though? It will
    toast cheese, and it will endure cold, as another man's
    sword will - and there's an end.
BARDOLPH
    I will bestow a breakfast to make you friends     10
    and we'll be all three sworn brothers to France. Let't
    be so, good Corporal Nim.
NIM
    Faith, I will live so long as I may, that's the certain
    of it, and when I cannot live any longer, I will do as I
    may. That is my rest, that is the rendezvous of it     15
BARDOLPH
    It is certain, corporal, that he is married to
    Nell Quickly, and certainly she did you wrong, for you
    were troth-plight to her.
NIM
    I cannot tell. Things must be as they may. Men may
    sleep, and they may have their throats about them at     20
    that time, and some say knives have edges. It must be
    as it may. Though Patience be a tired mare, yet she
    will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I cannot tell.
                Enter Ensign Pistol and Hostess Quickly
BARDOLPH
    Good morrow, Ensign Pistol. Here      25
    comes Ensign Pistol and his wife. Good Corporal, be
    patient here.
NIM
    How now, mine host Pistol?
PISTOL
    Base tick, call'st thou me host? Now by Gad's lugs
    I swear I scorn the term. Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers   30
HOSTESS
    No, by my troth, not long, for we cannot lodge
    and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live
    honestly by the prick of their needles, but it will be
    thought we keep a bawdy-house straight.
                Nim draws his sword
    O well-a-day, Lady! If he be not hewn now, we shall     35
    see wilful adultery and murder committed.
                Pistol draws his sword
BARDOLPH
    Good lieutenant, good corporal, offer nothing here.
NIM
    Pish.
PISTOL
    Pish for thee, Iceland dog. Thou prick-eared cur of Iceland   40
HOSTESS
    Good Corporal Nim, show thy valour, and put up your sword.
                They sheathe their swords
NIM
    Will you shog off? I would have you solus.
PISTOL
    `Solus', egregious dog? O viper vile!
    The solus in thy most marvellous face     45
    The solus in thy teeth, and in thy throat,
    And in thy hateful lungs, yea in thy maw pardie -
    And which is worse, within thy nasty mouth.
    I do retort the solus in thy bowels,
    For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up     50
    And flashing fire will follow.
NIM
    I am not Barbason, you cannot conjure me. I have
    an humour to knock you indifferently well. If you grow
    foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my rapier,
    as I may, in fair terms. If you would walk off, I would   55
    prick your guts a little, in good terms, as I may, and
    that's the humour of it.
PISTOL
    O braggart vile, and damned furious wight!
    The grave doth gape and doting death is near.
    Therefore ex-hale           60
                Pistol and Nim draw their swords
BARDOLPH
    Hear me, hear me what I say.
                He draws his sword
    He that strikes the first stroke, I'll run him up to the
    hilts, as I am a soldier.
PISTOL
    An oath of mickle might, and fury shall abate.
                They sheathe their swords
    (To Nim)   Give me thy fist, thy forefoot to me give     65
    Thy spirits are most tall.
NIM
    I will cut thy throat one time or other, in fair terms,
    that is the humour of it.
PISTOL
    Couple a gorge,
    That is the word. I thee defy again     70
    O hound of Crete, think'st thou my spouse to get?
    No, to the spital go,
    And from the powd'ring tub of infamy
    Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid's kind,
    Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse     75
    I have, and I will hold, the quondam Quickly
    For the only she, and - pauca, there's enough. Go to.
                Enter the Boy running
BOY
    Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master, and
    you, hostess. He is very sick, and would to bed. - Good
    Bardolph, put thy face between his sheets, and do the   80
    office of a warming-pan. - Faith, he's very ill.
BARDOLPH
    Away, you rogue!
HOSTESS
    By my troth, he'll yield the crow a pudding one
    of these days. The King has killed his heart. Good
    husband, come home presently     85
                Exit with Boy
BARDOLPH
    Come, shall I make you two friends? We must
    to France together. Why the devil should we keep
    knives to cut one another's throats?
PISTOL
    Let floods o'erswell, and fiends for food howl on!
NIM
    You'll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at     90
    betting?
PISTOL
    Base is the slave that pays.
NIM
    That now I will have. That's the humour of it.
PISTOL
    As manhood shall compound. Push home.
                Pistol and Nim draw their swords
BARDOLPH
    By this sword, he that makes     95
    the first thrust, I'll kill him. By this sword, I will.
PISTOL
    Sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course.
                He sheathes his sword
BARDOLPH
    Corporal Nim, an thou wilt be friends, be
    friends. An thou wilt not, why then be enemies with
    me too. Prithee, put up     100
NIM
    I shall have my eight shillings?
PISTOL
    A noble shalt thou have, and present pay,
    And liquor likewise will I give to thee,
    And friendship shall combine, and brotherhood.
    I'll live by Nim, and Nim shall live by me     105
    Is not this just? For I shall sutler be
    Unto the camp, and profits will accrue.
    Give me thy hand.
NIM
    I shall have my noble?
PISTOL
    In cash, most justly paid     110
NIM
    Well then, that's the humour of't.
                Nim and Bardolph sheathe their swords.
                Enter Hostess Quickly
HOSTESS
    As ever you come of women, come in quickly to
    Sir John. Ah, poor heart, he is so shaked of a burning
    quotidian-tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold.
    Sweet men, come to him      115
                Exit
NIM
    The King hath run bad humours on the knight,
    that's the even of it.
PISTOL
    Nim, thou hast spoke the right.
    His heart is fracted and corroborate.
NIM
    The King is a good king, but it must be as it may     120
    He passes some humours and careers.
PISTOL
    Let us condole the knight - for, lambkins, we will live.
                Exeunt


2.2
                Enter Dukes of Exeter and Gloucester, and
                Earl of Westmoreland
GLOUCESTER
    Fore God, his grace is bold to trust these traitors.
EXETER
    They shall be apprehended by and by.
WESTMORELAND
    How smooth and even they do bear themselves,
    As if allegiance in their bosoms sat,
    Crowned with faith and constant loyalty     5
GLOUCESTER
    The King hath note of all that they intend,
    By interception which they dream not of.
EXETER
    Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow,
    Whom he hath dulled and cloyed with gracious favours -
    That he should for a foreign purse so sell     10
    His sovereign's life to death and treachery.
                Sound trumpets. Enter King Harry, Lord Scroop,
                Earl of Cambridge, and Sir Thomas Grey
KING HENRY
    Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard.
    My lord of Cambridge, and my kind lord of Masham,
    And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts.
    Think you not that the powers we bear with us     15
    Will cut their passage through the force of France,
    Doing the execution and the act
    For which we have in head assembled them?
SCROOP
    No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.
KING HENRY
    I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded     20
    We carry not a heart with us from hence
    That grows not in a fair consent with ours,
    Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish
    Success and conquest to attend on us.
CAMBRIDGE
    Never was monarch better feared and loved     25
    Than is your majesty. There's not, I think, a subject
    That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness
    Under the sweet shade of your government.
GREY
    True. Those that were your father's enemies
    Have steeped their galls in honey, and do serve you     30
    With hearts create of duty and of zeal.
KING HENRY
    We therefore have great cause of thankfulness,
    And shall forget the office of our hand
    Sooner than quittance of desert and merit,
    According to their weight and worthiness     35
SCROOP
    So service shall with steeled sinews toil,
    And labour shall refresh itself with hope,
    To do your grace incessant services.
KING HENRY
    We judge no less. - Uncle of Exeter,
    Enlarge the man committed yesterday     40
    That railed against our person. We consider
    It was excess of wine that set him on,
    And on his more advice we pardon him.
SCROOP
    That's mercy, but too much security.
    Let him be punished, sovereign, lest example     45
    Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.
KING HENRY
    O let us yet be merciful.
CAMBRIDGE
    So may your highness, and yet punish too.
GREY
    Sir, you show great mercy if you give him life,
    After the taste of much correction     50
KING HENRY
    Alas, your too much love and care of me
    Are heavy orisons 'gainst this poor wretch.
    If little faults proceeding on distemper
    Shall not be winked at, how shall we stretch our eye
    When capital crimes, chewed, swallowed, and digested     55
    Appear before us? We'll yet enlarge that man,
    Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care
    And tender preservation of our person,
    Would have him punished. And now to our French causes.
    Who are the late commissioners?
CAMBRIDGE
    I one, my lord              60
    Your highness bade me ask for it today.
SCROOP
    So did you me, my liege.
GREY
    And I, my royal sovereign.
KING HENRY
    Then Richard, Earl of Cambridge, there is yours,
    There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham, and sir knight,
    Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours     65
    Read them, and know I know your worthiness. -
    My lord of Westmoreland, and Uncle Exeter,
    We will aboard tonight. - Why, how now, gentlemen?
    What see you in those papers, that you lose
    So much complexion? - Look ye how they change     70
    Their cheeks are paper. - Why, what read you there
    That have so cowarded and chased your blood
    Out of appearance?
CAMBRIDGE
    I do confess my fault,
    And do submit me to your highness' mercy.
GREY AND SCROOP
    To which we all appeal      75
KING HENRY
    The mercy that was quick in us but late
    By your own counsel is suppressed and killed.
    You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy,
    For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
    As dogs upon their masters, worrying you     80
    See you, my princes and my noble peers,
    These English monsters? My lord of Cambridge here,
    You know how apt our love was to accord
    To furnish him with all appurtenants
    Belonging to his honour, and this vile man     85
    Hath for a few light crowns lightly conspired
    And sworn unto the practices of France
    To kill us here in Hampton. To the which
    This knight, no less for bounty bound to us
    Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But O     90
    What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,
    Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?
    Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
    That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,
    That almost mightst ha' coined me into gold     95
    Wouldst thou ha' practised on me for thy use:
    May it be possible that foreign hire
    Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
    That might annoy my finger? 'Tis so strange
    That though the truth of it stands off as gross     100
    As black on white, my eye will scarcely see it.
    Treason and murder ever kept together,
    As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose,
    Working so grossly in a natural cause
    That admiration did not whoop at them     105
    But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in
    Wonder to wait on treason and on murder.
    And whatsoever cunning fiend it was
    That wrought upon thee so preposterously
    Hath got the voice in hell for excellence     110
    And other devils that suggest by treasons
    Do botch and bungle up damnation
    With patches, colours, and with forms, being fetched
    From glist'ring semblances of piety,
    But he that tempered thee, bade thee stand up     115
    Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,
    Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.
    If that same demon that hath gulled thee thus
    Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
    He might return to vasty Tartar back     120
    And tell the legions, `I can never win
    A soul so easy as that Englishman's.'
    O how hast thou with jealousy infected
    The sweetness of affiance. Show men dutiful?
    Why so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned     125
    Why so didst thou. Come they of noble family?
    Why so didst thou. Seem they religious?
    Why so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,
    Free from gross passion, or of mirth or anger,
    Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood     130
    Garnished and decked in modest complement,
    Not working with the eye without the ear,
    And but in purged judgement trusting neither?
    Such, and so finely boulted, didst thou seem.
    And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot     135
    To mark the full-fraught man, and best endowed,
    With some suspicion. I will weep for thee,
    For this revolt of thine methinks is like
    Another fall of man. - Their faults are open.
    Arrest them to the answer of the law     140
    And God acquit them of their practices.
EXETER
    I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of
    Richard, Earl of Cambridge. - I arrest thee of high
    treason, by the name of Henry, Lord Scroop of
    Masham. - I arrest thee of high treason, by the name   145
    of Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland.
SCROOP
    Our purposes God justly hath discovered,
    And I repent my fault more than my death,
    Which I beseech your highness to forgive
    Although my body pay the price of it     150
CAMBRIDGE
    For me, the gold of France did not seduce,
    Although I did admit it as a motive
    The sooner to effect what I intended.
    But God be thanked for prevention,
    Which heartily in sufferance will rejoice     155
    Beseeching God and you to pardon me.
GREY
    Never did faithful subject more rejoice
    At the discovery of most dangerous treason
    Than I do at this hour joy o'er myself,
    Prevented from a damned enterprise     160
    My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.
KING HENRY
    God 'quit you in his mercy. Hear your sentence.
    You have conspired against our royal person,
    Joined with an enemy proclaimed and fixed,
    And from his coffers        165
    Received the golden earnest of our death,
    Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
    His princes and his peers to servitude,
    His subjects to oppression and contempt,
    And his whole kingdom into desolation     170
    Touching our person seek we no revenge,
    But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
    Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
    We do deliver you. Get ye therefore hence,
    Poor miserable wretches, to your death     175
    The taste whereof, God of his mercy give
    You patience to endure, and true repentance
    Of all your dear offences. - Bear them hence.
                Exeunt the traitors, guarded
    Now lords for France, the enterprise whereof
    Shall be to you, as us, like glorious     180
    We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,
    Since God so graciously hath brought to light
    This dangerous treason lurking in our way
    To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now
    But every rub is smoothed on our way     185
    Then forth, dear countrymen. Let us deliver
    Our puissance into the hand of God,
    Putting it straight in expedition.
    Cheerly to sea, the signs of war advance:
    No king of England, if not king of France     190
                Flourish. Exeunt


2.3
                Enter Ensign Pistol, Corporal Nim, Lieutenant
                Bardolph, Boy, and Hostess Quickly
HOSTESS
    Prithee, honey, sweet husband, let me bring thee
    to Staines.
PISTOL
    No, for my manly heart doth erne. Bardolph,
    Be blithe, Nim, rouse thy vaunting veins, boy, bristle
    Thy courage up. For Falstaff he is dead     5
    And we must earn therefore.
BARDOLPH
    Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is,
    either in heaven or in hell.
HOSTESS
    Nay, sure he's not in hell. He's in Arthur's
    bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A made     10
    a finer end, and went away an it had been any christom
    child. A parted ev'n just between twelve and one, ev'n
    at the turning o'th' tide - for after I saw him fumble
    with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon
    his finger's end, I knew there was but one way. For     15
    his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a babbled of green
    fields. `How now, Sir John?' quoth I. `What, man! Be
    o' good cheer.' So a cried out, `God, God, God', three
    or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a should
    not think of God, I hoped there was no need to trouble   20
    himself with any such thoughts yet. So a bade me lay
    more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed
    and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone.
    Then I felt to his knees, and so up'ard and up'ard, and
    all was as cold as any stone     25
NIM
    They say he cried out of sack.
HOSTESS
    Ay, that a did.
BARDOLPH
    And of women.
HOSTESS
    Nay, that a did not.
BOY
    Yes, that a did, and said they were devils incarnate     30
HOSTESS
    A could never abide carnation, 'twas a colour he
    never liked.
BOY
    A said once the devil would have him about women.
HOSTESS
    A did in some sort, indeed, handle women - but
    then he was rheumatic, and talked of the Whore of     35
    Babylon.
BOY
    Do you not remember, a saw a flea stick upon
    Bardolph's nose, and a said it was a black soul burning
    in hell-fire.
BARDOLPH
    Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that fire     40
    That's all the riches I got in his service.
NIM
    Shall we shog? The King will be gone from Southampton.
PISTOL
    Come, let's away. - My love, give me thy lips.
                He kisses her
    Look to my chattels and my movables     45
    Let senses rule. The word is `Pitch and pay'.
    Trust none, for oaths are straws, men's faiths are
        wafer-cakes,
    And Holdfast is the only dog, my duck.
    Therefore caveto be thy counsellor.
    Go, clear thy crystals. - Yokefellows in arms     50
    Let us to France, like horseleeches, my boys,
    To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!
BOY    (aside)
    And that's but unwholesome food, they say.
PISTOL
    Touch her soft mouth, and march.
BARDOLPH
    Farewell, hostess           55
                He kisses her
NIM
    I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it, but adieu.
PISTOL    (to Hostess)
    Let housewifery appear. Keep close, I thee command.
HOSTESS
    Farewell! Adieu!
                Exeunt severally


2.4
                Flourish. Enter King Charles the Sixth of
                France, the Dauphin, the Constable, and
                Dukes of Berri and Bourbon
KING CHARLES
    Thus comes the English with full power upon us,
    And more than carefully it us concerns
    To answer royally in our defences.
    Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Bourbon,
    Of Brabant and of Orleans shall make forth     5
    And you Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch
    To line and new-repair our towns of war
    With men of courage and with means defendant.
    For England his approaches makes as fierce
    As waters to the sucking of a gulf     10
    It fits us then to be as provident
    As fear may teach us, out of late examples
    Left by the fatal and neglected English
    Upon our fields.
DAUPHIN
    My most redoubted father,
    It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe     15
    For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom -
    Though war, nor no known quarrel, were in  question -
    But that defences, musters, preparations
    Should be maintained, assembled, and collected
    As were a war in expectation     20
    Therefore, I say, 'tis meet we all go forth
    To view the sick and feeble parts of France.
    And let us do it with no show of fear,
    No, with no more than if we heard that England
    Were busied with a Whitsun morris dance     25
    For, my good liege, she is so idly kinged,
    Her sceptre so fantastically borne
    By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
    That fear attends her not.
CONSTABLE
    O peace, Prince Dauphin.
    You are too much mistaken in this king     30
    Question your grace the late ambassadors
    With what great state he heard their embassy,
    How well supplied with aged counsellors,
    How modest in exception, and withal
    How terrible in constant resolution     35
    And you shall find his vanities forespent
    Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
    Covering discretion with a coat of folly,
    As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
    That shall first spring and be most delicate     40
DAUPHIN
    Well, 'tis not so, my Lord High Constable.
    But though we think it so, it is no matter.
    In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh
    The enemy more mighty than he seems.
    So the proportions of defence are filled     45
    Which, of a weak and niggardly projection,
    Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scanting
    A little cloth.
KING CHARLES
    Think we King Harry strong.
    And princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
    The kindred of him hath been fleshed upon us     50
    And he is bred out of that bloody strain
    That haunted us in our familiar paths.
    Witness our too-much-memorable shame
    When Crecy battle fatally was struck,
    And all our princes captived by the hand     55
    Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales,
    Whiles that his mountant sire, on mountain standing,
    Up in the air, crowned with the golden sun,
    Saw his heroical seed and smiled to see him
    Mangle the work of nature and deface     60
    The patterns that by God and by French fathers
    Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
    Of that victorious stock, and let us fear
    The native mightiness and fate of him.
                Enter a Messenger
MESSENGER
    Ambassadors from Harry, King of England     65
    Do crave admittance to your majesty.
KING CHARLES
    We'll give them present audience. Go and bring them.
                Exit Messenger
    You see this chase is hotly followed, friends.
DAUPHIN
    Turn head and stop pursuit. For coward dogs
    Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten   70
    Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,
    Take up the English short, and let them know
    Of what a monarchy you are the head.
    Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
    As self-neglecting.
                Enter the Duke of Exeter, attended
KING CHARLES
    From our brother England     75
EXETER
    From him, and thus he greets your majesty:
    He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
    That you divest yourself and lay apart
    The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven,
    By law of nature and of nations, 'longs     80
    To him and to his heirs, namely the crown,
    And all wide-stretched honours that pertain
    By custom and the ordinance of times
    Unto the crown of France. That you may know
    'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim     85
    Picked from the worm-holes of long-vanished days,
    Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,
    He sends you this most memorable line,
    In every branch truly demonstrative,
    Willing you over-look this pedigree     90
    And when you find him evenly derived
    From his most famed of famous ancestors,
    Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
    Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
    From him, the native and true challenger     95
KING CHARLES
    Or else what follows?
EXETER
    Bloody constraint. For if you hide the crown
    Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it.
    Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
    In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove     100
    That if requiring fail, he will compel,
    And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
    Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
    On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
    Opens his vasty jaws, and on your head     105
    Turns he the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,
    The dead men's blood, the pining maidens' groans,
    For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers
    That shall be swallowed in this controversy.
    This is his claim, his threat'ning, and my message     110
    Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,
    To whom expressly I bring greeting too.
KING CHARLES
    For us, we will consider of this further.
    Tomorrow shall you bear our full intent
    Back to our brother England.
DAUPHIN
    For the Dauphin             115
    I stand here for him. What to him from England?
EXETER
    Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt,
    And anything that may not misbecome
    The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.
    Thus says my king: an if your father's highness     120
    Do not, in grant of all demands at large,
    Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty,
    He'll call you to so hot an answer for it
    That caves and womby vaultages of France
    Shall chide your trespass and return your mock     125
    In second accent of his ordinance.
DAUPHIN
    Say if my father render fair return
    It is against my will, for I desire
    Nothing but odds with England. To that end,
    As matching to his youth and vanity     130
    I did present him with the Paris balls.
EXETER
    He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
    Were it the mistress court of mighty Europe.
    And be assured, you'll find a diff'rence,
    As we his subjects have in wonder found     135
    Between the promise of his greener days
    And these he masters now: now he weighs time
    Even to the utmost grain. That you shall read
    In your own losses, if he stay in France.
KING CHARLES    [rising]
    Tomorrow shall you know our mind at full     140
                Flourish
EXETER
    Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
    Come here himself to question our delay -
    For he is footed in this land already.
KING CHARLES
    You shall be soon dispatched with fair conditions.
    A night is but small breath and little pause     145
    To answer matters of this consequence.
                Flourish. Exeunt

ACT III  Henry V

3.1
                Alarum. Enter King Harry and the English army,
                with scaling ladders
KING HENRY
    Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
    Or close the wall up with our English dead.
    In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
    As modest stillness and humility,
    But when the blast of war blows in our ears     5
    Then imitate the action of the tiger.
    Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
    Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage.
    Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,
    Let it pry through the portage of the head     10
    Like the brass cannon, let the brow o'erwhelm it
    As fearfully as doth a galled rock
    O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
    Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
    Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide     15
    Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
    To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,
    Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,
    Fathers that like so many Alexanders
    Have in these parts from morn till even fought     20
    And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.
    Dishonour not your mothers, now attest
    That those whom you called fathers did beget you.
    Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
    And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen     25
    Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
    The mettle of your pasture, let us swear
    That you are worth your breeding - which I doubt not,
    For there is none of you so mean and base
    That hath not noble lustre in your eyes     30
    I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
    Straining upon the start. The game's afoot.
    Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
    Cry, `God for Harry! England and Saint George!'
                Alarum, and chambers go off. Exeunt


3.2
                Enter Nim, Bardolph, Ensign Pistol, and Boy
BARDOLPH
    On, on, on, on, on! To the breach, to the breach!
NIM
    Pray thee corporal, stay. The knocks are too hot,
    and for mine own part I have not a case of lives. The
    humour of it is too hot, that is the very plainsong of it   5
PISTOL
    `The plainsong' is most just, for humours do abound.
    Knocks go and come, God's vassals drop and die,
    [sings]
                         And sword and shield
                            In bloody field     10
                        Doth win immortal fame.
BOY
    Would I were in an alehouse in London. I would
    give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety.
PISTOL    [sings]
                                 And I.
                      If wishes would prevail with me     15
                    My purpose should not fail with me
                        But thither would I hie.
BOY    [sings]
                                As duly
                           But not as truly
                      As bird doth sing on bough     20
                Enter Captain Fluellen and beats them in
FLUELLEN
    God's plud! Up to the breaches, you dogs!
    Avaunt, you cullions!
PISTOL
    Be merciful, great duke, to men of mould.
    Abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage,
    Abate thy rage, great duke. Good bawcock, bate     25
    Thy rage. Use lenity, sweet chuck.
NIM
    These be good humours!
                Fluellen begins to beat Nim
    Your honour runs bad humours.
                Exeunt all but the Boy
BOY
    As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers.
    I am boy to them all three, but all they three    30
    though they should serve me, could not be man to me,
    for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man.
    For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced - by the
    means whereof a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol,
    he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword - by the     35
    means whereof a breaks words, and keeps whole
    weapons. For Nim, he hath heard that men of few
    words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say
    his prayers, lest a should be thought a coward. But his
    few bad words are matched with as few good deeds     40
    for a never broke any man's head but his own, and
    that was against a post, when he was drunk. They will
    steal anything, and call it `purchase'. Bardolph stole a
    lute case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three
    halfpence. Nim and Bardolph are sworn brothers in     45
    filching, and in Calais they stole a fire shovel. I knew
    by that piece of service the men would carry coals.
    They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as
    their gloves or their handkerchiefs - which makes much
    against my manhood, if I should take from another's     50
    pocket to put into mine, for it is plain pocketing up of
    wrongs. I must leave them, and seek some better
    service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach,
    and therefore I must cast it up.
                Exit


3.3
                Enter Captain Gower and Captain Fluellen,
                meeting
GOWER
    Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the
    mines. The Duke of Gloucester would speak with you.
FLUELLEN
    To the mines? Tell you the Duke it is not so
    good to come to the mines. For look you, the mines is
    not according to the disciplines of the war. The concavi   5
    ties of it is not sufficient. For look you, th'athversary,
    you may discuss unto the Duke, look you, is digt
    himself, four yard under, the countermines. By Cheshu, I
    think a will plow up all, if there is not better directions.
GOWER
    The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of the     10
    siege is given, is altogether directed by an Irishman, a
    very valiant gentleman, i'faith.
FLUELLEN
    It is Captain MacMorris, is it not?
GOWER
    I think it be.
FLUELLEN
    By Cheshu, he is an ass, as in the world. I will     15
    verify as much in his beard. He has no more directions
    in the true disciplines of the wars, look you - of the
    Roman disciplines - than is a puppy dog.
                Enter Captain MacMorris and Captain Jamy
GOWER
    Here a comes, and the Scots captain, Captain
    Jamy, with him              20
FLUELLEN
    Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous gentle-
    man, that is certain, and of great expedition and
    knowledge in th'anciant wars, upon my particular
    knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu, he will
    maintain his argument as well as any military man in     25
    the world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the
    Romans.
JAMY
    I say gud day, Captain Fluellen.
FLUELLEN
    Good e'en to your worship, good Captain James.
GOWER
    How now, Captain MacMorris, have you quit the     30
    mines? Have the pioneers given o'er?
MACMORRIS
    By Chrish law, 'tish ill done. The work ish
    give over, the trumpet sound the retreat. By my hand
    I swear, and my father's soul, the work ish ill done, it
    ish give over. I would have blowed up the town, so     35
    Chrish save me law, in an hour. O 'tish ill done, 'tish
    ill done, by my hand 'tish ill done.
FLUELLEN
    Captain MacMorris, I beseech you now, will
    you vouchsafe me, look you, a few disputations with
    you, as partly touching or concerning the disciplines   40
    of the war, the Roman wars, in the way of argument,
    look you, and friendly communication? Partly to satisfy
    my opinion and partly for the satisfaction, look you, of
    my mind. As touching the direction of the military
    discipline, that is the point     45
JAMY
    It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captains bath,
    and I sall quite you with gud leve, as I may pick
    occasion. That sall I, marry.
MACMORRIS
    It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me.
    The day is hot, and the weather and the wars and the     50
    King and the dukes. It is no time to discourse. The
    town is besieched. An the trumpet call us to the breach,
    and we talk and, be Chrish, do nothing, 'tis shame for
    us all. So God sa' me, 'tis shame to stand still, it is
    shame by my hand. And there is throats to be cut,      55
    and works to be done, and there ish nothing done,
    so Christ sa' me law.
JAMY
    By the mess, ere these eyes of mine take themselves
    to slumber, ay'll de gud service, or I'll lig i'th' grund
    for it. Ay owe Got a death, and I'll pay't as valorously   60
    as I may, that sall I suirely do, that is the brief and
    the long. Marry, I wad full fain heard some question
    'tween you twae.
FLUELLEN
    Captain MacMorris, I think, look you, under
    your correction, there is not many of your nation     65
MACMORRIS
    Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a
    villain and a bastard and a knave and a rascal? What
    ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?
FLUELLEN
    Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is
    meant, Captain MacMorris, peradventure I shall think    70
    you do not use me with that affability as in discretion
    you ought to use me, look you, being as good a man
    as yourself, both in the disciplines of war and in the
    derivation of my birth, and in other particularities.
MACMORRIS
    I do not know you so good a man as myself     75
    So Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.
GOWER
    Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.
JAMY
    Ah, that's a foul fault.
                A parley is sounded
GOWER
    The town sounds a parley.
FLUELLEN
    Captain MacMorris, when there is more better     80
    opportunity to be required, look you, I will be so bold
    as to tell you I know the disciplines of war. And there
    is an end.
                Exit
                Flourish. Enter King Harry and all his train
                before the gates
KING HENRY
    How yet resolves the Governor of the town?
    This is the latest parle we will admit     85
    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 batt'ry once again     90
    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 fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,
    In liberty of bloody hand shall range     95
    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
    Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends
    Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats     100
    Enlinked 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     105
    When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
    We may as bootless spend our vain command
    Upon th'enraged soldiers in their spoil
    As send precepts to the leviathan
    To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur     110
    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     115
    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 dashed to the walls     120
    Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
    Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
    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     125
    Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroyed?
                Enter Governor on the wall
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, dread King     130
    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.
                Exit Governor
    Come, Uncle Exeter,
    Go you and enter Harfleur. There remain     135
    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     140
    Tomorrow for the march are we addressed.
                The gates are opened. Flourish, and they enter
                the town


3.4
                Enter Princess Catherine and Alice,
                an old gentlewoman
CATHERINE
    Alice, tu as ete en Angleterre, et tu bien parles
    le langage.
ALICE
    Un peu, madame.
CATHERINE
    Je te prie, m'enseignez. Il faut que j'apprenne
    aA parler. Comment appelez-vous la main en anglais     5
ALICE
    La main? Elle est appelee de hand.
CATHERINE
    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 appeles de
    fingres. Oui, de fingres     10
CATHERINE
    La main, de hand, les doigts, de fingres. Je pense
    que je suis la bonne ecoliere, j'ai gagne deux mots
    d'anglais vitement. Comment appelez-vous les ongles?
ALICE
    Les ongles? Nous les appelons de nails.
CATHERINE
    De nails. Ecoutez - dites-moi si je parle bien     15
    de hand, de fingres, et de nails.
ALICE C
    'est bien dit, madame. Il est fort bon anglais.
CATHERINE
    Dites-moi l'anglais pour le bras.
ALICE
    De arma, madame.
CATHERINE
    Et le coude                 20
ALICE D
    'elbow.
CATHERINE D
    'elbow. Je m'en fais la repetition de tous les
    mots que vous m'avez appris des aA present.
ALICE
    Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.
CATHERINE
    Excusez-moi, Alice. Ecoutez: d'hand, de fingre     25
    de nails, d'arma, de bilbow.
ALICE D
    'elbow, madame.
CATHERINE
    O Seigneur Dieu, je m'en oublie! D'elbow.
    Comment appelez-vous le col?
ALICE
    De nick, madame             30
CATHERINE
    De nick. Et le menton?
ALICE
    De chin.
CATHERINE
    De sin. Le col, de nick, le menton, de sin.
ALICE
    Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en verite vous prononcez
    les mots aussi droit que les natifs d'Angleterre     35
CATHERINE
    Je ne doute point d'apprendre, par la graCce de
    Dieu, et en peu de temps.
ALICE N
    'avez-vous y deja oublie ce que je vous ai enseigne?
CATHERINE
    Non, et je reciterai aA vous promptement     40
    d'hand, de fingre, de mailes -
ALICE
    De nails, madame.
CATHERINE
    De nails, de arma, de ilbow -
ALICE
    Sauf votre honneur, d'elbow.
CATHERINE
    Ainsi dis-je. D'elbow, de nick, et de sin. Comment     45
    appelez-vous les pieds et la robe?
ALICE
    De foot, madame, et de cown.
CATHERINE
    De foot et de cown? O Seigneur Dieu! Ils sont
    les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et
    impudique, et non pour les dames d'honneur d'user. Je   50
    ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs
    de France pour tout le monde. Foh! De foot et de cown!
    Neanmoins, je reciterai une autre fois ma lecon
    ensemble. D'hand, de fingre, de nails, d'arma, d'elbow,
    de nick, de sin, de foot, de cown     55
ALICE
    Excellent, madame!
CATHERINE C
    'est assez pour une fois. Allons-nous aA dCner.
                Exeunt


3.5
                Enter King Charles the Sixth of France, the
                Dauphin, the Constable, the Duke of Bourbon,
                and others
KING CHARLES
    'Tis certain he hath passed 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     5
    The emptying of our fathers' luxury,
    Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,
    Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds
    And over-look their grafters?
BOURBON
    Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards     10
    Mort de ma vie, if they march along
    Unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom
    To buy a slobb'ry and a dirty farm
    In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.
CONSTABLE
    Dieu de batailles! Where have they this mettle     15
    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-reined jades - their barley-broth -
    Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat     20
    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     25
    `Poor' may we 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     30
    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     35
KING CHARLES
    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 Delabret, High Constable of France     40
    You Dukes of Orleans, Bourbon, and of Berri,
    Alencon, Brabant, Bar, and Burgundy,
    Jaques Chatillion, Rambures, Vaudemont,
    Beaumont, Grandpre, Roussi, and Fauconbridge,
    Foix, Lestrelles, Boucicault, and Charolais     45
    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     50
    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      55
    Sorry am I his numbers are so few,
    His soldiers sick and famished in their march,
    For I am sure when he shall see our army
    He'll drop his heart into the sink of fear
    And, fore achievement, offer us his ransom     60
KING CHARLES
    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     65
KING CHARLES
    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 severally


3.6
                Enter Captains 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     5
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 live and
    my living and my uttermost power. He is not, God be
    praised and blessed, any hurt in the world, but keeps   10
    the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline.
    There is an ensign 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     15
GOWER
    What do you call him?
FLUELLEN
    He is called Ensign Pistol.
GOWER
    I know him not.
                Enter Ensign Pistol
FLUELLEN
    Here is the man.
PISTOL
    Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours     20
    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,
    Of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate     25
    And giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel,
    That goddess blind that stands
    upon the rolling restless stone -
FLUELLEN
    By your patience, Ensign Pistol: Fortune is
    painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify
    to you that Fortune is blind. And she is painted also    30
    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    35
    of it, Fortune is an excellent moral.
PISTOL
    Fortune is Bardolph's foe and frowns on him,
    For he hath stol'n a pax, and hanged must a be.
    A damned death -
    Let gallows gape for dog, let man go free     40
    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     45
    With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.
    Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.
FLUELLEN
    Ensign Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.
PISTOL
    Why then rejoice therefor     50
FLUELLEN
    Certainly, ensign, 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
    executions. For discipline ought to be used.
PISTOL
    Die and be damned! and fico for thy friendship     55
FLUELLEN
    It is well.
PISTOL
    The fig of Spain.
FLUELLEN
    Very good.
PISTOL
    I say the fig within thy bowels and thy dirty maw.
                Exit
FLUELLEN
    Captain Gower, cannot you hear it lighten and thunder   60
GOWER
    Why, is this the ensign you told me of? 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     65
    very well. What he has spoke to me, that is well, I
    warrant you, when time is serve.
GOWER
    Why 'tis 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     70
    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 disgraced, what terms the enemy stood on - and     75
    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-washed wits is
    wonderful to be thought on. But you must learn to     80
    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     85
    tell him my mind.
                A drum is heard
    Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with
    him from the pridge.
                Enter King Harry and his poor soldiers, with
                drum and colours
    God pless your majesty.
KING HENRY
    How now, Fluellen, com'st thou from the bridge     90
FLUELLEN
    Ay, so please your majesty. The Duke of Exeter
    has very gallantly maintained 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     95
    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 th'athversary hath been very great,
    reasonable great. Marry, for my part I think the    100
    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 bubuncles 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   105
    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 here give express charge that in our marches
    through the country there be nothing compelled from     110
    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     115
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 seemed
    dead, we did but sleep. Advantage is a better soldier
    than rashness. Tell him, we could have rebuked him     120
    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     125
    proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we
    have lost, the disgrace we have digested - which in
    weight to re-answer, his pettiness would bow under.
    For our losses, his exchequer is too poor, for th'effusion
    of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a     130
    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 pronounced   135
    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     140
    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     145
    My numbers lessened, 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     150
    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     155
    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 hindered     160
    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     165
    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 hand, brother, not in theirs.
    March to the bridge. It now draws toward night     170
    Beyond the river we'll encamp ourselves,
    And on tomorrow bid them march away.
                Exeunt


3.7
                Enter the Constable, Lord Rambures, the
                Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, 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     5
ORLEANS
    Will it never be morning?
BOURBON
    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                10
BOURBON
    What a long night is this! I will not change
    my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns.
    Ah ha! He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were
    hares - le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de
    feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk, he trots    15
    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.
BOURBON
    And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for     20
    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     25
    excellent horse.
BOURBON
    It is the prince of palfreys. His neigh is like the
    bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces
    homage.
ORLEANS
    No more, cousin             30
BOURBON
    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    35
    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     40
ORLEANS
    I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress.
BOURBON
    Then did they imitate that which I composed
    to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.
ORLEANS
    Your mistress bears well.
BOURBON
    Me well, which is the prescribed praise and     45
    perfection of a good and particular mistress.
CONSTABLE
    Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress
    shrewdly shook your back.
BOURBON
    So perhaps did yours.
CONSTABLE
    Mine was not bridled        50
BOURBON
    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 judgement in horsemanship.
BOURBON
    Be warned by me then: they that ride so, and     55
    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.
BOURBON
    I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his own hair   60
CONSTABLE
    I could make as true a boast as that, if I had
    a sow to my mistress.
BOURBON
    `Le chien est retourne aA son propre vomissement,
    et la truie lavee au bourbier.' Thou makest use of
    anything                    65
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              70
BOURBON
    Some of them will fall tomorrow, I hope.
CONSTABLE
    And yet my sky shall not want.
BOURBON
    That may be, for you bear a many super-
    fluously, and 'twere more honour some were away.
CONSTABLE
    Even as your horse bears your praises, who     75
    would trot as well were some of your brags dismounted.
BOURBON
    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 faced out     80
    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     85
    have them.
BOURBON
    'Tis midnight. I'll go arm myself.
                Exit
ORLEANS
    The Duke of Bourbon longs for morning.
RAMBURES
    He longs to eat the English.
CONSTABLE
    I think he will eat all he kills     90
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     95
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     100
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
    cared not who knew it       105
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     110
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 placed! There stands your friend for the     115
    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          120
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 measured the ground?
MESSENGER
    The Lord Grandpre           125
CONSTABLE
    A valiant and most expert gentleman.
                Exit Messenger
    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-brained followers    130
    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    135
    heavy headpieces.
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 crushed like    140
    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   145
    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   150
    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  Henry V

4.1
                Enter King Harry and Duke of Gloucester, then
                Duke of Clarence
KING HENRY
    Gloucester, 'tis true that we are in great danger,
    The greater therefore should our courage be.
    Good morrow, brother Clarence. God Almighty!
    There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
    Would men observingly distil it out     5
    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     10
    Thus may we gather honey from the weed
    And make a moral of the devil himself.
                Enter Sir Thomas Erpingham
    Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham.
    A good soft pillow for that good white head
    Were better than a churlish turf of France     15
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 quickened, out of doubt     20
    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.
                He puts on Erpingham's cloak
    Brothers both,
    Commend me to the princes in our camp     25
    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          30
    Go with my brothers to my lords of England.
    I and my bosom must debate awhile,
    And then I would no other company.
ERPINGHAM
    The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry.
KING HENRY
    God-a-mercy, old heart, thou speak'st cheerfully     35
                Exeunt all but King Harry
                Enter Pistol to him
PISTOL
    Qui vous laA?
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     40
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     45
    A lad of life, an imp of fame,
    Of parents good, of fist most valiant.
    I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heartstring
    I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?
KING HENRY
    Harry le roi                50
PISTOL
    Leroi? 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     55
    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         60
PISTOL
    The fico for thee then.
KING HENRY
    I thank you. God be with you.
PISTOL
    My name is Pistol called.
KING HENRY
    It sorts well with your fierceness.
                Exit Pistol
                Enter Captains Fluellen and Gower severally.
                King Harry stands apart
GOWER
    Captain Fluellen            65
FLUELLEN
    So! In the name of Jesu Christ, speak fewer. It
    is the greatest admiration in the universal world, when
    the true and ancient prerogatifs 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   70
    you, that there is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-babble 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         75
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     80
GOWER
    I will speak lower.
FLUELLEN
    I pray you and beseech you that you will.
                Exeunt Fluellen and Gower
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     85
    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     90
    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 gentle     95
    man. I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?
KING HENRY
    Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look
    to be washed 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     100
    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     105
    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     110
    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     115
    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     120
    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     125
    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     130
    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 chopped off in a battle shall join     135
    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   140
    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     145
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     150
    money, be assailed by robbers, and die in many
    irreconciled 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   155
    master of his servant, for they purpose not their deaths
    when they propose their services. Besides, there is no
    king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the
    arbitrament of swords, can try it out with all unspotted
    soldiers. Some, peradventure, have on them the guilt   160
    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    165
    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
    punished for before-breach of the King's laws, in now
    the King's quarrel. Where they feared the death, they   170
    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   175
    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     180
    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.
BATES
    'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon     185
    his own head. The King is not to answer it. 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 ransomed   190
WILLIAMS
    Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully, but
    when our throats are cut he may be ransomed, and
    we ne'er the wiser.
KING HENRY
    If I live to see it, I will never trust his word
    after                       195
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    200
    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                205
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 darest acknowledge
    it, I will make it my quarrel.
WILLIAMS
    Here's my glove. Give me another of thine     210
KING HENRY
    There.
                They exchange gloves
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     215
WILLIAMS
    Thou darest as well be hanged.
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     220
    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    225
    be a clipper.
                Exeunt soldiers
    Upon the King.
    `Let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our care-full
        wives,
    Our children, and our sins, lay on the King.'
    We must bear all. O hard condition     230
    Twin-born with greatness: subject to the breath
    Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel
    But his own wringing. What infinite heartsease
    Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?
    And what have kings that privates have not too     235
    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     240
    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 feared     245
    Than they in fearing.
    What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
    But poisoned flattery? O be sick, great greatness,
    And bid thy ceremony give thee cure.
    Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out     250
    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     255
    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     260
    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     265
    Who with a body filled and vacant mind
    Gets him to rest, crammed 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     270
    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     275
    Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
    Had the forehand 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     280
    Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
                Enter Sir Thomas 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       285
                Exit
KING HENRY
    O God of battles, steel my soldiers' hearts.
    Possess them not with fear. Take from them now
    The sense of reck'ning, ere th'opposed numbers
    Pluck their hearts from them. Not today, O Lord,
    O not today, think not upon the fault     290
    My father made in compassing the crown.
    I Richard's body have interred new,
    And on it have bestowed more contrite tears
    Than from it issued forced drops of blood.
    Five hundred poor have I in yearly pay     295
    Who twice a day their withered 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     300
    Since that my penitence comes after ill,
    Imploring pardon.
                Enter the Duke of 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     305
                Exeunt


4.2
                Enter the Dukes of Bourbon and Orleans,
                and Lord Rambures
ORLEANS
    The sun doth gild our armour. Up, my lords!
BOURBON
    Monte cheval! My horse! Varlet, lacquais! Ha!
ORLEANS
    O brave spirit!
BOURBON
    Via les eaux et terre!
ORLEANS
    Rien plus? L'air et feu     5
BOURBON
    Cieux, cousin Orleans!
                Enter the Constable
    Now, my Lord Constable!
CONSTABLE
    Hark how our steeds for present service neigh.
BOURBON
    Mount them and make incision in their hides,
    That their hot blood may spin in English eyes     10
    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 embattled, you French peers.
CONSTABLE
    To horse, you gallant princes, straight to horse     15
    Do but behold yon poor and starved band,
    And your fair show shall suck away their souls,
    Leaving them but the shells and husks of men.
    There is not work enough for all our hands,
    Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins     20
    To give each naked curtal-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     25
    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     30
    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     35
    For our approach shall so much dare the field
    That England shall couch down in fear and yield.
                Enter Lord Grandpre
GRANDPRE
    Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?
    Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
    Ill-favouredly become the morning field     40
    Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose
    And our air shakes them passing scornfully.
    Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggared host
    And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.
    The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks     45
    With torchstaves in their hands, 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 palled dull mouths the gimmaled bit
    Lies foul with chewed grass, still and motionless     50
    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     55
CONSTABLE
    They have said their prayers, and they stay for death.
BOURBON
    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 guidon. To the field     60
    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


4.3
                Enter the Dukes of Gloucester, Clarence, and
                Exeter, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, and
                Sir Thomas Erpingham, with all the host
GLOUCESTER
    Where is the King?
CLARENCE
    The King himself is rode to view their battle.
WARWICK
    Of fighting men they have full threescore thousand.
EXETER
    There's five to one. Besides, they all are fresh.
SALISBURY
    God's arm strike with us! 'Tis a fearful odds     5
    God b'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 Clarence,
    My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord Exeter,
    And  (to Warwick)    my kind kinsman, warriors all,
        adieu                   10
CLARENCE
    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 framed of the firm truth of valour.
                Exit Salisbury
CLARENCE
    He is as full of valour as of kindness     15
    Princely in both.
                Enter King Harry, behind
WARWICK
    O that we now had here
    But one ten thousand of those men in England
    That do no work today.
KING HENRY
    What's he that wishes so?
    My cousin Warwick? No, my fair cousin.
    If we are marked to die, we are enough     20
    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     25
    It ernes 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     30
    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 presently through my host
    That he which hath no stomach to this fight     35
    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 called the Feast of Crispian     40
    He that outlives this day and comes safe home
    Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named
    And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
    He that shall see this day and live t'old age
    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours     45
    And say, `Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.'
    Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars
    And say, `These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
    Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot,
    But he'll remember, with advantages     50
    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     55
    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     60
    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 accursed they were not here     65
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
                Enter the Earl of 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     70
KING HENRY
    All things are ready if our minds be so.
WARWICK
    Perish the man whose mind is backward now.
KING HENRY
    Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz?
WARWICK
    God's will, my liege, would you and I alone,
    Without more help, could fight this royal battle     75
KING HENRY
    Why now thou hast unwished 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     80
    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     85
    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     90
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 lived, was killed with hunting him     95
    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     100
    They shall be famed. 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     105
    That, being dead, like to the bullets 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     110
    Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirched
    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     115
    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, as they will pluck
    The gay new coats o'er your French soldiers' heads,
    And turn them out of service. If they do this     120
    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     125
    Shall yield them little. Tell the Constable.
MONTJOY
    I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well.
    Thou never shalt hear herald any more.
KING HENRY
    I fear thou wilt once more come for a ransom.
                Exit Montjoy
                Enter the Duke of York
YORK
    My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg     130
    The leading of the vanguard.
KING HENRY
    Take it, brave York. - Now soldiers, march away,
    And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day.
                Exeunt


4.4
                Alarum. Excursions. Enter Pistol,
                a French soldier, and the Boy
PISTOL
    Yield, cur.
FRENCH SOLDIER
    Je pense que vous etes le gentilhomme de
    bon qualite.
PISTOL
    Qualite? `Calin o custure me!'
    Art thou a gentleman? What is thy name? Discuss     5
FRENCH SOLDIER
    O Seigneur Dieu!
PISTOL    [aside]
    O Seigneur Dew should be a gentleman. -
    Perpend my words, O Seigneur Dew, and mark:
    O Seigneur Dew, thou diest, on point of fox,
    Except, O Seigneur, thou do give to me     10
    Egregious ransom.
FRENCH SOLDIER
    O prenez misericorde! Ayez pitie 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     15
FRENCH SOLDIER
    Est-il impossible d'echapper la force de ton bras?
PISTOL
    Brass, cur? Thou damned and luxurious mountain  goat,
    Offer'st me brass?
FRENCH SOLDIER
    O pardonne-moi              20
PISTOL
    Sayst thou me so? Is that a ton of moys? -
    Come hither boy. Ask me this slave in French
    What is his name.
BOY
    Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele?
FRENCH SOLDIER
    Monsieur le Fer             25
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     30
PISTOL
    Bid him prepare, for I will cut his throat.
FRENCH SOLDIER
    Que dit-il, monsieur?
BOY
    Il me commande a vous dire que vous faites vous pret,
    car ce soldat ici est dispose tout a cette heure de couper
    votre gorge                 35
PISTOL
    Oui, couper la gorge, par ma foi,
    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.   40
    Gardez ma vie, et je vous donnerai deux cents ecus.
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              45
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, neanmoins, pour les ecus que vous lui ci
    promettez, il est content a vous donner la liberte,    50
    le franchisement.
FRENCH SOLDIER    (kneeling)
    Sur mes genoux je vous
    donne mille remerciements, et je m'estime heureux que j'ai
    tombe entre les mains d'un chevalier, comme je pense, le plus
    brave, vaillant, et treis-distingue seigneur d'Angleterre    55
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     60
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   65
    the greatest sound.' Bardolph and Nim had ten times
    more valour than this roaring devil i'th' old play, that
    everyone may pare his nails with a wooden dagger,
    and they are both hanged, and so would this be, if he
    durst steal anything adventurously. I must stay with     70
    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


4.5
                Enter the Constable, the Dukes of Orleans and
                Bourbon, and Lord Rambures
CONSTABLE
    O diable!
ORLEANS
    O Seigneur! Le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!
BOURBON
    Mort de ma vie! All is confounded, all.
    Reproach and everlasting shame
    Sits mocking in our plumes     5
                A short alarum
    O mechante fortune! -  (To Rambures)   Do not run away.
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. Once more back again     10
    And he that will not follow Bourbon now,
    Let him go home, and with his cap in hand
    Like a base leno hold the chamber door
    Whilst by a slave no gentler than my dog
    His fairest daughter is contaminated     15
CONSTABLE
    Disorder that hath spoiled us friend us now.
    Let us on heaps go offer up our lives.
BOURBON
    I'll to the throng.
    Let life be short, else shame will be too long.
                Exeunt


4.6
                Alarum. Enter King Harry 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.
                Enter the Duke of Exeter
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     5
    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,
    Yokefellow to his honour-owing wounds,
    The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies     10
    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,
    And cries aloud, `Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk     15
    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 cheered him up     20
    He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,
    And with a feeble grip 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 kissed his lips     25
    And so espoused to death, with blood he sealed
    A testament of noble-ending love.
    The pretty and sweet manner of it forced
    Those waters from me which I would have stopped.
    But I had not so much of man in me     30
    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     35
    The French have reinforced their scattered men.
    Then every soldier kill his prisoners.
                The soldiers kill their prisoners
    Give the word through.
PISTOL
    Coup' la gorge.
                Exeunt


4.7
                Enter Captains 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 offert. In your
    conscience now, is it not?
GOWER
    'Tis certain there's not a boy left alive. And the     5
    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 caused every soldier to cut his
    prisoner's throat. O 'tis a gallant king     10
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     15
    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   20
FLUELLEN
    I think it is e'en Macedon where Alexander is
    porn. I tell you, captain, if you look in the maps of the
    world 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     25
    and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth. It is
    called 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     30
    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   35
    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 killed
    any of his friends.
FLUELLEN
    It is not well done, mark you now, to take the     40
    tales out of my mouth ere it is made an end and
    finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of
    it. As Alexander killed his friend Cleitus, being in his
    ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth, being in
    his right wits and his good judgements, turned away     45
    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     50
    at Monmouth.
GOWER
    Here comes his majesty.
                Alarum. Enter King Harry and the English army,
                with the Duke of Bourbon, the Duke of Orleans,
                and other 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 yon hill     55
    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     60
    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 used to be     65
KING HENRY
    How now, what means this, herald? Know'st thou not
    That I have fined these bones of mine for ransom?
    Com'st thou again for ransom?
MONTJOY
    No, great King.
    I come to thee for charitable licence,
    That we may wander o'er this bloody field     70
    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 drowned and soaked in mercenary blood.
    So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs     75
    In blood of princes, and our wounded steeds
    Fret fetlock-deep in gore, and with wild rage
    Jerk 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     80
    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     85
    What is this castle called 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 Crispian.
FLUELLEN
    Your grandfather of famous memory, an't     90
    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     95
    is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in
    a 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    100
    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     105
    that. God 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 world    110
    I need not to be ashamed of your majesty, praised be
    God, so long as your majesty is an honest man.
KING HENRY
    God keep me so.
                Enter Williams with a glove in his cap
    Our heralds go with him.
    Bring me just notice of the numbers dead
    On both our parts.
                Exeunt Montjoy, Gower, and an English
                herald
    Call yonder fellow hither     115
EXETER
    Soldier, you must come to the King.
KING HENRY
    Soldier, why wearest 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     120
KING HENRY
    An Englishman?
WILLIAMS
    An't please your majesty, a rascal, that
    swaggered with me last night - who, if a live, and ever
    dare to challenge this glove, I have sworn to take him
    a box o'th' ear, or if I can see my glove in his    125
    cap which he swore, as he was a soldier, he would wear
    if a lived - 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     130
    your majesty, in my conscience.
KING HENRY
    It may be his enemy is a gentleman of great
    sort, quite from the answer of his degree.
FLUELLEN
    Though he be as good a gentleman as the devil is,
    as Lucifer and Beelzebub himself, it is necessary    135
    look your grace, that he keep his vow and his oath. If
    he be perjured, see you now, his reputation is as arrant
    a villain and a Jack-sauce as ever his black shoe trod
    upon God's ground and his earth, in my conscience, law   140
KING HENRY
    Then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meetest the fellow.
WILLIAMS
    So I will, my liege, as I live.
KING HENRY
    Who serv'st thou under?
WILLIAMS
    Under Captain Gower, my liege     145
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    (giving him Williams's other glove)
    Here                        150
    Fluellen, wear thou this favour for me and stick it in
    thy cap. When Alencon and myself were down together,
    I plucked this glove from his helm. If any man challenge
    this, he is a friend to Alencon and an enemy to our
    person. If thou encounter any such, apprehend him     155
    an thou dost me love.
FLUELLEN
    Your grace does me as great honours as can
    be desired in the hearts of his subjects. I would fain see
    the man that has but two legs that shall find himself
    aggriefed at this glove, that is all, but I would fain see   160
    it once. An't please God of his grace, that I would see.
KING HENRY
    Know'st thou Gower?
FLUELLEN
    He is my dear friend, an't please you.
KING HENRY
    Pray thee, go seek him and bring him to my tent     165
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'th' ear     170
    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     175
    For I do know Fluellen valiant
    And touched 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     180
                Exeunt severally


4.8
                Enter Captain Gower and Williams
WILLIAMS
    I warrant it is to knight you, captain.
                Enter Captain 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                 5
WILLIAMS
    Sir, know you this glove?
FLUELLEN
    Know the glove? I know the glove is a glove.
WILLIAMS    [plucking the glove from Fluellen's cap]
    I know
    this, and thus I challenge it.
                He strikes Fluellen
FLUELLEN
    God's plood, and his! An arrant traitor as any's     10
    in the universal world, or in France, or in England.
GOWER    (to Williams)
    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     15
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 Alencon's.
                Enter the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of
                Gloucester
WARWICK
    How now, how now, what's the matter     20
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.
                Enter King Harry and the Duke of Exeter
    Here is his majesty.
KING HENRY
    How now, what is the matter     25
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 Alencon.
WILLIAMS
    My liege, this was my glove - here is the fellow of it -
    and he that I gave it to in change promised to     30
    wear it in his cap. I promised 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     35
    it is. I hope your majesty is pear me testimony and
    witness, and will avouchment that this is the glove of
    Alencon that your majesty is give me, in your
    conscience now.
KING HENRY
    Give me thy glove, soldier. Look, here is the     40
    fellow of it.
    'Twas I indeed thou promised'st to strike,
    And thou hast given me most bitter terms.
FLUELLEN
    An't please your majesty, let his neck answer
    for it, if there is any martial law in the world     45
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     50
WILLIAMS
    Your majesty came not like yourself. You
    appeared to me but as a common man. Witness the
    night, your garments, your lowliness. And what your
    highness suffered under that shape, I beseech you take it
    for your own fault, and not mine, for had you been as    55
    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     60
    Till I do challenge it. - Give him the 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   65
    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     70
    you be so pashful? Your shoes is not so good. 'Tis a
    good shilling, I warrant you, or I will change it.
                Enter an English Herald
KING HENRY
    Now, herald, are the dead numbered?
HERALD
    Here is the number of the slaughtered French.
KING HENRY
    What prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle     75
EXETER
    Charles, Duke of Orleans, nephew to the King,
    Jean, 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     80
    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     85
    Five hundred were but yesterday dubbed 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     90
    The names of those their nobles that lie dead:
    Charles Delabret, High Constable of France,
    Jaques of Chatillon, Admiral of France,
    The Master of the Crossbows, Lord Rambures,
    Great-Master of France, the brave Sir Guiscard Dauphin   95
    Jean, Duke of Alencon, Antony, Duke of Brabant,
    The brother to the Duke of Burgundy,
    And Edouard, Duke of Bar, of lusty earls,
    Grandpre and Roussi, Fauconbridge and Foix,
    Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrelles     100
    Here was a royal fellowship of death.
    Where is the number of our English dead?
                He is given another paper
    Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,
    Sir Richard Keighley, Davy Gam Esquire,
    None else of name, and of all other men     105
    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     110
    On one part and on th'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     115
    Which is his only.
FLUELLEN
    Is it not lawful, an't please your majesty, to tell
    how many is killed?
KING HENRY
    Yes, captain, but with this acknowledgement,
    That God fought for us      120
FLUELLEN
    Yes, in 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 enclosed in clay,
    And then to Calais, and to England then     125
    Where ne'er from France arrived more-happy men.
                Exeunt

ACT V  Henry V

5.1
                Enter Captain Gower and Captain Fluellen,
                with a leek in his cap and a cudgel
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     5
    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     10
    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 Ensign Pistol
GOWER
    Why, here a comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.
FLUELLEN
    'Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey     15
    cocks. - God pless you Ensign 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     20
FLUELLEN
    I peseech you heartily, scurvy 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    25
    you to eat it.
PISTOL
    Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.
FLUELLEN
    There is one goat for you.  (He strikes Pistol)
    Will you be so good, scald knave, as eat it?
PISTOL
    Base Trojan, thou shalt die     30
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.  (He strikes
    him)    You called me yesterday `mountain-squire', but I
    will make you today a `squire of low degree'. I pray     35
    you, fall to. If you can mock a leek you can eat a leek.
                He strikes him
GOWER
    Enough, captain, you have astonished him.
FLUELLEN
    By Jesu, I will make him eat some part of my
    leek, or I will peat his pate four days and four nights. -
    Bite, I pray you. It is good for your green wound    40
    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     45
                Fluellen threatens him
    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     50
    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     55
    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     60
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 b'wi' you, and keep you, and heal
    your pate.
                Exit
PISTOL
    All hell shall stir for this     65
GOWER
    Go, go, you are a counterfeit 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   70
    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     75
                Exit
PISTOL
    Doth Fortune play the hussy with me now?
    News have I that my Nell is dead
    I'th' spital of a malady of France,
    And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.
    Old I do wax, and from my weary limbs     80
    Honour is cudgelled. 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 cudgelled scars,
    And swear I got them in the Gallia wars     85
                Exit


5.2
                Enter at one door King Harry, tDukes of Exeter
                and Clarence, Earl of Warwick, and other
                lords, at another, King Charles the Sixth of France,
                Queen Isabel, Duke of Burgundy, and other
                French, among them Princess Catherine and Alice
KING HENRY
    Peace to this meeting, wherefor 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 Catherine,
    And as a branch and member of this royalty     5
    By whom this great assembly is contrived,
    We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy.
    And princes French, and peers, health to you all.
KING CHARLES
    Right joyous are we to behold your face.
    Most worthy brother England, fairly met     10
    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     15
    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     20
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 laboured
    With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours     25
    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 prevailed
    That face to face and royal eye to eye     30
    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     35
    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 chased,
    And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
    Corrupting in it own fertility     40
    Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
    Unpruned dies, her hedges even-plashed
    Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair
    Put forth disordered twigs, her fallow leas
    The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory     45
    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     50
    Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems
    But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
    Losing both beauty and utility.
    An all our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
    Defective in their natures, grow to wildness     55
    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     60
    To swearing and stern looks, diffused 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     65
    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 th'imperfections
    Which you have cited, you must buy that peace     70
    With full accord to all our just demands,
    Whose tenors and particular effects
    You have enscheduled 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        75
    Which you before so urged, lies in his answer.
KING CHARLES
    I have but with a cursitory eye
    O'erglanced the articles. Pleaseth your grace
    To appoint some of your council presently
    To sit with us once more, with better heed     80
    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 Huntingdon, go with the King     85
    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     90
    Go with the princes, or stay here with us?
QUEEN
    Our gracious brother, I will go with them.
    Haply a woman's voice may do some good
    When articles too nicely urged be stood on.
KING HENRY
    Yet leave our cousin Catherine here with us     95
    She is our capital demand, comprised
    Within the fore-rank of our articles.
QUEEN
    She hath good leave.
                Exeunt all but King Harry, Catherine, and Alice
KING HENRY
    Fair Catherine, and most fair,
    Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms
    Such as will enter at a lady's ear     100
    And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?
CATHERINE
    Your majesty shall mock at me. I cannot speak
    your England.
KING HENRY
    O fair Catherine, if you will love me soundly
    with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you     105
    confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you
    like me, Kate?
CATHERINE
    Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is `like me'.
KING HENRY
    An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel   110
CATHERINE    (to Alice)
    Que dit-il? - que je suis semblable a les anges?
ALICE
    Oui, vraiment - sauf votre grace - ainsi dit-il.
KING HENRY
    I said so, dear Catherine, and I must not
    blush to affirm it          115
CATHERINE
    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 tongeus of de mans is be full of deceits   120
    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    125
    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     130
    bargain. How say you, lady?
CATHERINE
    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     135
    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    140
    for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could
    lay on like a butcher, and sit like a jackanapes, 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   145
    till urged, 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     150
    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 livest, 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   155
    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   160
    will turn white, a curled 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   165
    such a one, take me, and take me, take a soldier, take
    a soldier, take a king. And what sayst thou then to my
    love? Speak, my fair - and fairly, I pray thee.
CATHERINE
    Is it possible dat I sould love de ennemi of France     170
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     175
    then yours is France, and you are mine.
CATHERINE
    I cannot tell vat 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   180
    Je quand suis le possesseur de France, et quand vous avez
    le possession de moi - let me see, what then? Saint Denis
    be my speed! - donc voCtre est France, et vous etes mienne.
    It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as
    to speak so much more French. I shall never move    185
    thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me.
CATHERINE
    Sauf votre honneur, le francais 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     190
    be granted to be much at one. But Kate, dost thou
    understand thus much English? Canst thou love me?
CATHERINE
    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     195
    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    200
    thou be'st mine, Kate - as I have a saving faith within me
    tells me thou shalt - I get thee with scrambling, 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,    205
    that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the
    beard? Shall we not? What sayst thou, my fair flower-de-luce?
CATHERINE
    I do not know dat.
KING HENRY
    No, 'tis hereafter to know, but now to     210
    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 Catherine du monde, mon tres
    chere et divine deesse      215
CATHERINE
    Your majeste 'ave faux 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   220
    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    225
    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     230
    me, better and better, and therefore tell me, most fair
    Catherine, 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   235
    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   240
    Come, your answer in broken music - for thy voice is
    music and thy English broken. Therefore, queen of all,
    Catherine, break thy mind to me in broken English:
    wilt thou have me?
CATHERINE
    Dat is as it shall please de roi mon pere     245
KING HENRY
    Nay, it will please him well, Kate. It shall
    please him, Kate.
CATHERINE
    Den it sall also content me.
KING HENRY
    Upon that I kiss your hand, and I call you my queen     250
CATHERINE
    Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je
    ne veux point que vous abbaissez votre grandeur en baisant
    la main d'une de votre seigneurie indigne serviteur.
    Excusez-moi, je vous supplie, mon treis-puissant seigneur.
KING HENRY
    Then I will kiss your lips, Kate     255
CATHERINE
    Les dames et demoiselles pour etre baisees devant
    leurs noces, il n'est pas la coutume de France.
KING HENRY
    Madam my interpreter, what says she?
ALICE
    Dat it is not be de facon pour les ladies of France     260
    I cannot tell vat is baiser en Anglish.
KING HENRY
    To kiss.
ALICE
    Your majeste 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     265
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   270
    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.
    (He kisses her)   You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate.
    There is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than   275
    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 King Charles, Queen Isabel, the Duke of
                Burgundy, and the French and English lords
BURGUNDY
    God save your majesty. My royal cousin, teach
    you our princess English     280
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    285
    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    290
    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 rosed over with the
    virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of
    a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were    295
    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 excused, my lord, when they
    see not what they do        300
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
    summered and warm kept, are like flies at     305
    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,   310
    in the latter end, and she must be blind too.
BURGUNDY
    As love is, my lord, before that 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   315
    my way.
KING CHARLES
    Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively,
    the cities turned into a maid - for they are all girdled
    with maiden walls that war hath never entered.
KING HENRY
    Shall Kate be my wife       320
KING CHARLES
    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.
KING CHARLES
    We have consented to all terms of reason     325
KING HENRY
    Is't so, my lords of England?
WARWICK
    The King hath granted every article:
    His daughter first, and so in sequel all,
    According to their firm proposed natures.
EXETER
    Only he hath not yet subscribed this     330
    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:
    [reads]    in French, Notre tres cher fils Henri, Roi
    d'Angleterre, Heritier de France, and thus in Latin     335
    Praeclarissimus filius noster Henricus, Rex Angliae et
    Haeres Franciae.
KING CHARLES
    Nor this I have not, brother, so denied,
    But your request shall make me let it pass.
KING HENRY
    I pray you then, in love and dear alliance     340
    Let that one article rank with the rest,
    And thereupon give me your daughter.
KING CHARLES
    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     345
    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     350
ALL
    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     355
    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     360
    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     365
    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 prosp'rous be.
                Sennet. Exeunt


EPILOGUE
                Enter Chorus
CHORUS
    Thus far with rough and all-unable pen
    Our bending author hath pursued 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     5
    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 crowned king
    Of France and England, did this king succeed     10
    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