Complete Plays, The (235 page)

Exit

S
CENE
I. L
ONDON
. A
STREET
.

Enter Corporal Nym and Lieutenant Bardolph

Bardolph

Well met, Corporal Nym.

Nym

Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.

Bardolph

What, are Ancient Pistol and you friends yet?

Nym

For my part, I care not: I say little; but when time shall serve, there shall be smiles; but that shall be as it may. I dare not fight; but I will wink and hold out mine iron: it is a simple one; but what though? it will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man’s sword will: and there’s an end.

Bardolph

I will bestow a breakfast to make you friends; and we’ll be all three sworn brothers to France: let it be so, good Corporal Nym.

Nym

Faith, I will live so long as I may, that’s the certain of it; and when I cannot live any longer, I will do as I may: that is my rest, that is the rendezvous of it.

Bardolph

It is certain, corporal, that he is married to Nell Quickly: and certainly she did you wrong; for you were troth-plight to her.

Nym

I cannot tell: things must be as they may: men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say knives have edges. It must be as it may: though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I cannot tell.

Enter Pistol and Hostess

Bardolph

Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife: good corporal, be patient here. How now, mine host Pistol!

Pistol

Base tike, call’st thou me host? Now, by this hand,
I swear, I scorn the term; Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers.

Hostess

No, by my troth, not long; for we cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of their needles, but it will be thought we keep a bawdy house straight.

Nym and Pistol draw

O well a day, Lady, if he be not drawn now! we shall see wilful adultery and murder committed.

Bardolph

Good lieutenant! good corporal! offer nothing here.

Nym

Pish!

Pistol

Pish for thee, Iceland dog! thou prick-ear’d cur of Iceland!

Hostess

Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour, and put up your sword.

Nym

Will you shog off? I would have you solus.

Pistol

‘solus,’ egregious dog? O viper vile!
The ‘solus’ in thy most mervailous face;
The ‘solus’ in thy teeth, and in thy throat,
And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy,
And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!
I do retort the ‘solus’ in thy bowels;
For I can take, and Pistol’s cock is up,
And flashing fire will follow.

Nym

I am not Barbason; you cannot conjure me. I have an humour to knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms: if you would walk off, I would prick your guts a little, in good terms, as I may: and that’s the humour of it.

Pistol

O braggart vile and damned furious wight!
The grave doth gape, and doting death is near;
Therefore exhale.

Bardolph

Hear me, hear me what I say: he that strikes the first stroke, I’ll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.

Draws

Pistol

An oath of mickle might; and fury shall abate.
Give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give:
Thy spirits are most tall.

Nym

I will cut thy throat, one time or other, in fair terms: that is the humour of it.

Pistol

‘Couple a gorge!’
That is the word. I thee defy again.
O hound of Crete, think’st thou my spouse to get?
No; to the spital go,
And from the powdering tub of infamy
Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind,
Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse:
I have, and I will hold, the quondam Quickly
For the only she; and — pauca, there’s enough. Go to.

Enter the Boy

Boy

Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master, and you, hostess: he is very sick, and would to bed. Good Bardolph, put thy face between his sheets, and do the office of a warming-pan. Faith, he’s very ill.

Bardolph

Away, you rogue!

Hostess

By my troth, he’ll yield the crow a pudding one of these days. The king has killed his heart. Good husband, come home presently.

Exeunt Hostess and Boy

Bardolph

Come, shall I make you two friends? We must to France together: why the devil should we keep knives to cut one another’s throats?

Pistol

Let floods o’erswell, and fiends for food howl on!

Nym

You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting?

Pistol

Base is the slave that pays.

Nym

That now I will have: that’s the humour of it.

Pistol

As manhood shall compound: push home.

They draw

Bardolph

By this sword, he that makes the first thrust, I’ll kill him; by this sword, I will.

Pistol

Sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course.

Bardolph

Corporal Nym, an thou wilt be friends, be friends: an thou wilt not, why, then, be enemies with me too. Prithee, put up.

Nym

I shall have my eight shillings I won of you at betting?

Pistol

A noble shalt thou have, and present pay;
And liquor likewise will I give to thee,
And friendship shall combine, and brotherhood:
I’ll live by Nym, and Nym shall live by me;
Is not this just? for I shall sutler be
Unto the camp, and profits will accrue.
Give me thy hand.

Nym

I shall have my noble?

Pistol

In cash most justly paid.

Nym

Well, then, that’s the humour of’t.

Re-enter Hostess

Hostess

As ever you came of women, come in quickly to Sir John. Ah, poor heart! he is so shaked of a burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him.

Nym

The king hath run bad humours on the knight; that’s the even of it.

Pistol

Nym, thou hast spoke the right;
His heart is fracted and corroborate.

Nym

The king is a good king: but it must be as it may; he passes some humours and careers.

Pistol

Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins we will live.

S
CENE
II. S
OUTHAMPTON
. A
COUNCIL
-
CHAMBER
.

Enter Exeter, Bedford, and Westmoreland

Bedford

’Fore God, his grace is bold, to trust these traitors.

Exeter

They shall be apprehended by and by.

Westmoreland

How smooth and even they do bear themselves!
As if allegiance in their bosoms sat,
Crowned with faith and constant loyalty.

Bedford

The king hath note of all that they intend,
By interception which they dream not of.

Exeter

Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow,
Whom he hath dull’d and cloy’d with gracious favours,
That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell
His sovereign’s life to death and treachery.

Trumpets sound. Enter King Henry V, Scroop, Cambridge, Grey, and Attendants

King Henry V

Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard.
My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham,
And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts:
Think you not that the powers we bear with us
Will cut their passage through the force of France,
Doing the execution and the act
For which we have in head assembled them?

Scroop

No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.

King Henry V

I doubt not that; since we are well persuaded
We carry not a heart with us from hence
That grows not in a fair consent with ours,
Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish
Success and conquest to attend on us.

Cambridge

Never was monarch better fear’d and loved
Than is your majesty: there’s not, I think, a subject
That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness
Under the sweet shade of your government.

Grey

True: those that were your father’s enemies
Have steep’d their galls in honey and do serve you
With hearts create of duty and of zeal.

King Henry V

We therefore have great cause of thankfulness;
And shall forget the office of our hand,
Sooner than quittance of desert and merit
According to the weight and worthiness.

Scroop

So service shall with steeled sinews toil,
And labour shall refresh itself with hope,
To do your grace incessant services.

King Henry V

We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter,
Enlarge the man committed yesterday,
That rail’d against our person: we consider
It was excess of wine that set him on;
And on his more advice we pardon him.

Scroop

That’s mercy, but too much security:
Let him be punish’d, sovereign, lest example
Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.

King Henry V

O, let us yet be merciful.

Cambridge

So may your highness, and yet punish too.

Grey

Sir,
You show great mercy, if you give him life,
After the taste of much correction.

King Henry V

Alas, your too much love and care of me
Are heavy orisons ’gainst this poor wretch!
If little faults, proceeding on distemper,
Shall not be wink’d at, how shall we stretch our eye
When capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d and digested,
Appear before us? We’ll yet enlarge that man,
Though Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, in their dear care
And tender preservation of our person,
Would have him punished. And now to our French causes:
Who are the late commissioners?

Cambridge

I one, my lord:
Your highness bade me ask for it to-day.

Scroop

So did you me, my liege.

Grey

And I, my royal sovereign.

King Henry V

Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours;
There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight,
Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours:
Read them; and know, I know your worthiness.
My Lord of Westmoreland, and uncle Exeter,
We will aboard to night. Why, how now, gentlemen!
What see you in those papers that you lose
So much complexion? Look ye, how they change!
Their cheeks are paper. Why, what read you there
That hath so cowarded and chased your blood
Out of appearance?

Cambridge

 
I do confess my fault;
And do submit me to your highness’ mercy.

Grey

Scroop

To which we all appeal.

King Henry V

The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;
For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.
See you, my princes, and my noble peers,
These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here,
You know how apt our love was to accord
To furnish him with all appertinents
Belonging to his honour; and this man
Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired,
And sworn unto the practises of France,
To kill us here in Hampton: to the which
This knight, no less for bounty bound to us
Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O,
What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop? thou cruel,
Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature!
Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
That knew’st the very bottom of my soul,
That almost mightst have coin’d me into gold,
Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use,
May it be possible, that foreign hire
Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
That might annoy my finger? ’tis so strange,
That, though the truth of it stands off as gross
As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.
Treason and murder ever kept together,
As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose,
Working so grossly in a natural cause,
That admiration did not whoop at them:
But thou, ’gainst all proportion, didst bring in
Wonder to wait on treason and on murder:
And whatsoever cunning fiend it was
That wrought upon thee so preposterously
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence:
All other devils that suggest by treasons
Do botch and bungle up damnation
With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch’d
From glistering semblances of piety;
But he that temper’d thee bade thee stand up,
Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,
Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.
If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus
Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
He might return to vasty Tartar back,
And tell the legions ‘I can never win
A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.’
O, how hast thou with jealousy infected
The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?
Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet,
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem:
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man. Their faults are open:
Arrest them to the answer of the law;
And God acquit them of their practises!