Gloucester.
King Henry.
Glou'ster, 'tis true, that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore shou'd 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.
Erping.
Not so, my Liege; this lodging likes me better;
Since I may say, now lye I like a King.
K. Henry.
'Tis good for men to love their present pain
Upon example; so the spirit is eased:
And when the mind is quicken'd, out of doubt,
The organs, though defunct and dead before,
Break up their drowsie grave, and newly move
With casted slough and fresh legerity.
Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas: brothers both,
-- 63 --
Commend me to the Princes in our camp:
Do my good morrow to them, and anon
Desire them all to my pavillion.
Glou.
We shall, my Liege.
Erping.
Shall I attend your grace?
K. 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.
Erping.
The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!
[Exeunt.
K. Henry.
God-a-mercy, old heart, thou speak'st chearfully.
Enter Pistol.
Pist.
Qui va là?
K. Henry.
A friend.
Pist.
Discuss unto me, art thou officer,
Or art thou base, common and popular?
K. Henry.
I am a gentleman of a company.
Pist.
Trail'st thou the puissant pike?
K. Henry.
Even so: what are you?
Pist.
As good a gentleman as the Emperor.
K. Henry.
Then you are a better than the King.
Pist.
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 my heart-string
I love the lovely bully. What's thy name?
K. Henry.
Harry le Roy.
Pist.
Le Roy! a Cornish name: art thou of Cornish
crew?
K. Henry.
No, I am a Welshman.
Pist.
Know'st thou Fluellen?
K. Henry.
Yes.
Pist.
Tell him, I'll knock his leek about his pate,
Upon St. David's day.
K. Henry.
Do not you wear your dagger in your cap
that day, left he knock that about yours.
Pist.
Art thou his friend?
-- 64 --
K. Henry.
And his kinsman too.
Pist.
The Figo for thee then!—
K. Henry.
I thank you: God be with you.
Pist.
My name is Pistol call'd.
[Exit.
K. Henry.
It sorts well with your fierceness.
[Manet King Henry.
Enter Fluellen, and Gower, severally.
Gow.
Captain Fluellen.—
Flu.
So; in the name of Jesu Christ, speak fewer; it
is the greatest admiration in the universal world, when
the true and auncient 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 sobrieties of it, and the modesty of it to be
otherwise.
Gow.
Why the enemy is loud, you hear him all
night.
Flu.
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?
Gow.
I will speak lower.
Flu.
I pray you, and beseech you, that you will.
[Exeunt.
K. 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?
-- 65 --
K. Henry.
A friend.
Will.
Under what captain serve you?
K. Henry.
Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.(30) note
Will.
A good old commander, and a most kind gentleman:
I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?
K. Henry.
Even as men wrack'd upon a sand, that
look to be wash'd off the next tide.
Bates.
He hath not told his thought to the King?
K. Henry.
No; nor is it meet, he shou'd: for tho 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
shews 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 tho 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
shewing it, should dishearten his army.
Bates.
He may shew what outward courage he will;
but I believe, as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself
in the Thames up to the neck; and so I would he
were, and I by him at all adventures, so we were quit
here.
K. Henry.
By my troth, I will speak my conscience of
the King; I think, he would not wish himself any where
but where he is.
Bates.
Then would he were here alone; so should he
be sure to be ransomed, and many poor mens lives
saved.
K. Henry.
I dare say, you love him not so ill to wish
him here alone; howsoever you speak this to feel other
mens minds. Methinks, I could not die any where so
contented as in the King's company; his cause being just,
and his quarrel honourable.
-- 66 --
Will.
That's more than we know.
Bates.
Ay, or more than we shou'd 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.
Will.
But if the cause be not good, the King himself
hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs,
and arms, and heads, chop'd off in a battel, shall join together
at the latter day, and cry all, We dy'd 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 afear'd there are few die well, that die in battel; for
how can they charitably dispose of any thing, 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, whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.
K. Henry.
So, if a son, that is sent by his father about
merchandize, do fall into some lewd action and miscarry,
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 assail'd 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 murther; 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 out-run native punishment;
though they can out-strip men, they have no
wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his
-- 67 --
vengeance; so that here men are punished, for before
breach of the King's laws, in the King's quarrel now:
where they feared the death, they have born 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 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 moth 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 out-live that day to see his greatness, and to
teach others how they should prepare.
Will.
'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is
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.
K. Henry.
I my self heard the King say, he would not
be ransom'd.
Will.
Ay, he said so, to make us fight chearfully; but
when our throats are cut, he may be ransom'd, and we
ne'er the wiser.
K. Henry.
If I live to see it, I will never trust his
word after.
Will.
You pay him then; that's a perilous shot out of
an Elder-gun, that a poor and 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.
K. Henry.
Your reproof is something too round: I
should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.
Will.
Let it be a quarrel between us, if you live.
K. Henry.
I embrace it.
Will.
How shall I know thee again?
-- 68 --
K. 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.
Will.
Here's my glove; give me another of thine.
K. Henry.
There.
Will.
This will I also wear in my cap; if ever thou
come to me and say, after to morrow, this is my glove;
by this hand, I will give thee a box on the ear.
K. Henry.
If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.
Will.
Thou dar'st as well be hang'd.
K. Henry.
Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the
King's company.
Will.
Keep thy word: fare thee well.
Bates.
Be friends, you English fools, be friends; we
have French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to
reckon.
[Exeunt soldiers.
[Manet King Henry.
K. 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 to morrow the King himself will be a clipper.
Upon the King! let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives, our children and
Our sins, lay on the King; he must bear all.
O hard condition, and twin-born with greatness,
Subject to breath of ev'ry fool, whose sense
No more can feel but his own wringing.
What infinite heart-ease must Kings neglect,
That private men enjoy? and what have Kings,
That privates have not too, save ceremony?
Save gen'ral 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?(31) note
-- 69 --
O ceremony, shew me but thy worth
What is thy toll, O 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 flatt'ry? 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?
Can'st 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 scepter and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The enter-tissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farsed title running 'fore the King,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shoar of this world;
No, not all these thrice-gorgeous ceremonies,
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 lacquey, from the rise to set,
Sweats in the eye of Phœbus; 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,
-- 70 --
Hath 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.
Erp.
My lord, your Nobles, jealous of your absence,
Seek through your camp to find you.
K. Henry.
Good old Knight,
Collect them all together at my tent:
I'll be before thee.
Erp.
I shall do't, my lord.
[Exit.
K. Henry.
O God of battels! steel my soldiers hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now(32) note
The sense of reck'ning; lest th' opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them.—Not to day, O Lord,
O not to day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown.
I Richard's body have interred new,
And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears,
Than from it issu'd forced drops of blood.
Five hundred Poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up
Tow'rd heaven to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chauntries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;
Tho all that I can do, is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after call,(33) note
Imploring pardon.
-- 71 --
Enter Gloucester.
Glou.
My Liege.
K. Henry.
My brother Glo'ster's voice?
I know thy errand, I will go with thee:
The day, my friends, and all things stay for me.
[Exeunt.
Lewis Theobald [1733], The works of Shakespeare: in seven volumes. Collated with the Oldest Copies, and Corrected; With notes, Explanatory and Critical; By Mr. Theobald (Printed for A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch [and] J. Tonson [etc.], London) [word count] [S11201].
