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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?
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GOWER I will speak lower.
FLUELLEN I pray you and beseech you that you will.
Exeunt Gower and Fluellen.
KING Though it appear a little out of fashion,
There is much care and valour in this Welshman.
Enter three soldiers, JOHN BATES, ALEXANDER COURT and MICHAEL WILLIAMS.
COURT Brother John Bates, is not that the morning
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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
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there?
KING A friend.
WILLIAMS Under what captain serve you?
KING Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.
WILLIAMS A good old commander and a most kind
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gentleman. I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?
KING Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be
washed off the next tide.
BATES He hath not told his thought to the King?
KING No, nor it is not meet he should. For though I
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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
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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
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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.
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KING 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
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saved.
KING 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
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just and his quarrel honourable.
WILLIAMS That’s more than we know.
BATES Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we
know enough if we know we are the King’s subjects. If
his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes
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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
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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
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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 So if a son that is by his father sent about
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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
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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
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their death when they purpose their services. Besides,
there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it
come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with
all unspotted soldiers. Some, peradventure, have on
them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder,
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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.
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BATES I do not desire he should answer for me, and yet
I determine to fight lustily for him.
KING I myself heard the King say he would not be
ransomed.
WILLIAMS Ay, he said so to make us fight cheerfully; but
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when our throats are cut he may be ransomed and we
ne’er the wiser.
KING 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
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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 Your reproof is something too round; I should be
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angry with you if the time were convenient.
WILLIAMS Let it be a quarrel between us, if you live.
KING I embrace it.
WILLIAMS How shall I know thee again?
KING Give me any gage of thine and I will wear it in my
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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 There. [They exchange gloves.]
WILLIAMS This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou
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come to me and say after tomorrow ‘This is my glove’,
by this hand I will take thee a box on the ear.
KING If ever I live to see it I will challenge it.
WILLIAMS Thou dar’st as well be hanged.
KING Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King’s
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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.
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KING Indeed, the French may lay twenty French
crowns to one they will beat us, for they bear them on
their shoulders, but it is no English treason to cut
French crowns, and tomorrow the King himself will
be a clipper. Exeunt soldiers.
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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
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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?
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And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents, what are thy comings-in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
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What is thy soul, O 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?
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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?
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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
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’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running ’fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
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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
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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
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Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour to his grave.
And but for ceremony such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
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Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country’s peace,
Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots
What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
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Enter ERPINGHAM.
ERPINGHAM
My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,
Seek through your camp to find you.
KING Good old knight,
Collect them all together at my tent.
I’ll be before thee.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 193