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KING HENRY V
Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day,
lest he knock that about yours.
PISTOL
Art thou his friend?
KING HENRY V
And his kinsman too.
PISTOL
The figo for thee, then!
KING HENRY V
I thank you: God be with you!
PISTOL
My name is Pistol call'd.
Exit
KING HENRY V
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 of 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 toddle
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 V
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 V
A friend.
WILLIAMS
Under what captain serve you?
KING HENRY V
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 V
Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be
washed off the next tide.
BATES
He hath not told his thought to the king?
KING HENRY V
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 V
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
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 V
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.
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 kings 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, chopped off in 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 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.
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