For many of our princes — woe the while!—
Lie drown’d and soak’d in mercenary blood;
So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs
In blood of princes; and their wounded steeds
Fret fetlock deep in gore and with wild rage
Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters,
Killing them twice. O, give us leave, great king,
To view the field in safety and dispose
Of their dead bodies!
King Henry V
I tell thee truly, herald,
I know not if the day be ours or no;
For yet a many of your horsemen peer
And gallop o’er the field.
Montjoy
The day is yours.
King Henry V
Praised be God, and not our strength, for it!
What is this castle call’d that stands hard by?
Montjoy
They call it Agincourt.
King Henry V
Then call we this the field of Agincourt,
Fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.
Fluellen
Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t please your majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in France.
King Henry V
They did, Fluellen.
Fluellen
Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day.
King Henry V
I wear it for a memorable honour;
For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.
Fluellen
All the water in Wye cannot wash your majesty’s Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that: God pless it and preserve it, as long as it pleases his grace, and his majesty too!
King Henry V
Thanks, good my countryman.
Fluellen
By Jeshu, I am your majesty’s countryman, I care not who know it; I will confess it to all the ’orld: I need not to be ashamed of your majesty, praised be God, so long as your majesty is an honest man.
King Henry V
God keep me so! Our heralds go with him:
Bring me just notice of the numbers dead
On both our parts. Call yonder fellow hither.
Points to Williams. Exeunt Heralds with Montjoy
Exeter
Soldier, you must come to the king.
King Henry V
Soldier, why wearest thou that glove in thy cap?
Williams
An’t please your majesty, ’tis the gage of one that
I should fight withal, if he be alive.
King Henry V
An Englishman?
Williams
An’t please your majesty, a rascal that swaggered with me last night; who, if alive and ever dare to challenge this glove, I have sworn to take him a box o’ th’ ear: or if I can see my glove in his cap, which he swore, as he was a soldier, he would wear if alive, I will strike it out soundly.
King Henry V
What think you, Captain Fluellen? is it fit this soldier keep his oath?
Fluellen
He is a craven and a villain else, an’t please your majesty, in my conscience.
King Henry V
It may be his enemy is a gentleman of great sort, quite from the answer of his degree.
Fluellen
Though he be as good a gentleman as the devil is, as Lucifer and Belzebub himself, it is necessary, look your grace, that he keep his vow and his oath: if he be perjured, see you now, his reputation is as arrant a villain and a Jacksauce, as ever his black shoe trod upon God’s ground and his earth, in my conscience, la!
King Henry V
Then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meetest the fellow.
Williams
So I will, my liege, as I live.
King Henry V
Who servest thou under?
Williams
Under Captain Gower, my liege.
Fluellen
Gower is a good captain, and is good knowledge and literatured in the wars.
King Henry V
Call him hither to me, soldier.
Williams
I will, my liege.
Exit
King Henry V
Here, Fluellen; wear thou this favour for me and stick it in thy cap: when Alencon and myself were down together, I plucked this glove from his helm: if any man challenge this, he is a friend to Alencon, and an enemy to our person; if thou encounter any such, apprehend him, an thou dost me love.
Fluellen
Your grace doo’s me as great honours as can be desired in the hearts of his subjects: I would fain see the man, that has but two legs, that shall find himself aggrieved at this glove; that is all; but I would fain see it once, an please God of his grace that I might see.
King Henry V
Knowest thou Gower?
Fluellen
He is my dear friend, an please you.
King Henry V
Pray thee, go seek him, and bring him to my tent.
Fluellen
I will fetch him.
Exit
King Henry V
My Lord of Warwick, and my brother Gloucester,
Follow Fluellen closely at the heels:
The glove which I have given him for a favour
May haply purchase him a box o’ th’ ear;
It is the soldier’s; I by bargain should
Wear it myself. Follow, good cousin Warwick:
If that the soldier strike him, as I judge
By his blunt bearing he will keep his word,
Some sudden mischief may arise of it;
For I do know Fluellen valiant
And, touched with choler, hot as gunpowder,
And quickly will return an injury:
Follow and see there be no harm between them.
Go you with me, uncle of Exeter.
Exeunt
SCENE VIII. BEFORE KING HENRY’S PAVILION.
Enter Gower and Williams
Williams
I warrant it is to knight you, captain.
Enter Fluellen
Fluellen
God’s will and his pleasure, captain, I beseech you now, come apace to the king: there is more good toward you peradventure than is in your knowledge to dream of.
Williams
Sir, know you this glove?
Fluellen
Know the glove! I know the glove is glove.
Williams
I know this; and thus I challenge it.
Strikes him
Fluellen
’sblood! an arrant traitor as any is in the universal world, or in France, or in England!
Gower
How now, sir! you villain!
Williams
Do you think I’ll be forsworn?
Fluellen
Stand away, Captain Gower; I will give treason his payment into ploughs, I warrant you.
Williams
I am no traitor.
Fluellen
That’s a lie in thy throat. I charge you in his majesty’s name, apprehend him: he’s a friend of the Duke Alencon’s.
Enter Warwick and Gloucester
Warwick
How now, how now! what’s the matter?
Fluellen
My Lord of Warwick, here is — praised be God for it! — a most contagious treason come to light, look you, as you shall desire in a summer’s day. Here is his majesty.
Enter King Henry and Exeter
King Henry V
How now! what’s the matter?
Fluellen
My liege, here is a villain and a traitor, that, look your grace, has struck the glov
e which your majesty is take out of the helmet of Alencon.
Williams
My liege, this was my glove; here is the fellow of it; and he that I gave it to in change promised to wear it in his cap: I promised to strike him, if he did: I met this man with my glove in his cap, and I have been as good as my word.
Fluellen
Your majesty hear now, saving your majesty’s manhood, what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is: I hope your majesty is pear me testimony and witness, and will avouchment, that this is the glove of Alencon, that your majesty is give me; in your conscience, now?
King Henry V
Give me thy glove, soldier: look, here is the fellow of it. ’Twas I, indeed, thou promised’st to strike; And thou hast given me most bitter terms.
Fluellen
An please your majesty, let his neck answer for it, if there is any martial law in the world.
King Henry V
How canst thou make me satisfaction?
Williams
All offences, my lord, come from the heart: never came any from mine that might offend your majesty.
King Henry V
It was ourself thou didst abuse.
Williams
Your majesty came not like yourself: you appeared to me but as a common man; witness the night, your garments, your lowliness; and what your highness suffered under that shape, I beseech you take it for your own fault and not mine: for had you been as I took you for, I made no offence; therefore, I beseech your highness, pardon me.
King Henry V
Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns,
And give it to this fellow. Keep it, fellow;
And wear it for an honour in thy cap
Till I do challenge it. Give him the crowns:
And, captain, you must needs be friends with him.
Fluellen
By this day and this light, the fellow has mettle enough in his belly. Hold, there is twelve pence for you; and I pray you to serve Got, and keep you out of prawls, and prabbles’ and quarrels, and dissensions, and, I warrant you, it is the better for you.
Williams
I will none of your money.
Fluellen
It is with a good will; I can tell you, it will serve you to mend your shoes: come, wherefore should you be so pashful? your shoes is not so good: ’tis a good silling, I warrant you, or I will change it.
Enter an English Herald
King Henry V
Now, herald, are the dead number’d?
Herald
Here is the number of the slaughter’d French.
King Henry V
What prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle?
Exeter
Charles Duke of Orleans, nephew to the king;
John Duke of Bourbon, and Lord Bouciqualt:
Of other lords and barons, knights and squires,
Full fifteen hundred, besides common men.
King Henry V
This note doth tell me of ten thousand French
That in the field lie slain: of princes, in this number,
And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead
One hundred twenty six: added to these,
Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,
Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which,
Five hundred were but yesterday dubb’d knights:
So that, in these ten thousand they have lost,
There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries;
The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires,
And gentlemen of blood and quality.
The names of those their nobles that lie dead:
Charles Delabreth, high constable of France;
Jaques of Chatillon, admiral of France;
The master of the cross-bows, Lord Rambures;
Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dolphin,
John Duke of Alencon, Anthony Duke of Brabant,
The brother of the Duke of Burgundy,
And Edward Duke of Bar: of lusty earls,
Grandpre and Roussi, Fauconberg and Foix,
Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrale.
Here was a royal fellowship of death!
Where is the number of our English dead?
Herald shews him another paper
Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,
Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire:
None else of name; and of all other men
But five and twenty. O God, thy arm was here;
And not to us, but to thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all! When, without stratagem,
But in plain shock and even play of battle,
Was ever known so great and little loss
On one part and on the other? Take it, God,
For it is none but thine!
Exeter
’Tis wonderful!
King Henry V
Come, go we in procession to the village.
And be it death proclaimed through our host
To boast of this or take the praise from God
Which is his only.
Fluellen
Is it not lawful, an please your majesty, to tell how many is killed?
King Henry V
Yes, captain; but with this acknowledgement,
That God fought for us.
Fluellen
Yes, my conscience, he did us great good.
King Henry V
Do we all holy rites;
Let there be sung ‘Non nobis’ and ‘Te Deum;’
The dead with charity enclosed in clay:
And then to Calais; and to England then:
Where ne’er from France arrived more happy men.
Exeunt
ACT V
PROLOGUE
Enter Chorus
Chorus
Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story,
That I may prompt them: and of such as have,
I humbly pray them to admit the excuse
Of time, of numbers and due course of things,
Which cannot in their huge and proper life
Be here presented. Now we bear the king
Toward Calais: grant him there; there seen,
Heave him away upon your winged thoughts
Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach
Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys,
Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep mouth’d sea,
Which like a mighty whiffler ’fore the king
Seems to prepare his way: so let him land,
And solemnly see him set on to London.
So swift a pace hath thought that even now
You may imagine him upon Blackheath;
Where that his lords desire him to have borne
His bruised helmet and his bended sword
Before him through the city: he forbids it,
Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride;
Giving full trophy, signal and ostent
Quite from himself to God. But now behold,
In the quick forge and working-house of thought,
How London doth pour out her citizens!
The mayor and all his brethren in best sort,
Like to the senators of the antique Rome,
With the plebeians swarming at their heels,
Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in:
As, by a lower but loving likelihood,
Were now the general of our gracious empress,
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit,
To welcome him! much more, and much more cause,
Did they this Harry. Now in London place him;
As yet the lamentation of the French
Invites the King of England’s stay at home;
The emperor’s coming in behalf of France,
To order peace between
them; and omit
All the occurrences, whatever chanced,
Till Harry’s back-return again to France:
There must we bring him; and myself have play’d
The interim, by remembering you ’tis past.
Then brook abridgment, and your eyes advance,
After your thoughts, straight back again to France.
Exit
SCENE I. FRANCE. THE ENGLISH CAMP.
Enter Fluellen and Gower
Gower
Nay, that’s right; but why wear you your leek today?
Saint Davy’s day is past.
Fluellen
There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things: I will tell you, asse my friend, Captain Gower: the rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol, which you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a fellow, look you now, of no merits, he is come to me and prings me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek: it was in place where I could not breed no contention with him; but I will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.
Enter Pistol
Gower
Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.
Fluellen
’Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks. God pless you, Aunchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!
Pistol
Ha! art thou bedlam? dost thou thirst, base Trojan,
To have me fold up Parca’s fatal web?
Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.
Fluellen
I peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek: because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections and your appetites and your digestions doo’s not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.
Pistol
Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.
Fluellen
There is one goat for you.
Strikes him
Will you be so good, scauld knave, as eat it?
Pistol
Base Trojan, thou shalt die.
Fluellen
You say very true, scauld knave, when God’s will is: I will desire you to live in the mean time, and eat your victuals: come, there is sauce for it.
Strikes him
You called me yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you to-day a squire of low degree. I pray you, fall to: if you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek.
Gower
Enough, captain: you have astonished him.
Fluellen
I say, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will peat his pate four days. Bite, I pray you; it is good for your green wound and your ploody coxcomb.
Complete Plays, The Page 194