Enter Captains, English and Welsh, Gower and Fluellen.GOWER How now, Captain Fluellen? Come you from the bridge?FLUELLEN I assure you there is very excellent services committed at the bridge.GOWER 5Is the Duke of Exeter safe?FLUELLEN The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon, and a man that I love and honor with my soul and my heart and my duty and my life and my living and my uttermost power. He is not, God10 be praised and blessed, any hurt in the world, but keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There is an aunchient lieutenant there at the pridge; I think in my very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark Antony, and he is a man of no15 estimation in the world, but I did see him do as gallant service.GOWER What do you call him?
FLUELLEN He is called Aunchient Pistol.GOWER I know him not.Enter Pistol.FLUELLEN 20Here is the man.PISTOL Captain, I thee beseech to do me favors. The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.FLUELLEN Ay, I praise God, and I have merited some love at his hands.PISTOL 25Bardolph, a soldier firm and sound of heart and of buxom valor, hath, by cruel Fate and giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel, that goddess blind, that stands upon the rolling restless stone—FLUELLEN By your patience, Aunchient Pistol, Fortune30 is painted blind, with a muffler afore ⌜her⌝ eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; 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 mutability and variation; and her foot, look you,35 is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls and rolls 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,40 for he hath stolen a pax and hangèd must he be. A damnèd 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. Therefore go speak; the Duke will hear thy45 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 Aunchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.PISTOL 50Why then, rejoice therefore.FLUELLEN Certainly, aunchient, 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 to execution, for discipline ought to be55 used.PISTOL Die and be damned, and figo for thy friendship!FLUELLEN It is well.PISTOL The fig of Spain!He exits.FLUELLEN Very good.GOWER 60Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal. I remember him now, a bawd, a cutpurse.FLUELLEN I’ll assure you he 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, I65 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’70 names, 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 in75 the phrase of war, which 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 such80 slanders of the age, or else you may be marvelously 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, I85 will tell him my mind.
Drum and Colors. Enter the King ⌜of England⌝ and his
poor Soldiers, ⌜and Gloucester.⌝ Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with him from the pridge.—God pless your Majesty.KING HENRY How now, Fluellen, cam’st thou from the90 bridge?FLUELLEN Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of 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 was95 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.KING HENRY What men have you lost, Fluellen?FLUELLEN 100The 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 like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man. His face is105 all bubukles 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 is executed, and his fire’s out.KING HENRY We would have all such offenders so cut110 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 French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when ⌜lenity⌝ and cruelty play115 for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.Tucket. Enter Montjoy.
MONTJOY You know me by my habit.KING HENRY Well then, I know thee. What shall I know of thee?MONTJOY 120My master’s mind.KING HENRY 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 him125 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 him130 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 th’135 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,140 whose condemnation is pronounced.” So far my king and master; so much my office.KING HENRY What is thy name? I know thy quality.MONTJOY Montjoy.KING HENRY Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,145 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,150 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 legs155 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,160 My army but a weak and sickly guard, Yet, God before, tell him we will come on Though France himself and such another neighbor Stand in our way. There’s for thy labor, Montjoy.⌜Gives money.⌝ Go bid thy master well advise himself:165 If we may pass, we will; if we be hindered, We shall your tawny ground with your red blood Discolor. And so, Montjoy, fare you well. The sum of all our answer is but this: We would not seek a battle as we are,170 Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it. So tell your master.MONTJOY I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.⌜He exits.⌝GLOUCESTER I hope they will not come upon us now.KING HENRY We are in God’s hand, brother, not in theirs.175 March to the bridge. It now draws toward night. Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves, And on tomorrow bid them march away.They exit.
Henry V
