The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  FLUELLEN ‘Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks. —God pless you Ensign 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 does not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it. 26

  PISTOL

  Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.

  FLUELLEN There is one goat for you. (He strikes Pistol) Will you be so good, scald knave, as eat it?

  PISTOL Base Trojan, thou shalt die.

  FLUELLEN You say very true, scald 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. (He strikes him) You called me yesterday ‘mountain-squire’, but I will make you today a ‘squire of low degree’. I pray you, fall to. If you can mock a leek you can eat a leek.⌈He strikes him⌉

  GOWER Enough, captain, you have astonished him.

  FLUELLEN By Jesu, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will peat his pate four days and four nights.—Bite, I pray you. It is good for your green wound and your ploody coxcomb.

  PISTOL Must I bite?

  FLUELLEN Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question too, and ambiguities.

  PISTOL By this leek, I will most horribly revenge—⌈Fluellen threatens him⌉ I eat and eat—I swear—

  FLUELLEN Eat, I pray you. Will you have some more sauce to your leek? There is not enough leek to swear by.

  PISTOL

  Quiet thy cudgel, thou dost see I eat.

  FLUELLEN Much good do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, pray you throw none away. The skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you mock at ’em, that is all.

  PISTOL Good.

  FLUELLEN Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate.

  PISTOL Me, a groat?

  FLUELLEN Yes, verity, and in truth you shall take it, or I have another leek in my pocket which you shall eat.

  PISTOL

  I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.

  FLUELLEN If I owe you anything, I will pay you in cudgels. You shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God b’wi’ you, and keep you, and heal your pate. Exit

  PISTOL All hell shall stir for this.

  GOWER Go, go, you are a counterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel. You find it otherwise. And henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition. Fare ye well.Exit

  PISTOL

  Doth Fortune play the hussy with me now?

  News have I that my Nell is dead

  I’th’ spital of a malady of France,

  And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.

  Old I do wax, and from my weary limbs

  Honour is cudgelled. Well, bawd I’ll turn,

  And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.

  To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal,

  And patches will I get unto these cudgelled scars,

  And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.Exit

  5.2 Enter at one door King Harry, the Dukes of Exeter and ⌈Clarence⌉, the Earl of Warwick, and other lords; at another, King Charles the Sixth of France, Queen Isabel, the Duke of Burgundy, and other French, among them Princess Catherine and Alice

  KING HARRY

  Peace to this meeting, wherefor we are met.

  Unto our brother France and to our sister,

  Health and fair time of day. joy and good wishes

  To our most fair and princely cousin Catherine;

  And as a branch and member of this royalty,

  By whom this great assembly is contrived,

  We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy.

  And princes French, and peers, health to you all.

  KING CHARLES

  Right joyous are we to behold your face.

  Most worthy brother England, fairly met.

  So are you, princes English, every one.

  QUEEN ISABEL

  So happy be the issue, brother England,

  Of this good day and of this gracious meeting,

  As we are now glad to behold your eyes—

  Your eyes which hitherto have borne in them,

  Against the French that met them in their bent,

  The fatal balls of murdering basilisks.

  The venom of such looks we fairly hope

  Have lost their quality, and that this day

  Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

  KING HARRY

  To cry amen to that, thus we appear.

  QUEEN ISABEL

  You English princes all, I do salute you.

  BURGUNDY

  My duty to you both, on equal love,

  Great Kings of France and England. That I have

  laboured

  With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours,

  To bring your most imperial majesties

  Unto this bar and royal interview,

  Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.

  Since, then, my office hath so far prevailed

  That face to face and royal eye to eye

  You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me

  If I demand, before this royal view,

  What rub or what impediment there is

  Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,

  Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,

  Should not in this best garden of the world,

  Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?

  Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,

  And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,

  Corrupting in it own fertility.

  Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,

  Unprunèd dies; her hedges even-plashed

  Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair

  Put forth disordered twigs; her fallow leas

  The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory

  Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts

  That should deracinate such savagery.

  The even mead—that erst brought sweetly forth

  The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover—

  Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

  Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems

  But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,

  Losing both beauty and utility.

  An all our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,

  Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,

  Even so our houses and ourselves and children

  Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,

  The sciences that should become our country,

  But grow like savages—as soldiers will

  That nothing do but meditate on blood—

  To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,

  And everything that seems unnatural.

  Which to reduce into our former favour

  You are assembled, and my speech entreats

  That I may know the let why gentle peace

  Should not expel these inconveniences

  And bless us with her former qualities.

  KING HARRY

  If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace

  Whose want gives growth to th’imperfections

  Which you have cited, you must buy that peace

  Wit
h full accord to all our just demands,

  Whose tenors and particular effects

  You have enscheduled briefly in your hands.

  BURGUNDY

  The King hath heard them, to the which as yet

  There is no answer made.

  KING HARRY Well then, the peace,

  Which you before so urged, lies in his answer.

  KING CHARLES

  I have but with a cursitory eye

  O’erglanced the articles. Pleaseth your grace

  To appoint some of your council presently

  To sit with us once more, with better heed

  To re-survey them, we will suddenly

  Pass our accept and peremptory answer.

  KING HARRY

  Brother, we shall.—Go, Uncle Exeter

  And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloucester;

  Warwick and Huntingdon, go with the King,

  And take with you free power to ratify,

  Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best

  Shall see advantageable for our dignity,

  Anything in or out of our demands,

  And we’ll consign thereto.—Will you, fair sister,

  Go with the princes, or stay here with us?

  QUEEN

  Our gracious brother, I will go with them.

  Haply a woman’s voice may do some good

  When articles too nicely urged be stood on.

  KING HARRY

  Yet leave our cousin Catherine here with us.

  She is our capital demand, comprised

  Within the fore-rank of our articles.

  QUEEN

  She hath good leave.Exeunt all but King Harry, Catherine, and Alice

  KING HARRY Fair Catherine, and most fair,

  Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms

  Such as will enter at a lady’s ear

  And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?

  CATHERINE Your majesty shall mock at me. I cannot speak your England.

  KING HARRY O fair Catherine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?

  CATHERINE Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is ‘like me’.

  KING HARRY An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.

  CATHERINE (to Alice) Que dit-il?—que je suis semblable à les anges?

  ALICE Oui, vraiment—sauf votre grâce—ainsi dit-il.

  KING HARRY I said so, dear Catherine, and I must not blush to affirm it.

  CATHERINE O bon Dieu! Les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies.

  KING HARRY What says she, fair one? That the tongues of men are full of deceits?

  ALICE Oui, dat de tongeus of de mans is be full of deceits—dat is de Princess.

  KING HARRY The Princess is the better Englishwoman. I‘faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say, ‘I love you’; then if you urge me farther than to say, ‘Do you in faith?’, I wear out my suit. Give me your answer, i’faith do, and so clap hands and a bargain. How say you, lady?

  CATHERINE Sauf votre honneur, me understand well.

  KING HARRY Marry, if you would put me to verses, or to dance for your sake, Kate, why, you undid me. For the one I have neither words nor measure, and for the other I have no strength in measure—yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher, and sit like a jackanapes, never off. But before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation—only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier: if thou canst love me for this, take me. If not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true—but for thy love, by the Lord, no. Yet I love thee, too. And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy, for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places. For these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! A speaker is but a prater, a rhyme is but a ballad; a good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow, but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon—or rather the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what sayst thou then to my love? Speak, my fair—and fairly, I pray thee.

  CATHERINE Is it possible dat I sould love de ennemi of France?

  KING HARRY No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of France, Kate. But in loving me, you should love the friend of France, for I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it, I will have it all mine; and Kate, when France is mine, and I am yours, then yours is France, and you are mine.

  CATHERINE I cannot tell vat is dat.

  KING HARRY No, Kate? I will tell thee in French—which I am sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook off. le quand suis le possesseur de France, et quand vous avez le possession de moi—let me see, what then? Saint Denis be my speed!—donc vôtre est France, et vous êtes mienne. It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French. I shall never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me.

  CATHERINE Sauf votre honneur, le français que vous parlez, il est meilleur que l’anglais lequel je parle.

  KING HARRY No, faith, is’t not, Kate. But thy speaking of my tongue, and I thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be granted to be much at one. But Kate, dost thou understand thus much English? Canst thou love me?

  CATHERINE I cannot tell.

  KING HARRY Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I’ll ask them. Come, I know thou lovest me, and at night when you come into your closet you’ll question this gentlewoman about me, and I know, Kate, you will to her dispraise those parts in me that you love with your heart. But good Kate, mock me mercifully—the rather, gentle princess, because I love thee cruelly. If ever thou be’st mine, Kate—as I have a saving faith within me tells me thou shalt—I get thee with scrambling, and thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-breeder. Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half-French half-English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard? Shall we not? What sayst thou, my fair flowerde-luce?

  CATHERINE I do not know dat.

  KING HARRY No, ’tis hereafter to know, but now to promise. Do but now promise, Kate, you will endeavour for your French part of such a boy, and for my English moiety take the word of a king and a bachelor. How answer you, la plus belle Catherine du monde, mon très chere et divine deésse?

  CATHERINE Your majesté ’ave faux French enough to deceive de most sage demoiselle dat is en France.

  KING HARRY Now fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true English, I love thee, Kate. By which honour I dare not swear thou lovest me, yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage. Now beshrew my father’s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars when he got me; therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that when I come to woo ladies I fright them. But in faith, Kate, the elder I wax the better I shall appear. My comfort is that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no
more spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst, and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better; and therefore tell me, most fair Catherine, will you have me? Put off your maiden blushes, avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress, take me by the hand and say, ‘Harry of England, I am thine’—which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud, ‘England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet is thine’—who, though I speak it before his face, if he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows. Come, your answer in broken music—for thy voice is music and thy English broken. Therefore, queen of all, Catherine, break thy mind to me in broken English: wilt thou have me?

  CATHERINE Dat is as it shall please de roi mon père.

  KING HARRY Nay, it will please him well, Kate. It shall please him, Kate.

  CATHERINE Den it sail also content me.

  KING HARRY Upon that I kiss your hand, and I call you my queen.

  CATHERINE Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je ne veux point que vous abbaissez votre grandeur en baisant la main d’une de votre seigneurie indigne serviteur. Excusezmoi, je vous supplie, mon treis-puissant seigneur.

  KING HARRY Then I will kiss your lips, Kate. 255

  CATHERINE Les dames et demoiselles pour être baisées devant leurs noces, il n’est pas la coutume de France.

  KING HARRY (to Alice) Madam my interpreter, what says she?

  ALICE Dat it is not be de façon pour les ladies of France—I cannot tell vat is baiser en Anglish.

  KING HARRY To kiss.

  ALICE Your majesté entend bettre que moi.

  KING HARRY It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say? 265 ALICE Oui, vraiment.

  KING HARRY O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate, and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults, as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss. Therefore, patiently and yielding. (He kisses her) You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate. There is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French Council, and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father Enter King Charles, Queen Isabel, the Duke of Burgundy, and the French and English lords