FLUELLEN It is Well.

PISTOL The fig of Spain.

FLUELLEN Very good.

PISTOL

I say the fig within thy bowels and thy dirty maw.

Exit

FLUELLEN Captain Gower, cannot you hear it lighten and thunder?

GOWER Why, is this the ensign you told me of? 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 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, 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 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 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.

A drum is heard

Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with him from the pridge.

Enter King Harry and his poor soldiers, with drum and colours

God pless your majesty.

KING HARRY

How now, Fluellen, com’st thou from the 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 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.

KING HARRY 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 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 is executed, and his fire’s out.

KING HARRY We would have all such offenders so cut off, and we here 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 play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner. Tucket. Enter Montjoy

MONTJOY You know me by my habit.

KING HARRY

Well then, I know thee. What shall I know of thee?

MONTJOY

My master’s mind.

KING HARRY 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, 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 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 re-answer, his pettiness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for th’ffusion 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.

KING HARRY

What is thy name? I know thy quality.

MONTJOY Montjoy.

KING HARRY

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, 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 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

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,

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. There’s for thy labour, Montjoy.

Go bid thy master well advise himself.

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,

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 HARRY

We are in God’s hand, brother, not in theirs.

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, Lord Rambures, the Dukes of Orléans and ⌈Bourbon⌉, 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.

ORLÉANS Will it never be morning?

⌈BOURBON⌉ My lord of Orléans and my Lord High Constable, you talk of horse and armour?

ORLÉANS You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.

⌈BOURBON⌉ What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ah ha! He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hares-le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk; he trots the air, the earth sings when he touches it, the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.

ORLÉANS He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.