GOWER I will speak lower.

FLUELLEN I pray you and beseech you that you will.

Exeunt Fluellen and Gower

KING HARRY

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.

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

KING HARRY A friend.

WILLIAM Under what captain serve you?

KING HARRY Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.

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

KING HARRY 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 HARRY 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 HARRY By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King. I think he would not wish himself anywhere 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 HARRY 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 anywhere 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 King’s 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 a battle shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ‘We died at such a ptace’—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 anything, 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—who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

KING HARRY 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. Or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers, and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation. But this is not so. The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant, for they purpose not their deaths when they propose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrament of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some, peradventure, have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle. War is his vengeance. So that here men are punished for before-breach of the King’s laws, in now the King’s quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the King guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. 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. And in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, he let him outlive that day to see his greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.

⌈BATES⌉ ’Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head. The King is not to answer it. I do not desire he should answer for me, and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.

KING HARRY I myself heard the King say he would not be ransomed.

WILLIAMS 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.

KING HARRY If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.

WILLIAMS You pay him then! That’s a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and a 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.

KING HARRY Your reproof is something too round. I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.

WILLIAMS Let it be a quarrel between us, if you live.

KING HARRY I embrace it.

WILLIAM How shall I know thee again?

KING HARRY 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.

WILLIAMS Here’s my glove. Give me another of thine.

KING HARRY There. They exchange gloves

WILLIAM This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou come to me and say, after tomorrow, ‘This is my glove’, by this hand I will take thee a box on the ear.

KING HARRY If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.

WILLIAM Thou darest as well be hanged.

KING HARRY Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King’s company.

WILLIAMS Keep thy word. Fare thee well.

BATES Be friends, you English fools, be friends. We have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to reckon.

KING HARRY Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders. But it is no English treason to cut French crowns, and tomorrow the King himself will be a clipper. Exeunt soldiers Upon the King. ‘Let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our care-full wives, Our children, and our sins, lay on the King.’ We must bear all. O hard condition, Twin-born with greatness: subject to the breath Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel But his own wringing. What infinite heartsease Must kings 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? What kind of god art thou, that suffer‘st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? What are thy comings-in? O ceremony, show me but thy worth. What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy, being feared, Than they in fearing. What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poisoned flattery? O be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure. Think‘st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? 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 intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running fore the king, 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 filled and vacant mind Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread; Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, But like a lackey from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse, And follows so the ever-running year With profitable labour to his grave. And but for ceremony such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the forehand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country’s peace, Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages. Enter Sir Thomas Erpingham