Part 63

KING HENRY. Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back, And tell thy King I do not seek him now, But could be willing to march on to Calais Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth, Though ’tis no wisdom to confess so much Unto an enemy of craft and vantage, My people are with sickness much enfeebled, My numbers lessen’d, and those few I have Almost no better than so many French; Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald, I thought upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God, That I do brag thus! This your air of France Hath blown that vice in me. I must repent. Go therefore, tell thy master here I am; My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk, My army but a weak and sickly guard; Yet, God before, tell him we will come on, Though France himself and such another neighbour Stand in our way. There’s for thy labour, Montjoy. Go, bid thy master well advise himself. If we may pass, we will; if we be hind’red, We shall your tawny ground with your red blood Discolour; and so, Montjoy, fare you well. The sum of all our answer is but this: We would not seek a battle, as we are; Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it. So tell your master.

MONTJOY. I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.

[_Exit._]

GLOUCESTER. I hope they will not come upon us now.

KING HENRY. We are in God’s hands, brother, not in theirs. March to the bridge; it now draws toward night. Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves, And on tomorrow bid them march away.

[_Exeunt._]

SCENE VII. The French camp, near Agincourt.

Enter the Constable of France, the Lord Rambures, Orleans, Dauphin with others.

CONSTABLE. Tut! I have the best armour of the world. Would it were day!

ORLEANS. You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due.

CONSTABLE. It is the best horse of Europe.

ORLEANS. Will it never be morning?

DAUPHIN. My Lord of Orleans, and my Lord High Constable, you talk of horse and armour?

ORLEANS. You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.

DAUPHIN. What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ch’ha! He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; _le cheval volant_, the Pegasus, _qui a les narines de feu!_ When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk. He trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.

ORLEANS. He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.

DAUPHIN. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus. He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him. He is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.

CONSTABLE. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.

DAUPHIN. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.

ORLEANS. No more, cousin.

DAUPHIN. Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey. It is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all. ’Tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign’s sovereign to ride on; and for the world, familiar to us and unknown, to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: “Wonder of nature,”—

ORLEANS. I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s mistress.

DAUPHIN. Then did they imitate that which I compos’d to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.

ORLEANS. Your mistress bears well.

DAUPHIN. Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular mistress.

CONSTABLE. Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back.

DAUPHIN. So perhaps did yours.

CONSTABLE. Mine was not bridled.

DAUPHIN. O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode, like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off, and in your strait strossers.

CONSTABLE. You have good judgment in horsemanship.

DAUPHIN. Be warn’d by me, then; they that ride so and ride not warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my mistress.

CONSTABLE. I had as lief have my mistress a jade.

DAUPHIN. I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his own hair.

CONSTABLE. I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to my mistress.

DAUPHIN. “_Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier_.” Thou mak’st use of anything.

CONSTABLE. Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose.

RAMBURES. My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent tonight, are those stars or suns upon it?

CONSTABLE. Stars, my lord.

DAUPHIN. Some of them will fall tomorrow, I hope.

CONSTABLE. And yet my sky shall not want.

DAUPHIN. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honour some were away.

CONSTABLE. Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted.

DAUPHIN. Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it never be day? I will trot tomorrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English faces.

CONSTABLE. I will not say so, for fear I should be fac’d out of my way. But I would it were morning; for I would fain be about the ears of the English.

RAMBURES. Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?

CONSTABLE. You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them.

DAUPHIN. ’Tis midnight; I’ll go arm myself.

[_Exit._]

ORLEANS. The Dauphin longs for morning.

RAMBURES. He longs to eat the English.

CONSTABLE. I think he will eat all he kills.

ORLEANS. By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant prince.

CONSTABLE. Swear by her foot that she may tread out the oath.

ORLEANS. He is simply the most active gentleman of France.

CONSTABLE. Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.

ORLEANS. He never did harm, that I heard of.

CONSTABLE. Nor will do none tomorrow. He will keep that good name still.

ORLEANS. I know him to be valiant.

CONSTABLE. I was told that by one that knows him better than you.

ORLEANS. What’s he?

CONSTABLE. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he car’d not who knew it.

ORLEANS. He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.

CONSTABLE. By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but his lackey. ’Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.

ORLEANS. “Ill will never said well.”

CONSTABLE. I will cap that proverb with “There is flattery in friendship.”

ORLEANS. And I will take up that with “Give the devil his due.”

CONSTABLE. Well plac’d. There stands your friend for the devil; have at the very eye of that proverb with “A pox of the devil.”

ORLEANS. You are the better at proverbs, by how much “A fool’s bolt is soon shot.”

CONSTABLE. You have shot over.

ORLEANS. ’Tis not the first time you were overshot.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER. My Lord High Constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents.

CONSTABLE. Who hath measur’d the ground?

MESSENGER. The Lord Grandpré.

CONSTABLE. A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day! Alas, poor Harry of England, he longs not for the dawning as we do.

ORLEANS. What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of England, to mope with his fat-brain’d followers so far out of his knowledge!

CONSTABLE. If the English had any apprehension, they would run away.

ORLEANS. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces.

RAMBURES. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures. Their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.

ORLEANS. Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads crush’d like rotten apples! You may as well say, that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

CONSTABLE. Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives; and then, give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.

ORLEANS. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.

CONSTABLE. Then shall we find tomorrow they have only stomachs to eat and none to fight. Now is it time to arm. Come, shall we about it?

ORLEANS. It is now two o’clock; but, let me see, by ten We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.

[_Exeunt._]

ACT IV

Enter Chorus.

CHORUS. Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fix’d sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other’s watch; Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation. The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, And the third hour of drowsy morning name. Proud of their numbers and secure in soul, The confident and over-lusty French Do the low-rated English play at dice; And chide the cripple tardy-gaited Night Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp So tediously away. The poor condemned English, Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires Sit patiently and inly ruminate The morning’s danger; and their gesture sad, Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats, Presented them unto the gazing moon So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold The royal captain of this ruin’d band Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, Let him cry, “Praise and glory on his head!” For forth he goes and visits all his host, Bids them good morrow with a modest smile, And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. Upon his royal face there is no note How dread an army hath enrounded him; Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour Unto the weary and all-watched night, But freshly looks, and over-bears attaint With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; That every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. A largess universal like the sun His liberal eye doth give to everyone, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night. And so our scene must to the battle fly, Where—O for pity!—we shall much disgrace With four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-dispos’d in brawl ridiculous, The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see, Minding true things by what their mock’ries be.

[_Exit._]

SCENE I. The English camp at Agincourt.

Enter King Henry, Bedford and Gloucester.

KING HENRY. Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger; The greater therefore should our courage be. Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty! There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out; For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers, Which is both healthful and good husbandry. Besides, they are our outward consciences, And preachers to us all, admonishing That we should dress us fairly for our end. Thus may we gather honey from the weed, And make a moral of the devil himself.

Enter Erpingham.

Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham: A good soft pillow for that good white head Were better than a churlish turf of France.

ERPINGHAM. Not so, my liege; this lodging likes me better, Since I may say, “Now lie I like a king.”

KING HENRY. ’Tis good for men to love their present pains Upon example; so the spirit is eased; And when the mind is quick’ned, out of doubt, The organs, though defunct and dead before, Break up their drowsy grave and newly move, With casted slough and fresh legerity. Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers both, Commend me to the princes in our camp; Do my good morrow to them, and anon Desire them all to my pavilion.

GLOUCESTER. We shall, my liege.

ERPINGHAM. Shall I attend your Grace?

KING HENRY. No, my good knight; Go with my brothers to my lords of England. I and my bosom must debate a while, And then I would no other company.

ERPINGHAM. The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!

[_Exeunt all but King._]

KING HENRY. God-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak’st cheerfully.

Enter Pistol.

PISTOL. _Qui vous là?_

KING HENRY. A friend.

PISTOL. Discuss unto me; art thou officer? Or art thou base, common, and popular?

KING HENRY. I am a gentleman of a company.

PISTOL. Trail’st thou the puissant pike?

KING HENRY. Even so. What are you?

PISTOL. As good a gentleman as the Emperor.

KING HENRY. Then you are a better than the King.

PISTOL. The King’s a bawcock, and a heart of gold, A lad of life, an imp of fame; Of parents good, of fist most valiant. I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?

KING HENRY. Harry le Roy.

PISTOL. Le Roy! a Cornish name. Art thou of Cornish crew?

KING HENRY. No, I am a Welshman.

PISTOL. Know’st thou Fluellen?

KING HENRY. Yes.

PISTOL. Tell him I’ll knock his leek about his pate Upon Saint Davy’s day.

KING HENRY. Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest he knock that about yours.

PISTOL. Art thou his friend?

KING HENRY. And his kinsman too.

PISTOL. The _fico_ for thee, then!

KING HENRY. I thank you. God be with you!

PISTOL. My name is Pistol call’d.

[_Exit._]

KING HENRY. It sorts well with your fierceness.

Enter Fluellen and Gower.

GOWER. Captain Fluellen!

FLUELLEN. So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak lower. It is the greatest admiration in the universal world, when the true and anchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept. If you would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great, you shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle taddle nor pibble pabble in Pompey’s camp. I warrant you, you shall find the ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it, and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise.

GOWER. Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.

FLUELLEN. If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? In your own conscience, now?

GOWER. I will speak lower.

FLUELLEN. I pray you and beseech you that you will.

[_Exeunt Gower and Fluellen._]

KING HENRY. Though it appear a little out of fashion, There is much care and valour in this Welshman.

Enter three soldiers, John Bates, Alexander Court and Michael Williams.

COURT. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder?

BATES. I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the approach of day.

WILLIAMS. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?

KING HENRY. A friend.

WILLIAMS. Under what captain serve you?

KING HENRY. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.

WILLIAMS. A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?

KING HENRY. Even as men wreck’d upon a sand, that look to be wash’d off the next tide.

BATES. He hath not told his thought to the King?

KING HENRY. No; nor it is not meet he should. For though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of fears as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are; yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.

BATES. He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as cold a night as ’tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.

KING HENRY. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King: I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.

BATES. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved.

KING HENRY. I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men’s minds. Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.

WILLIAMS. That’s more than we know.

BATES. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the King’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.

WILLIAMS. But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp’d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, “We died at such a place”; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

KING HENRY. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him; or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconcil’d iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation. But this is not so. The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of Peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here men are punish’d for before-breach of the King’s laws in now the King’s quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the King guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject’s duty is the King’s; but every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.

WILLIAMS. ’Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the King is not to answer for it.

BATES. I do not desire he should answer for me; and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.

KING HENRY. I myself heard the King say he would not be ransom’d.

WILLIAMS. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut, he may be ransom’d, and we ne’er the wiser.

KING HENRY. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.

WILLIAMS. You pay him then. That’s a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and a private displeasure can do against a monarch! You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock’s feather. You’ll never trust his word after! Come, ’tis a foolish saying.

KING HENRY. Your reproof is something too round. I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.

WILLIAMS. Let it be a quarrel between us if you live.

KING HENRY. I embrace it.

WILLIAMS. How shall I know thee again?

KING HENRY. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet; then, if ever thou dar’st acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.

WILLIAMS. Here’s my glove; give me another of thine.

KING HENRY. There.

WILLIAMS. This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou come to me and say, after tomorrow, “This is my glove,” by this hand I will take thee a box on the ear.

KING HENRY. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.

WILLIAMS. Thou dar’st as well be hang’d.

KING HENRY. Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King’s company.

WILLIAMS. Keep thy word; fare thee well.

BATES. Be friends, you English fools, be friends. We have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to reckon.

KING HENRY. Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders; but it is no English treason to cut French crowns, and tomorrow the King himself will be a clipper.

[_Exeunt soldiers._]

Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, Our children, and our sins lay on the King! We must bear all. O hard condition, Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel But his own wringing! What infinite heart’s ease Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy! And what have kings, that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? What are thy comings in? O Ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear’d Than they in fearing. What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison’d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy Ceremony give thee cure! Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose; I am a king that find thee, and I know ’Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running ’fore the King, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world, No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous Ceremony,— Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread, Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse, And follows so the ever-running year, With profitable labour, to his grave: And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country’s peace, Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

Enter Erpingham.

ERPINGHAM. My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence, Seek through your camp to find you.