Enter the two Bishops of Canterbury and Ely.

BISHOP OF 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 scambling and unquiet time
Did push it out of farther question.
BISHOP OF ELY
But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
BISHOP OF 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
Would they strip from us, being valued thus:
“As much as would maintain, to the King’s honor,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars and weak age
Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,
A hundred almshouses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the King besides,
A thousand pounds by th’ year.” Thus runs the bill.

---

BISHOP OF ELY
This would drink deep.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY ’Twould drink the cup and
all.
BISHOP OF ELY But what prevention?
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
The King is full of grace and fair regard.
BISHOP OF ELY
And a true lover of the holy Church.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
The courses of his youth promised it not.
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,
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,
Nor never Hydra-headed willfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.
BISHOP OF ELY We are blessèd in the change.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
Hear him but reason in divinity
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
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;
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
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,
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.
BISHOP OF ELY
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbored by fruit of baser quality;
And so the Prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness, which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen yet crescive in his faculty.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
It must be so, for miracles are ceased,
And therefore we must needs admit the means
How things are perfected.
BISHOP OF ELY But, my good lord,
How now for mitigation of this bill
Urged by the Commons? Doth his Majesty
Incline to it or no?
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY He seems indifferent,
Or rather swaying more upon our part
Than cherishing th’ exhibitors against us;
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

---

Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.
BISHOP OF ELY
How did this offer seem received, my lord?
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
With good acceptance of his Majesty—
Save that there was not time enough to hear,
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.
BISHOP OF ELY
What was th’ impediment that broke this off?
BISHOP OF 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?
BISHOP OF ELY It is.
BISHOP OF 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.
BISHOP OF ELY
I’ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.
They exit.

Enter the King of England, Humphrey Duke of
Gloucester, Bedford, Clarence, Warwick, Westmoreland,
and Exeter, with other Attendants.

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
That task our thoughts concerning us and France.

Enter the two Bishops of Canterbury and Ely.

BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
God and his angels guard your sacred throne
And make you long become it.
KING HENRY Sure we thank you.
My learnèd lord, we pray you to proceed
And justly and religiously unfold
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
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
Suits not in native colors 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.
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
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
That what you speak is in your conscience washed
As pure as sin with baptism.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers
That owe yourselves, your lives, and services
To this imperial throne. There is no bar
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 gloze
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 Sala and of Elbe,
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 then this law: to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salic land,
Which “Salic,” as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Sala
Is at this day in Germany called Meissen.
Then doth it well appear the Salic law
Was not devisèd for the realm of France,
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
Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great

---

Subdued the Saxons and did seat the French
Beyond the river Sala in the year
Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,
King Pepin, which deposèd Childeric,
Did, as heir general, being descended
Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,
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
Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,
To find his title with some shows of truth,
Though in pure truth it was corrupt and naught,
Conveyed himself as th’ heir to th’ Lady Lingare,
Daughter to Charlemagne, who was the son
To Lewis the Emperor, and Lewis the son
Of Charles the Great. Also King Lewis the Tenth,
Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,
Could not keep quiet in his conscience,
Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied
That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother,
Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare,
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.
So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun,
King Pepin’s title and Hugh Capet’s claim,
King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear
To hold in right and title of the female.
So do the kings of France unto this day,
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 imbar their crooked titles
Usurped from you and your progenitors.
KING HENRY
May I with right and conscience make this claim?

---

BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
The sin upon my head, dread sovereign,
For in the Book of Numbers is it writ:
“When the man dies, let the inheritance
Descend unto the daughter.” Gracious lord,
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,
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.
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!
BISHOP OF ELY
Awake remembrance of these valiant dead
And with your puissant arm renew their feats.
You are their heir, you sit upon their throne,
The blood and courage that renownèd them
Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege
Is in the very May-morn of his youth,
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;
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.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege,
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.
KING HENRY
We must not only arm t’ invade the French,
But lay down our proportions to defend
Against the Scot, who will make road upon us
With all advantages.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
They of those marches, gracious sovereign,
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 neighbor to us.
For you shall read that my great-grandfather
Never went with his forces into 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,
Galling the gleanèd land with hot assays,
Girding with grievous siege castles and towns,
That England, being empty of defense,
Hath shook and trembled at th’ ill neighborhood.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
She hath been then more feared than harmed, my
liege,
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
The King of Scots, whom she did send to France
To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings
And make her chronicle as rich with praise
As is the ooze and bottom of the sea
With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.
BISHOP OF ELY
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
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,
Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries
And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.
While that the armèd hand doth fight abroad,
Th’ advisèd head defends itself at home.
For government, though high and low and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
Congreeing in a full and natural close,
Like music.
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavor in continual motion,
To which is fixèd as an aim or butt
Obedience; for so work the honeybees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

---

They have a king and officers of sorts,
Where some like magistrates correct at home,
Others like merchants venture trade abroad,
Others like soldiers armèd in their stings
Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent royal of their emperor,
Who, busied in his majesty , surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
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
To one consent, may work contrariously,
As many arrows loosèd several ways
Come 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 center,
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose and be all well borne
Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege!
Divide your happy England into four,
Whereof take you one quarter into France,
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.
KING HENRY
Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.
Attendants exit.
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,
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
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshiped with a waxen epitaph.

Enter Ambassadors of France, with Attendants.


Now are we well prepared to know the pleasure
Of our fair cousin Dauphin, for we hear
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?
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 uncurbèd plainness
Tell us the Dauphin’s mind.
AMBASSADOR Thus, then, in few:
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 savor too much of your youth
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,
Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim
Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
KING HENRY
What treasure, uncle?
EXETER 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.
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
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
To barbarous license, 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,
For that I have 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.
And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his
Hath turned his balls to gun-stones, and his soul
Shall stand sore chargèd for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them; for many a thousand
widows
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands,

---

Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;
And 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
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 savor but of shallow wit
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.—
Convey them with safe conduct.—Fare you well.
Ambassadors exit, with Attendants.
EXETER This was a merry message.
KING HENRY
We hope to make the sender blush at it.
Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour
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
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.
Flourish. They exit.

Enter Chorus.

CHORUS
Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armorers, and honor’s thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,
Following the mirror of all Christian kings
With wingèd heels, as English Mercurys.
For now sits Expectation in the air
And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point,
With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets
Promised to Harry and his followers.
The French, advised by good intelligence
Of this most dreadful preparation,
Shake in their fear, and with pale policy
Seek to divert the English purposes.
O England, model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What might’st thou do, that honor would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural!
But see, thy fault France hath in thee found out,
A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills
With treacherous crowns, and three corrupted men—
One, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, and the second,

---

Henry, Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,
Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland—
Have, for the gilt of France (O guilt indeed!),
Confirmed conspiracy with fearful France,
And by their hands this grace of kings must die,
If hell and treason hold their promises,
Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton.
Linger your patience on, and we’ll digest
Th’ abuse of distance, force a play.
The sum is paid, the traitors are agreed,
The King is set from London, and the scene
Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton.
There is the playhouse now, there must you sit,
And thence to France shall we convey you safe
And bring you back, charming the narrow seas
To give you gentle pass; for, if we may,
We’ll not offend one stomach with our play.
But, till the King come forth, and not till then,
Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.
He exits.

Enter Corporal Nym and Lieutenant Bardolph.

BARDOLPH Well met, Corporal Nym.
NYM Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.
BARDOLPH What, are Ancient Pistol and you friends
yet?
NYM For my part, I care not. I say little, but when time
shall serve, there shall be smiles; but that shall be as
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, and we’ll be all three sworn brothers to
France. Let ’t be so, good Corporal Nym.
NYM 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.
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.
NYM I cannot tell. Things must be as they may. Men
may sleep, and they may have their throats about
them at 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 Pistol and Hostess Quickly.

BARDOLPH Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife.
Good corporal, be patient here.—How now, mine
host Pistol?
PISTOL Base tyke, call’st thou me host? Now, by this
hand, I swear I scorn the term, nor shall my Nell
keep lodgers.
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.
Nym and Pistol draw their swords.
O well-a-day, Lady! If he be not hewn now, we shall
see willful adultery and murder committed.
BARDOLPH Good lieutenant, good corporal, offer nothing
here.
NYM Pish!
PISTOL Pish for thee, Iceland dog, thou prick-eared
cur of Iceland!

---

HOSTESS Good Corporal Nym, show thy valor, and put
up your sword.
NYM Will you shog off? To Pistol. I would have you
solus.
PISTOL “Solus,” egregious dog? O viper vile, the solus
in thy most marvelous face, the solus in thy teeth
and in thy throat and in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy
maw, perdy, 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, and flashing fire will
follow.
NYM I am not Barbason, you cannot conjure me. I
have an humor 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 prick your guts a little in good terms, as
I may, and that’s the humor of it.
PISTOL
O braggart vile and damnèd furious wight,
The grave doth gape, and doting death is near.
Therefore exhale.
BARDOLPH Hear me, hear me what I say: he that strikes
the first stroke, I’ll run him up to the hilts, as I am a
soldier. He draws.
PISTOL An oath of mickle might, and fury shall abate.
Pistol and Nym and then Bardolph
sheathe their swords.
Give me thy fist, thy forefoot to me give. Thy spirits
are most tall.
NYM , to Pistol I will cut thy throat one time or other
in fair terms, that is the humor of it.
PISTOL Couple à gorge, that is the word. I defy thee
again. 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. I

---

have, and I will hold, the quondam Quickly for the
only she: and pauca, there’s enough too! Go to.

Enter the Boy.

BOY Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master,
and your hostess. He is very sick and would to
bed.—Good Bardolph, put thy face between his
sheets, and do the 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.
She exits with the 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!
NYM You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at
betting?
PISTOL Base is the slave that pays.
NYM That now I will have, that’s the humor of it.
PISTOL As manhood shall compound. Push home.
They draw.
BARDOLPH , drawing his sword By this sword, he that
makes the first thrust, I’ll kill him. By this sword, I
will.
PISTOL , sheathing his sword “Sword” is an oath, and
oaths must have their course.
BARDOLPH Corporal Nym, an thou wilt be friends, be
friends; an thou wilt not, why then be enemies with
me too. Prithee, put up.
PISTOL , to Nym 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 Nym, and Nym shall live by me. Is not this just?
For I shall sutler be unto the camp, and profits will
accrue. Give me thy hand.
NYM I shall have my noble?
PISTOL In cash, most justly paid.
NYM Well, then, that’s the humor of ’t.
Nym and Bardolph sheathe their swords.

Enter Hostess.

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.
NYM The King hath run bad humors on the knight,
that’s the even of it.
PISTOL Nym, thou hast spoke the right. His heart is
fracted and corroborate.
NYM The King is a good king, but it must be as it may;
he passes some humors and careers.
PISTOL Let us condole the knight, for, lambkins, we
will live.
They exit.

Enter Exeter, Bedford, and Westmoreland.

BEDFORD
’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
Crownèd with faith and constant loyalty.

---

BEDFORD
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
favors—
That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell
His sovereign’s life to death and treachery!

Sound Trumpets. Enter the King of England, Scroop, Cambridge, and Grey, with Attendants.


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
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
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
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
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 the weight and worthiness.
SCROOP
So service shall with steelèd sinews toil,
And labor 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
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
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.
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,
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.
Your Highness bade me ask for it today.
SCROOP So did you me, my liege.
GREY And I, my royal sovereign.
KING HENRY , giving them papers
Then Richard, Earl of Cambridge, there is yours—
There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham.—And, sir
knight,
Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours.—
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 you, how they change.
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/SCROOP To which we all appeal.
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.—
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 honor, and this man
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,
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 have coined me into gold,
Wouldst thou have practiced 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
As black and 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.
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.
All other devils that suggest by treasons
Do botch and bungle up damnation
With patches, colors, and with forms being fetched
From glist’ring semblances of piety;
But he that tempered thee bade thee stand up,
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
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 learnèd?
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,
Garnished and decked in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purgèd judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem.
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot
To mark the full-fraught man and best endued
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,
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 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.
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 thankèd for prevention,
Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,
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 damnèd enterprise.
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 from his
coffers
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.
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 you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death,
The taste whereof God of His mercy give
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offenses.—Bear them hence.
They exit under guard.
Now, lords, for France, the enterprise whereof
Shall be to you as us, like glorious.
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 smoothèd on our way.
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.
Flourish. They exit.

Enter Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, Boy, and Hostess.

HOSTESS Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring
thee to Staines.
PISTOL No; for my manly heart doth earn.—Bardolph,
be blithe.—Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins.— Boy,
bristle thy courage up. For Falstaff, he is dead, 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. He
made a finer end, and went away an it had been any
christom child. He 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 his nose was as sharp as a pen and
he talked of green fields. “How now, Sir John?”
quoth I. “What, man, be o’ good cheer!” So he cried
out “God, God, God!” three or four times. Now I, to
comfort him, bid him he should not think of God; I
hoped there was no need to trouble himself with
any such thoughts yet. So he 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 upward and upward, and
all was as cold as any stone.
NYM They say he cried out of sack.
HOSTESS Ay, that he did.
BARDOLPH And of women.
HOSTESS Nay, that he did not.
BOY Yes, that he did, and said they were devils
incarnate.
HOSTESS He could never abide carnation. ’Twas a
color he never liked.
BOY He said once, the devil would have him about
women.
HOSTESS He did in some sort, indeed, handle women,
but then he was rheumatic and talked of the Whore
of Babylon.
BOY Do you not remember he saw a flea stick upon
Bardolph’s nose, and he said it was a black soul
burning in hell?
BARDOLPH Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that
fire. That’s all the riches I got in his service.
NYM Shall we shog? The King will be gone from
Southampton.
PISTOL Come, let’s away.—My love, give me thy lips.
They kiss. Look to my chattels and my movables.
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 counselor. Go, clear thy
crystals.—Yoke-fellows in arms, let us to France,
like horse-leeches, my boys, to suck, to suck, the
very blood to suck.
BOY And that’s but unwholesome food, they say.
PISTOL Touch her soft mouth, and march.
BARDOLPH , kissing the Hostess Farewell, hostess.
NYM I cannot kiss, that is the humor of it. But adieu.

---

PISTOL , to the Hostess Let huswifery appear. Keep
close, I thee command.
HOSTESS Farewell. Adieu.
They exit.

Flourish. Enter the French King, the Dauphin, the Dukes
of Berri and Brittany, the Constable, and others.

KING OF FRANCE
Thus comes the English with full power upon us,
And more than carefully it us concerns
To answer royally in our defenses.
Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Brittany,
Of Brabant and of Orléans, shall make forth,
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.
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,
For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
Though war nor no known quarrel were in question
But that defenses, musters, preparations
Should be maintained, assembled, and collected
As were a war in expectation.
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.
For, my good liege, she is so idly kinged,
Her scepter 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.
Question your Grace the late ambassadors
With what great state he heard their embassy,
How well supplied with noble councillors,
How modest in exception, and withal
How terrible in constant resolution,
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.
DAUPHIN
Well, ’tis not so, my Lord High Constable.
But though we think it so, it is no matter.
In cases of defense, ’tis best to weigh
The enemy more mighty than he seems.
So the proportions of defense are filled,
Which of a weak and niggardly projection
Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
A little cloth.
KING OF FRANCE Think we King Harry strong,
And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
The kindred of him hath been fleshed upon us,
And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths.
Witness our too-much-memorable shame
When Cressy battle fatally was struck
And all our princes captived by the hand
Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of
Wales,

---

Whiles that his mountain 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
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
Do crave admittance to your Majesty.
KING OF FRANCE
We’ll give them present audience. Go, and bring
them. Messenger exits.
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
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 Exeter, with Lords and Attendants.

KING OF FRANCE From our brother of England?
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
To him and to his heirs—namely, the crown

---

And all wide-stretchèd honors 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
Picked from the wormholes of long-vanished days
Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,
He sends you this most memorable line,
He offers a paper.
In every branch truly demonstrative,
Willing you overlook this pedigree,
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.
KING OF FRANCE 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,
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
Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries,
The dead men’s blood, the privèd maidens’
groans,
For husbands, fathers, and betrothèd lovers
That shall be swallowed in this controversy.
This is his claim, his threat’ning, and my message—
Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,
To whom expressly I bring greeting too.
KING OF FRANCE
For us, we will consider of this further.

---

Tomorrow shall you bear our full intent
Back to our brother of England.
DAUPHIN , to Exeter For the Dauphin,
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
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 of it
That caves and womby vaultages of France
Shall chide your trespass and return your mock
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,
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 difference,
As we his subjects have in wonder found,
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 OF FRANCE
Tomorrow shall you know our mind at full.
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 OF FRANCE
You shall be soon dispatched with fair conditions.
A night is but small breath and little pause
To answer matters of this consequence.
Flourish. They exit.

Enter Chorus.

CHORUS
Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed king at Dover pier
Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus
fanning .
Play with your fancies and in them behold,
Upon the hempen tackle, shipboys climbing.
Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give
To sounds confused. Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th’ invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing,
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!
Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,
And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,
Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance,
For who is he whose chin is but enriched
With one appearing hair that will not follow

---

These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
Suppose th’ Ambassador from the French comes
back,
Tells Harry that the King doth offer him
Katherine his daughter and with her, to dowry,
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.
The offer likes not, and the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
Alarum, and chambers go off.
And down goes all before them. Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with your mind.
He exits.

Enter the King of England, Exeter, Bedford, and
Gloucester. Alarum. Enter Soldiers with scaling
ladders at Harfleur.

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,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage,
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon, let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock

---

O’erhang and jutty his confounded base
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide,
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,
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonor 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,
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 luster in your eyes.
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.
They exit.

Enter Nym, Bardolph, Pistol, and Boy.

BARDOLPH On, on, on, on, on! To the breach, to the
breach!
NYM Pray thee, corporal, stay. The knocks are too hot,
and, for mine own part, I have not a case of lives.
The humor of it is too hot; that is the very plainsong
of it.

---

PISTOL “The plainsong” is most just, for humors do
abound.
Knocks go and come. God’s vassals drop and die,
Sings And sword and shield,
In bloody field,
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 And I.
Sings If wishes would prevail with me,
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.

Enter Fluellen.

FLUELLEN
Up to the breach, you dogs! Avaunt, you cullions!
PISTOL Be merciful, great duke, to men of mold. Abate
thy rage, abate thy manly rage, abate thy rage, great
duke. Good bawcock, ’bate thy rage. Use lenity,
sweet chuck.
NYM , to Fluellen These be good humors. Your Honor
wins bad humors.
All but the Boy exit.
BOY As young as I am, I have observed these three
swashers. I am boy to them all three, but all they
three, though they would 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 he faces it out
but fights not; for Pistol, he hath a killing tongue
and a quiet sword, by the means whereof he breaks
words and keeps whole weapons; for Nym, he hath
heard that men of few words are the best men, and

---

therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest he should
be thought a coward, but his few bad words are
matched with as few good deeds, for he 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.
Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in 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 handkerchers, which makes
much against my manhood, if I should take from
another’s 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.
He exits.

Enter Fluellen and Gower.

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
concavities 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 he will plow up all if
there is not better directions.
GOWER The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of
the 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 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 he comes, and the Scots captain, Captain
Jamy, with him.
FLUELLEN Captain Jamy is a marvelous falorous gentleman,
that is certain, and of great expedition and
knowledge in th’ aunchient wars, upon my particular
knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu, he will
maintain his argument as well as any military man
in the world in the disciplines of the pristine wars
of the Romans.
JAMY I say gudday, Captain Fluellen.
FLUELLEN Godden to your Worship, good Captain
James.
GOWER How now, Captain Macmorris, have you quit
the mines? Have the pioners given o’er?
MACMORRIS By Chrish, la, ’tish ill done. The work ish
give over. The trompet 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 Chrish save me, la, 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 voutsafe me, look you, a few disputations
with you as partly touching or concerning the
disciplines 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.
JAMY It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captens bath,

---

and I sall quit 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 King, and the dukes. It is no time to
discourse. The town is beseeched. 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, and works to be done,
and there ish nothing done, so Christ sa’ me, la.
JAMY By the Mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves
to slomber, ay’ll de gud service, or I’ll lig i’
th’ grund for it, ay, or go to death. And I’ll pay ’t as
valorously as I may, that sall I suerly do, that is the
breff and the long. Marry, I wad full fain heard
some question ’tween you tway.
FLUELLEN Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under
your correction, there is not many of your
nation—
MACMORRIS Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a
villain and a basterd 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 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. 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 sounds .
GOWER The town sounds a parley.

---

FLUELLEN Captain Macmorris, when there is more
better 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.
They exit.

Enter the King of England and all his train
before the gates.

KING HENRY , to the men of Harfleur
How yet resolves the Governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit.
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves
Or, like to men proud of destruction,
Defy us to our worst. For, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the batt’ry once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie burièd.
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
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
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
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command

---

Upon th’ enragèd soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the Leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Desire the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,
Your fathers taken by the silver beards
And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,
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
Or, guilty in defense, be thus destroyed?

Enter Governor.

GOVERNOR
Our expectation hath this day an end.
The Dauphin, whom of succors we entreated,
Returns us that his powers are yet not ready
To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great king,
We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.
Enter our gates, dispose of us and ours,
For we no longer are defensible.
KING HENRY
Open your gates. Governor exits.
Come, uncle Exeter,
Go you and enter Harfleur. There remain,
And fortify it strongly ’gainst the French.
Use mercy to them all for us, dear uncle.

---

The winter coming on and sickness growing
Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais.
Tonight in Harfleur will we be your guest.
Tomorrow for the march are we addressed.
Flourish, and enter the town.

Enter Katherine and Alice , an old Gentlewoman.

KATHERINE Alice, tu as été en Angleterre, et tu parles
bien le langage.
ALICE Un peu, madame.
KATHERINE Je te prie, m’enseignez. Il faut que j’apprenne
à parler. Comment appelez-vous “la main” en
anglais?
ALICE La main? Elle est appelée “de hand.”
KATHERINE De hand. Et “les doigts” ?
ALICE Les doigts? Ma foi, j’oublie les doigts; mais je
me souviendrai. Les doigts? Je pense qu’ils sont
appelés “de fingres”; oui, de fingres.
KATHERINE La main , de hand. Les doigts , le fingres.
Je pense que je suis le bon écolier. J’ai gagné deux
mots d’anglais vitement. Comment appelez-vous “les
ongles” ?
ALICE Les ongles? Nous les appelons “de nailes.”
KATHERINE De nailes. Écoutez. Dites-moi si je parle
bien: de hand, de fingres, et de nailes.
ALICE C’est bien dit, madame. Il est fort bon anglais.
KATHERINE Dites-moi l’anglais pour “le bras .”
ALICE “De arme,” madame.
KATHERINE Et “le coude” ?
ALICE “D’ elbow.”
KATHERINE D’ elbow. Je m’en fais la répétition de tous
les mots que vous m’avez appris dès à présent.
ALICE Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.

---

KATHERINE Excusez-moi, Alice. Écoutez: d’ hand, de
fingre, de nailes, d’ arma, de bilbow.
ALICE D’ elbow, madame.
KATHERINE Ô Seigneur Dieu! Je m’en oublie; d’ elbow.
Comment appelez-vous “le col” ?
ALICE “De nick,” madame.
KATHERINE De nick. Et “le menton” ?
ALICE “De chin.”
KATHERINE De sin. Le col, de nick; le menton, de sin.
ALICE Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en vérité vous prononcez
les mots aussi droit que les natifs d’Angleterre.
KATHERINE Je ne doute point d’apprendre, par le grâce
de Dieu, et en peu de temps.
ALICE N’avez-vous pas déjà oublié ce que je vous ai
enseigné?
KATHERINE Non. Je réciterai à vous promptement: d’
hand, de fingre, de mailes—
ALICE De nailes, madame.
KATHERINE De nailes, de arme, de ilbow—
ALICE Sauf votre honneur, d’ elbow.
KATHERINE Ainsi dis-je: d’ elbow, de nick, et de sin.
Comment appelez-vous “le pied” et “la robe” ?
ALICE “Le foot,” madame, et “le count.”
KATHERINE Le foot, et le count. Ô Seigneur Dieu! Ils
sont les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et
impudique, et non pour les dames d’honneur d’user.
Je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs
de France, pour tout le monde. Foh! Le foot et le
count! Néanmoins, je réciterai une autre fois ma
leçon ensemble: d’ hand, de fingre, de nailes, d’
arme, d’ elbow, de nick, de sin, de foot, le count.
ALICE Excellent, madame.
KATHERINE C’est assez pour une fois. Allons-nous à
dîner.
They exit.

Enter the King of France, the Dauphin, the Duke of
Brittany, the Constable of France, and others.

KING OF FRANCE
’Tis certain he hath passed the river Somme.
CONSTABLE
An 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
Ô Dieu vivant, shall a few sprays of us,
The emptying of our fathers’ luxury,
Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,
Spurt up so suddenly into the clouds
And overlook their grafters?
BRITTANY
Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!
Mort de ma vie, if they march along
Unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom
To buy a slobb’ry and a dirty farm
In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.
CONSTABLE
Dieu de batailles, where have they this mettle?
Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull,
On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,
Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water,
A drench for sur-reined jades, their barley broth,
Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?
And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine,
Seem frosty? O, for honor of our land,
Let us not hang like roping icicles
Upon our houses’ thatch, whiles a more frosty
people
Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields!
“Poor” we may call them in their native lords.

---

DAUPHIN By faith and honor,
Our madams mock at us and plainly say
Our mettle is bred out, and they will give
Their bodies to the lust of English youth
To new-store France with bastard warriors.
BRITTANY
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.
KING OF FRANCE
Where is Montjoy the herald? Speed him hence.
Let him greet England with our sharp defiance.
Up, princes, and, with spirit of honor edged
More sharper than your swords, hie to the field:
Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France;
You Dukes of Orléans, Bourbon, and of Berri,
Alençon, Brabant, Bar, and Burgundy;
Jacques Chatillon, Rambures, Vaudemont ,
Beaumont, Grandpré, Roussi, and Faulconbridge,
Foix , Lestrale, Bouciquault, and Charolois;
High dukes, great princes, barons, lords, and
knights ,
For your great seats now quit you of great shames.
Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land
With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur.
Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow
Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat
The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon.
Go down upon him—you have power enough—
And in a captive chariot into Rouen
Bring him our prisoner.
CONSTABLE This becomes the great!
Sorry am I his numbers are so few,
His soldiers sick and 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 for achievement offer us his ransom.
KING OF FRANCE
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.
KING
Be patient, for you shall remain with us.—
Now forth, Lord Constable and princes all,
And quickly bring us word of England’s fall.
They exit.

Enter Captains, English and Welsh, Gower and Fluellen.

GOWER How now, Captain Fluellen? Come you from
the bridge?
FLUELLEN I assure you there is very excellent services
committed at the bridge.
GOWER Is the Duke of Exeter safe?
FLUELLEN The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as
Agamemnon, and a man that I love and honor 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 aunchient 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 called Aunchient Pistol.
GOWER I know him not.

Enter Pistol.

FLUELLEN Here is the man.
PISTOL Captain, I thee beseech to do me favors. 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 valor, 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, Aunchient Pistol, Fortune
is painted blind, with a muffler afore her 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 hangèd must he be. A
damnèd 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 Aunchient Pistol, I do partly understand
your meaning.
PISTOL Why then, rejoice therefore.
FLUELLEN Certainly, aunchient, 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 damned, and figo for thy friendship!
FLUELLEN It is well.
PISTOL The fig of Spain! He exits.
FLUELLEN Very good.
GOWER Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal. I
remember him now, a bawd, a cutpurse.
FLUELLEN I’ll assure you he 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, ’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
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 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 know such
slanders of the age, or else you may be marvelously
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 and Colors. Enter the King of England and his
poor Soldiers, and Gloucester.

Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak
with him from the pridge.—God pless 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 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 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 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 compelled
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 seemed dead, we did but sleep.
Advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him
we could have rebuked 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 reanswer, 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 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.” 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 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,
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 neighbor
Stand in our way. There’s for thy labor, Montjoy.
Gives money.
Go bid thy master well advise himself:
If we may pass, we will; if we be hindered,
We shall your tawny ground with your red blood
Discolor. 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.
He exits.
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.
Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves,
And on tomorrow bid them march away.
They exit.

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

CONSTABLE Tut, I have the best armor of the world.
Would it were day!
ORLÉANS You have an excellent armor, but let my
horse have his due.
CONSTABLE It is the best horse of Europe.
ORLÉANS Will it never be morning?
DAUPHIN My Lord of Orléans and my Lord High Constable,
you talk of horse and armor?
ORLÉANS 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 .
Çà, 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.
ORLÉANS He’s of the color 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.
ORLÉANS 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—”
ORLÉANS I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s
mistress.
DAUPHIN Then did they imitate that which I composed
to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.
ORLÉANS 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 warned 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 armor 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 honor some were away.
CONSTABLE Ev’n 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 faced
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. He exits.
ORLÉANS The Dauphin longs for morning.
RAMBURES He longs to eat the English.
CONSTABLE I think he will eat all he kills.
ORLÉANS By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant
prince.
CONSTABLE Swear by her foot, that she may tread out
the oath.
ORLÉANS He is simply the most active gentleman of
France.
CONSTABLE Doing is activity, and he will still be doing.
ORLÉANS He never did harm, that I heard of.
CONSTABLE Nor will do none tomorrow. He will keep
that good name still.

---

ORLÉANS I know him to be valiant.
CONSTABLE I was told that by one that knows him
better than you.
ORLÉANS What’s he?
CONSTABLE Marry, he told me so himself, and he said
he cared not who knew it.
ORLÉANS 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 valor, and when
it appears, it will bate.
ORLÉANS Ill will never said well.
CONSTABLE I will cap that proverb with “There is
flattery in friendship.”
ORLÉANS And I will take up that with “Give the devil
his due.”
CONSTABLE Well placed; there stands your friend for
the devil. Have at the very eye of that proverb with
“A pox of the devil.”
ORLÉANS You are the better at proverbs, by how much
“A fool’s bolt is soon shot.”
CONSTABLE You have shot over.
ORLÉANS ’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 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.
ORLÉANS What a wretched and peevish fellow is this
King of England to mope with his fat-brained
followers so far out of his knowledge.
CONSTABLE If the English had any apprehension, they
would run away.

---

ORLÉANS That they lack; for if their heads had any
intellectual armor, they could never wear such
heavy headpieces.
RAMBURES That island of England breeds very valiant
creatures. Their mastiffs are of unmatchable
courage.
ORLÉANS Foolish curs, that run winking into the
mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads
crushed 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.
ORLÉANS 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?
ORLÉANS
It is now two o’clock. But, let me see, by ten
We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.
They exit.

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 fixed 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 umbered face;
Steed threatens steed in high and boastful neighs
Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents
The armorers, 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 named,
Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,
The confident and overlusty 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 condemnèd 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,
Presenteth them unto the gazing moon
So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold
The royal captain of this ruined 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 color
Unto the weary and all-watchèd night,
But freshly looks and overbears attaint
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty,
That every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.
A largesse 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-disposed in brawl ridiculous,
The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,
Minding true things by what their mock’ries be.
He exits.

Enter the King of England, 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 distill it out.
For our bad neighbor 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 quickened, 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.
He puts on Erpingham’s cloak.
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 awhile,
And then I would no other company.
ERPINGHAM
The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry.
All but the King exit.
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 heartstring 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 figo for thee then!
KING HENRY I thank you. God be with you.
PISTOL My name is Pistol called. He exits.
KING HENRY It sorts well with your fierceness.
He steps aside.

Enter Fluellen and Gower.

GOWER Captain Fluellen.
FLUELLEN So. In the name of Jesu Christ, speak fewer.
It is the greatest admiration in the universal world
when the true and aunchient 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 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.
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.
Gower and Fluellen exit.
KING HENRY
Though it appear a little out of fashion,
There is much care and valor 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 wracked 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 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 honorable.
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, chopped 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 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 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 arbitrament 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 punished 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 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 ransomed.
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.
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. 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.
WILLIAMS Thou dar’st 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 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.
Soldiers exit.
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 worshipers?
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 feared,
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

---

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 scepter, and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farcèd 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 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
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labor to his grave.
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
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,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

Enter Erpingham.

ERPINGHAM
My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,

---

Seek through your camp to find you.
KING HENRY Good old knight,
Collect them all together at my tent.
I’ll be before thee.
ERPINGHAM I shall do ’t, my lord. He exits.
KING HENRY
O God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts.
Possess them not with fear. Take from them now
The sense of reck’ning or th’ opposèd numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not today, O Lord,
O, not today, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown.
I Richard’s body have interrèd new
And on it have bestowed more contrite tears
Than from it issued forcèd drops of blood.
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay
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,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.

Enter Gloucester.

GLOUCESTER My liege.
KING HENRY My brother Gloucester’s voice.—Ay,
I know thy errand. I will go with thee.
The day, my friends , and all things stay for me.
They exit.