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,
35
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.
10
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!’
40
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
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 191
