The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 191

by William Shakespeare


  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,

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  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,

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  And hanged must ’a be, a damned death!

  Let gallows gape for dog, let man go free,

  And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate!

  But Exeter hath given the doom of death

  For pax of little price.

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  Therefore go speak – the Duke will hear thy voice –

  And let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut

  With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.

  Speak, Captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.

  FLUELLEN Anchient Pistol, I do partly understand your

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  meaning.

  PISTOL Why then, rejoice therefor.

  FLUELLEN Certainly, Anchient, it is not a thing to

  rejoice at; for if, look you, he were my brother, I would

  desire the Duke to use his good pleasure and put him

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  to execution; for discipline ought to be used.

  PISTOL

  Die and be damned, and fico for thy friendship!

  FLUELLEN It is well.

  PISTOL The fig of Spain! Exit.

  FLUELLEN Very good.

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  GOWER Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal, I

  remember him now – a bawd, a cutpurse.

  FLUELLEN I’ll assure you ’a uttered as prave words at

  the pridge as you shall see in a summer’s day. But it is

  very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, I

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  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,

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  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

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  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

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  marvellously mistook.

  FLUELLEN I tell you what, Captain Gower: I do

  perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make

  show to the world he is. If I find a hole in his coat, I

  will tell him my mind. [Drum within.]

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  Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with

  him from the pridge.

  Drum and colours. Enter the KING and GLOUCESTER and his poor soldiers.

  God pless your majesty!

  KING

  How now, Fluellen, cam’st thou from the bridge?

  FLUELLEN Ay, so please your majesty. The Duke of

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  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

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  tell your majesty, the Duke is a prave man.

  KING 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

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  like to be executed for robbing a church, one

  Bardolph, if your majesty know the man. His face is all

  bubuncles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’ fire,

  and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of

  fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red; but his nose

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  is executed, and his fire’s out.

  KING 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

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  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 Well then, I know thee: what shall I know of thee?

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  MONTJOY My master’s mind.

  KING 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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  condemnation is pronounced.’ So far my king and

  master, so much my office.

  KING What is thy name? I know thy quality.

  MONTJOY Montjoy.

  KING Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,

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  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,

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  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

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  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,

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  My army but a weak and sickly guard.

  Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,

  Though France himself and such another neighbour

  Stand in our way. [Gives a purse.]

  There’s for thy labo
ur, Montjoy.

  Go, bid thy master well advise himself.

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  If we may pass, we will; if we be hindered,

  We shall your tawny ground with your red blood

  Discolour. And so, Montjoy, fare you well.

  The sum of all our answer is but this:

  We would not seek a battle as we are,

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  Nor as we are, we say, we will not shun it:

  So tell your master.

  MONTJOY I shall deliver so. Thanks to your highness.

  Exit.

  GLOUCESTER I hope they will not come upon us now.

  KING We are in God’s hand, brother, not in theirs. –

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  March to the bridge. – It now draws toward night.

  Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves,

  And on tomorrow bid them march away. Exeunt.

  3.7 Enter the Constable of France, the LORD RAMBURES, ORLEANS and the DAUPHIN, with others.

  CONSTABLE Tut, I have the best armour of the world.

  Would it were day!

  ORLEANS You have an excellent armour; but let my

  horse have his due.

  CONSTABLE It is the best horse of Europe.

  5

  ORLEANS Will it never be morning?

  DAUPHIN My lord of Orleans and my lord High

  Constable, you talk of horse and armour?

  ORLEANS You are as well provided of both as any prince

  in the world.

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  DAUPHIN What a long night is this! I will not change my

  horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ch’ha!

  He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs

  – le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu!

  When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk. He trots the

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  air. The earth sings when he touches it; the basest

  horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of

  Hermes.

  ORLEANS He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.

  DAUPHIN And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for

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  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

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  excellent horse.

  DAUPHIN It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the

  bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces

  homage.

  ORLEANS No more, cousin.

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  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

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  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!’

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  ORLEANS 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.

  ORLEANS Your mistress bears well.

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  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.

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  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 judgement in horse-

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  manship.

  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.

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  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,

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  et la truie lavée au bourbier.’ Thou mak’st use of

  anything.

  CONSTABLE Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress,

  or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose.

  RAMBURES My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw

 

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