Part 4

FLUELLEN. The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and my living, and my uttermost power. He is not—God be praised and blessed!—any hurt in the world; but keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There is an anchient lieutenant there at the pridge, I think in my very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark Antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the world, but I did see him do as gallant service.

GOWER. What do you call him?

FLUELLEN. He is call’d Anchient Pistol.

GOWER. I know him not.

Enter Pistol.

FLUELLEN. Here is the man.

PISTOL. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours. The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.

FLUELLEN. Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at his hands.

PISTOL. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart, And of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel, That goddess blind, That stands upon the rolling restless stone—

FLUELLEN. By your patience, Anchient Pistol. Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore his eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation; and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it. Fortune is an excellent moral.

PISTOL. Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him; For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must ’a be,— A damned death! Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free, And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate. But Exeter hath given the doom of death For pax of little price. Therefore, go speak; the Duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord and vile reproach. Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.

FLUELLEN. Anchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.

PISTOL. Why then, rejoice therefore.

FLUELLEN. Certainly, anchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at; for if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke to use his good pleasure, and put him to execution; for discipline ought to be used.

PISTOL. Die and be damn’d! and _fico_ for thy friendship!

FLUELLEN. It is well.

PISTOL. The fig of Spain.

[_Exit._]

FLUELLEN. Very good.

GOWER. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal. I remember him now; a bawd, a cutpurse.

FLUELLEN. I’ll assure you, ’a uttered as prave words at the pridge as you shall see in a summer’s day. But it is very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve.

GOWER. Why, ’t is a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to the wars, to grace himself at his return into London under the form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great commanders’ names; and they will learn you by rote where services were done; at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgrac’d, what terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths: and what a beard of the general’s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will do among foaming bottles and ale-wash’d wits, is wonderful to be thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or else you may be marvellously mistook.

FLUELLEN. I tell you what, Captain Gower; I do perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the world he is. If I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind. [_Drum heard._] Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with him from the pridge.

Drum and colours. Enter King Henry, Gloucester and his poor soldiers.

God bless your Majesty!

KING HENRY. How now, Fluellen! cam’st thou from the bridge?

FLUELLEN. Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of Exeter has very gallantly maintain’d the pridge. The French is gone off, look you; and there is gallant and most prave passages. Marry, th’ athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced to retire, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge. I can tell your Majesty, the Duke is a prave man.

KING HENRY. What men have you lost, Fluellen?

FLUELLEN. The perdition of the athversary hath been very great, reasonable great. Marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man. His face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’ fire; and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire’s out.

KING HENRY. We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing compell’d from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.

Tucket. Enter Montjoy.

MONTJOY. You know me by my habit.

KING HENRY. Well then I know thee. What shall I know of thee?

MONTJOY. My master’s mind.

KING HENRY. Unfold it.

MONTJOY. Thus says my King: Say thou to Harry of England: Though we seem’d dead, we did but sleep; advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him we could have rebuk’d him at Harfleur, but that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial. England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance. Bid him therefore consider of his ransom; which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested; which in weight to re-answer, his pettishness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our feet, but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add defiance; and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his followers, whose condemnation is pronounc’d. So far my King and master; so much my office.

KING HENRY. What is thy name? I know thy quality.

MONTJOY. Montjoy.

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

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

[_Exit._]

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

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

[_Exeunt._]

## 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?