The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare [book recommendations based on other books txt] 📗

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, chopp’d off in a 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 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 HENRY. 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 irreconcil’d 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 death when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement 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 punish’d 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.

WILLIAMS. ‘Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head-the King is not to answer for it.

BATES. I do not desire he should answer for me, and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.

KING HENRY. I myself heard the King say he would not be ransom’d.

WILLIAMS. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut he may be ransom’d, and we ne’er the wiser.

KING HENRY. 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 HENRY. 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 HENRY. I embrace it.

WILLIAMS. How shall I know thee again?

KING HENRY. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet; then if ever thou dar’st acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.

WILLIAMS. Here’s my glove; give me another of thine.

KING HENRY. There.

WILLIAMS. 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 HENRY. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.

WILLIAMS. Thou dar’st as well be hang’d.

KING HENRY. 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 enow, if you could tell how to reckon.

KING HENRY. 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 careful 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 heart’s ease 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 fear’d Than they in fearing.

What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison’d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!

Thinks 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 tide 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 fill’d and vacant mind, Gets him to rest, cramm’d 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 Pheebus, 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 ERPINGHAM

ERPINGHAM. My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence, Seek through your camp to find you.

KING. Good old knight,

Collect them all together at my tent: I’ll be before thee.

ERPINGHAM. I shall do’t, my lord. Exit KING. O God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts, Possess them not with fear! Take from them now The sense of reck’ning, if th’ opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them! Not to-day, O Lord, O, not to-day, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard’s body have interred new,

And on it have bestowed more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood; Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do; Though all that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after all, Imploring pardon.

Enter GLOUCESTER

GLOUCESTER. My liege!

KING HENRY. My brother Gloucester’s voice? Ay; I know thy errand, I will go with thee; The day, my friends, and all things, stay for me. Exeunt

SCENE II.

The French camp

Enter the DAUPHIN, ORLEANS, RAMBURES, and others ORLEANS. The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords!

DAUPHIN. Montez a cheval! My horse! Varlet, laquais! Ha!

ORLEANS. O brave spirit!

DAUPHIN. Via! Les eaux et la terre—

ORLEANS. Rien puis? L’air et le feu.

DAUPHIN. Ciel! cousin Orleans.

Enter CONSTABLE

Now, my Lord Constable!

CONSTABLE. Hark how our steeds for present service neigh!

DAUPHIN. Mount them, and make incision in their hides, That their hot blood may spin in English eyes, And dout them with superfluous courage, ha!

RAMBURES. What, will you have them weep our horses’ blood?

How shall we then behold their natural tears?

Enter a MESSENGER

MESSENGER. The English are embattl’d, you French peers.

CONSTABLE. To horse, you gallant Princes! straight to horse!

Do but behold yon poor and starved band, And your fair show shall suck away their souls, Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.

There is not work enough for all our hands; Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins To give each naked curtle-axe a stain That our French gallants shall to-day draw out, And sheathe for lack of sport. Let us but blow on them, The vapour of our valour will o’erturn them.

‘Tis positive ‘gainst all exceptions, lords, That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants-Who in unnecessary action swarm

About our squares of battle-were enow To purge this field of, such a hilding foe; Though we upon this mountain’s basis by Took stand for idle speculation-But that our honours must not. What’s to say?

A very little little let us do,

And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound The tucket sonance and the note to mount; For our approach shall so much dare the field That England shall couch down in fear and yield.

Enter GRANDPRE

GRANDPRE. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?

Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones, Ill-favouredly become the morning field; Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose, And our air shakes them passing scornfully; Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar’d host, And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.

The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips, The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes, And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal’d bit Lies foul with chaw’d grass, still and motionless; And their executors, the knavish crows, Fly o’er them, all impatient for their hour.

Description cannot suit itself in words To demonstrate the life of such a battle In life so lifeless as it shows itself.

CONSTABLE. They have said their prayers and