SparkNotes: Complete Text of Henry V: Act IV, Scene i

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READ STUDY GUIDE: Act IV, Prologue and scenes i–ii

Act IV, Scene i:
The English camp at Agincourt.

[Enter King Henry, 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 distil it out;

For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,

Which is both healthful and good husbandry.

Besides, they are our outward consciences,

And preachers to us all, admonishing

That we should dress us fairly for our end.

Thus may we gather honey from the weed,

And make a moral of the devil himself.

[Enter Erpingham.]

Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham:

A good soft pillow for that good white head

Were better than a churlish turf of France.

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 quick'ned, 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. 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 a while,

And then I would no other company.

ERPINGHAM:

The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!

[Exeunt [all but King.]

KING HENRY:

God-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak'st cheerfully.

[Enter Pistol.]

PISTOL:

Qui va la?

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 heart-string

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 call'd.

[Exit.]

KING HENRY:

It sorts well with your fierceness.

[Enter Fluellen and Gower.]

GOWER:

Captain Fluellen!

FLUELLEN:

So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak lower. 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 pabble in Pompey's camp. I warrant you, you shall find the

ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it,

and the 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.

[Exeunt [Gower and Fluellen.]

KING HENRY:

Though it appear a little out of fashion,

There is much care and valour in this Welshman.

[Enter three soldiers, John Bates, Alexander Court,And Michael Williams.]

COURT:

Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks

yonder?

BATES:

I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the

approach of day.

WILLIAMS:

We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think

we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?

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 wreck'd upon a sand, that look to be

wash'd 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 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 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, chopp'd

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 irreconcil'd

iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of

the servant's damnation. But this is not so. The King is not

bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father

of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not

their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is

no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the

arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.

Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and

contrived 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

punish'd 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 for 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 ransom'd.

WILLIAMS:

Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our

throats are cut, he may be ransom'd, 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.

WILLIAMS:

This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou come to me

and say, after to-morrow, "This is my glove," by this hand I

will 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 hang'd.

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 enow, if you could tell how to reckon.

[Exeunt soldiers.]

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 to-morrow the

King himself will be a clipper.

Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls,

Our debts, our careful wives,

Our children, and our sins lay on the King!

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 worshippers?

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 fear'd

Than they in fearing.

What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,

But poison'd 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 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

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 fill'd and vacant mind

Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread,

Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,

But, like a 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 labour, to his grave:

And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,

Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,

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.

[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.

[Exit.]

KING HENRY:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts.

Possess them not with fear. Take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers

Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,

O, not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard's body have interred new,

And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears

Than from it issued forced drops of blood.

Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,

Who twice a day their wither'd 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.

[Exeunt.]

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