Henry V, Kean adaptation

Fr. King. Where is Montjoy the herald? speed him hence:

Let him greet England with our sharp defiance.—

Up, princes! and, with spirit of honour edg’d

More sharper than your swords, hie to the field:

Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land

With pennons3 painted in the blood of Harfleur:

Go down upon him,—you have power enough,—

And in a captive chariot into Rouen

Bring him our prisoner.

Con.

This becomes the great.

Sorry am I his numbers are so few,

His soldiers sick, and famish’d in their march;

For, I am sure, when he shall see our army,

He’ll drop his heart into the sink of fear,

And, for achievement offer us his ransom.4

Fr. King. Therefore, lord constable, haste on Montjoy;

Constable crosses to L.

And let him say to England, that we send

To know what willing ransom he will give.—

Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Rouen.

Fr. King. Be patient; for you shall remain with us.—

Now, forth, lord constable (Exit Constable, L.H.), and princes all,

And quickly bring us word of England’s fall.

Scene II.—A VIEW IN PICARDY.

Flu. (R.C.) I assure you, there is very excellent service committed at the pridge.

Flu. The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and my livings, and my uttermost powers: he is not (Heaven be praised and plessed!) any hurt in the ’orld; but keeps the pridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There is an ensign there at the pridge,—I think in my very conscience he is as valiant as Mark Antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the ’orld; but I did see him do gallant service.

Pist. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours:

The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.

Pist. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart,

Of buxom valour,6 hath,—by cruel fate,

And giddy fortune’s furious fickle wheel,

That goddess blind.

That stands upon the rolling restless stone,—7

Flu. By your patience, ancient Pistol. Fortune is painted plind, with a muffler before her eyes,8 to signify to you that fortune is plind; And she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and variations, and mutabilities: and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls:—In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of fortune: fortune, look you, is an excellent moral.

Pist. Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him;

For he has stolen a pix,9 and hang’d must ’a be.(B)

A damned death!

Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free,

Crosses to L.H.

But Exeter hath given the doom of death,

For pix of little price.

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.

Crosses to R.H.

Flu. Certainly, ancient, it is not a thing to rejoice at: for if, look you, he were my prother, I would desire the duke to use his goot pleasure, and put him to executions; for disciplines ought to be used.

Gow. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; a cut-purse; I remember him now.

Flu. I’ll assure you, ’a utter’d as prave ’ords at the pridge as you shall see in a summer’s day.

Gow. 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. You must learn to know such slanders of the age,12 or else you may be marvellously mistook.

Flu. I tell you what, Captain Gower;—I do perceive, he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the ’orld he is: if I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind.

Flu. Ay, so please your majesty. The duke of Exeter has very gallantly maintained the pridge: the French has 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 tell your majesty, the duke is a prave man.

Flu. The perdition of th’athversary hath been very great, very reasonable great: marry, for my part, I think the duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your majesty knows the man: his face is all bubukles,14 and whelks,15 and knobs, and flames of fire: and his lips plows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue, and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire’s out.16

Mont. Thus says my king:—Say thou to Harry of England: Though we seemed dead, we did but sleep. Tell him, he shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance.18 Bid him, therefore, consider of his ransom; which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for the 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 condemnation is pronounced. So far my king and master; so much my office.

K. Hen. Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,

And tell thy king,—I do not seek him now;

But could be willing to march on to Calais

Without impeachment:19 for, to say the sooth

(Though ’tis no wisdom to confess so much

Unto an enemy of craft and vantage),

My people are with sickness much enfeebled;

My numbers lessen’d; 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,

Did march three Frenchmen.—Forgive me, Heaven,

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;

My army but a weak and sickly guard:

Yet, Heaven before,20 tell him we will come on,

Though France himself,21 and such another neighbour,

Stand in our way. There’s for thy labour, Montjoy.

Go, bid thy master well advise himself:

If we may pass, we will; if we be hinder’d,

We shall your tawny ground with your red blood

Discolour:(C) and so, Montjoy, fare you well.

The sum of all our answer is but this:

We would not seek a battle, as we are;

Nor, as we are, we say, we will not shun it:

So tell your master.

Mont.

I shall deliver so.

Montjoy rises from his knee.

Thanks to your highness.

K. Hen. We are in Heaven’s hand, brother, not in theirs.

March to the bridge; it now draws toward night:

Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves;

And on to-morrow bid them march away.

END OF ACT THIRD.

HISTORICAL NOTES TO ACT THIRD.

(A) Come you from the bridge?] After Henry had passed the Somme, Titus Livius asserts, that the King having been informed of a river which must be crossed, over which was a bridge, and that his progress depended in a great degree upon securing possession of it, despatched some part of his forces to defend it from any attack, or from being destroyed. They found many of the enemy ready to receive them, to whom they gave battle, and after a severe conflict, they captured the bridge, and kept it.

(B)

Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him;

For he hath stol’n a pix, and hanged must ’a be.

It will be seen by the following extract from the anonymous Chronicler how minutely Shakespeare has adhered to history— “There was brought to the King in that plain a certain English robber, who, contrary to the laws of God and the Royal Proclamation, had stolen from a church a pix of copper gilt, found in his sleeve, which he happened to mistake for gold, in which the Lord’s body was kept; and in the next village where he passed the night, by decree of the King, he was put to death on the gallows.” Titus Livius relates that Henry commanded his army to halt until the sacrilege was expiated. He first caused the pix to be restored to the Church, and the offender was then led, bound as a thief, through the army, and afterwards hung upon a tree, that every man might behold him.

(C)

Go, bid thy master well advise himself:

If we may pass, we will; if we be hinder’d,

We shall your tawny ground with your red blood

Discolour:]

My desire is, that none of you be so unadvised, as to be the occasion that I in my defence shall colour and make red your tawny ground with the effusion of Christian blood. When he (Henry) had thus answered the Herald, he gave him a great reward, and licensed him to depart. —Holinshed.

Enter Chorus.

Cho. Now entertain conjecture of a time

When creeping murmur and the poring dark

Fills the wide vessel of the universe.

From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night

The hum of either army stilly sounds,1

That the fix’d sentinels almost receive

The secret whispers of each other’s watch:2

Fire answers fire;3 and through their paly flames

Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face:4

Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs

Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents,

The armourers, accomplishing the knights,

With busy hammers closing rivets up,

Give dreadful note of preparation.

Proud of their numbers, and secure in soul,

The confident and over-lusty5 French

Do the low-rated English play at dice;6

And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night,

Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp

So tediously away.

Scene opens and discovers the interior of a French tent, with the Dauphin, the Constable, Orleans, and others, playing at dice.

Con. I would it were morning; for I would fain be about the ears of the English.

Con. Would it were day! Alas, poor Harry of England! he longs not for the dawning, as we do.

Con. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.

Dau. Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have their heads crushed like rotten apples! You may as well say,—that’s a valiant flea, that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

Con. Just, just: give them great meals of beef, and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves, and fight like devils.

Con. Then we shall find to-morrow—they have only stomachs to eat, and none to fight. Now is it time to arm: Come, shall we about it?

Dau. It is now two o’clock: but, let me see,—by ten We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.

SCENE CLOSES IN.

Cho. The poor condemned English,

Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires

Sit patiently, and inly ruminate

The morning’s danger; and their gestures sad,

Investing lank-lean cheeks, and war-worn coats,

Presenteth them unto the gazing moon

So many horrid ghosts.

Scene re-opens, discovering the English camp, with group of soldiery praying. After a pause the scene closes.

O, now, who will behold

The royal captain of this ruin’d band

Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,

Let him cry—Praise and glory on his head!

For forth he goes and visits all his host;

Bids them good-morrow with a modest smile,

And calls them—brothers, friends, and countrymen.

Upon his royal face there is no note

How dread an army hath enrounded him;

Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour

Unto the weary and all-watched night;

But freshly looks, and overbears attaint

With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty;

That every wretch, pining and pale before,

Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks:

Then, mean and gentle all,

Behold, as may unworthiness define,

A little touch of Harry in the night:

And so our scene must to the battle fly;

The field of Agincourt. Yet, sit and see;

Minding true things7 by what their mockeries be.

ACT IV.

Scene I.—THE ENGLISH CAMP AT AGINCOURT.(A) NIGHT.

K. Hen. Gloster, ’tis true that we are in great danger;

The greater therefore should our courage be.

Good morrow, brother Bedford.—Gracious Heaven!

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.

Thus may we gather honey from the weed,

And make a moral of the devil himself.

Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham:

A good soft pillow for that good white head

Were better than a churlish turf of France.

Erp. Not so, my liege: this lodging likes me better,

Since I may say—now lie I like a king.

K. Hen. 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.

K. Hen.

No, my good knight;

Go with my brothers to my lords of England:

Erpingham crosses to R.

I and my bosom must debate a while,

And then I would no other company.

Pist. Discuss unto me; Art thou officer?

Or art thou base, common, and popular?1

Pist. The king’s a bawcock,3 and a heart of gold,

A lad of life, an imp of fame;4

Of parents good, of fist most valiant:

I kiss his dirty shoe, and from my heart-strings

I love the lovely bully. What’s thy name?

Pist. Tell him, I’ll knock his leek about his pate,

Upon Saint Davy’s day.

K. Hen. Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest he knock that about yours.

Enter Fluellen, L.H., and crosses to R., and Gower, U.E.R.H., following hastily.

Flu. (R.C.) So! in the name of Heaven, speak lower.6 It is the greatest admiration in the universal ’orld, when the true and auncient 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, or pibble pabble in Pompey’s camp.

Flu. 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?

K. Hen. Though it appear a little out of fashion, there is much care and valour in this Welshman.

Bates. I think it be: but we have no great cause to desire the approach of day.

Will. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but, I think, we shall never see the end of it.—Who goes there?

Will. A good old commander, and a most kind gentleman: I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?

K. Hen. Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed off the next tide.

K. Hen. No; nor it is not meet he should. Crosses to centre. 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:7 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 the Thames up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.

K. Hen. (C.) By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king: I think he would not wish himself any where but where he is.

Bates. (L.) Then ’would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved.

K. Hen. 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 any where so contented as in the king’s company; his cause being just, and his quarrel honourable.8

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.

Will. But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy rekoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day,9 and cry all—We died at such 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.10 I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, 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; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

K. Hen. 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:—But this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, nor the father of his son, for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. 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.

Will. ’Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is 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.

Will. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but, when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we ne’er the wiser.

Will. That’s a perilous shot out of an elder gun, that a poor and 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.

K. Hen. Your reproof is something too round:11 I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.

K. Hen. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet: then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.

Will. 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.

Bates. Be friends, you English fools, be friends: (Crosses to Williams, R.) we have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to reckon.

K. Hen. Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,

Our sins, lay on the king!—we must bear all.

O hard condition, twin-born with greatness,

Subjected to the breath of every fool.

What infinite heart’s ease must king’s 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?

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!

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 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;

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.

Erp. My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,

Seek through your camp to find you.

K. Hen.

Good old knight,

Collect them all together at my tent:

I’ll be before thee.

Erp.

I shall do’t, my lord.

K. Hen. O God of battles! steel my soldier’s hearts;

Possess them not with fear; take from them now

The sense of reckoning, lest 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;(C)

And on it have bestow’d more contrite tears,

Than from it issu’d 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:

More will I do—

Scene II.—THE FRENCH CAMP—SUNRISE.

Dau. The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords!

My horse! varlet! lacquay! ha!

Dau. Cousin Orleans.—

Enter Constable, L.H.

Now, my lord Constable!

Dau. Mount them, and make incision in their hides,

That their hot blood may spin in English eyes,

And dout them13 with superfluous courage, Ha!

Con. What, will you have them weep our horses’ blood?

How shall we, then, behold their natural tears?

Con. To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse!

Do but behold yon poor and starved band.

There is not work enough for all our hands;

Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins,

To give each naked curtle-ax a stain.

’Tis positive ’gainst all exceptions, lords,

That our superfluous lackeys, are enough

To purge this field of such a hilding foe.14

A very little little let us do,

And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound:

For our approach shall so much dare the field,

That England shall couch down in fear, and yield.