Act 3, Scene 6

The English camp in Picardy.

[Enter Gower and Fluellen, meeting.]
Gower
1374 How now, Captain Fluellen! come you from the bridge?
Fluellen
1375 I assure you, there is very excellent services committed at the
1376 bridge.
Gower
1377 Is the Duke of Exeter safe?
Fluellen
1378 The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a
1379 man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my
1380 duty, and my live, and my living, and my uttermost power. He
1381 is not—God be praised and blessed!—any hurt in the world; but
1382 keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There
1383 is an aunchient lieutenant there at the pridge, I think in my
1384 very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark Antony; and he is
1385 a man of no estimation in the world, but I did see him do as
1386 gallant service.
Gower
1387 What do you call him?
Fluellen
1388 He is call'd Aunchient Pistol.
Gower
1389 I know him not.
[Enter Pistol.]
Fluellen
1390 Here is the man.
Pistol
1391 Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours.
1392 The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.
Fluellen
1393 Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at his hands.
Pistol
1394 Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart,
1395 And of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate
1396 And giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel,
1397 That goddess blind,
1398 That stands upon the rolling restless stone—
Fluellen
1399 By your patience, Aunchient Pistol. Fortune is painted
1400 blind, with a muffler afore his eyes, to signify to you that
1401 Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to
1402 signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning,
1403 and inconstant, and mutability, and variation; and her foot,
1404 look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and
1405 rolls, and rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent
1406 description of it. Fortune is an excellent moral.
Pistol
1407 Fortune is Bardolph's foe, and frowns on him;
1408 For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must 'a be,—
1409 A damned death!
1410 Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free,
1411 And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate.
1412 But Exeter hath given the doom of death
1413 For pax of little price.
1414 Therefore, go speak; the Duke will hear thy voice;
1415 And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut
1416 With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.
Pistol
1417 Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.
Fluellen
1418 Aunchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.
Pistol
1419 Why then, rejoice therefore.
Fluellen
1420 Certainly, aunchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at; for if,
1421 look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke
1422 to use his good pleasure, and put him to execution; for
1423 discipline ought to be used.
Pistol
1424 Die and be damn'd! and figo for thy friendship!
Fluellen
1425 It is well.
Pistol
1426 The fig of Spain.
[Exit.]
Fluellen
1427 Very good.
Gower
1428 Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal. I remember
1429 him now; a bawd, a cutpurse.
Fluellen
1430 I'll assure you, 'a uttered as prave words at the pridge as you
1431 shall see in a summer's day. But it is very well; what he has
1432 spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve.
Gower
1433 Why, 't is a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to
1434 the wars, to grace himself at his return into London under the
1435 form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great
1436 commanders' names; and they will learn you by rote where services
1437 were done; at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a
1438 convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgrac'd, what
1439 terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the
1440 phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths: and what
1441 a beard of the general's cut and a horrid suit of the camp will
1442 do among foaming bottles and ale-wash'd wits, is wonderful to be
1443 thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age,
1444 or else you may be marvellously mistook.
Fluellen
1445 I tell you what, Captain Gower; I do perceive he is not the man
1446 that he would gladly make show to the world he is. If I find a
1447 hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind.
[Drum heard.]
Fluellen
1448 Hark
1449 you, the King is coming, and I must speak with him from the pridge.
[Drum and colours. Enter King Henry, [Gloucester,]
Fluellen
1450 and his poor soldiers.]
Fluellen
1451 God bless your Majesty!
King Henry V
1452 How now, Fluellen! cam'st thou from the bridge?
Fluellen
1453 Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of Exeter has very
1454 gallantly maintain'd the pridge. The French is gone off, look
1455 you; and there is gallant and most prave passages. Marry, th'
1456 athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced
1457 to retire, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge. I can
1458 tell your Majesty, the Duke is a prave man.
King Henry V
1459 What men have you lost, Fluellen?
Fluellen
1460 The perdition of the athversary hath been very great, reasonable
1461 great. Marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath lost never a
1462 man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one
1463 Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man. His face is all bubukles,
1464 and whelks, and knobs, and flames o' fire; and his lips blows at
1465 his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and
1466 sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire's out.
King Henry V
1467 We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express
1468 charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing
1469 compell'd from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of
1470 the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when
1471 lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the
1472 soonest winner.
[Tucket. Enter Montjoy.]
Montjoy
1473 You know me by my habit.
King Henry V
1474 Well then I know thee. What shall I know of thee?
Montjoy
1475 My master's mind.
King Henry V
1476 Unfold it.
Montjoy
1477 Thus says my King: Say thou to Harry of England: Though we
1478 seem'd dead, we did but sleep; advantage is a better soldier
1479 than rashness. Tell him we could have rebuk'd him at Harfleur,
1480 but that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were
1481 full ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial.
1482 England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our
1483 sufferance. Bid him therefore consider of his ransom; which must
1484 proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost,
1485 the disgrace we have digested; which in weight to re-answer, his
1486 pettishness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too
1487 poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom
1488 too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling
1489 at our feet, but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add
1490 defiance; and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his
1491 followers, whose condemnation is pronounc'd. So far my King and
1492 master; so much my office.
King Henry V
1493 What is thy name? I know thy quality.
Montjoy
1494 Montjoy.
King Henry V
1495 Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,
1496 And tell thy King I do not seek him now,
1497 But could be willing to march on to Calais
King Henry V
1498 Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth,
1499 Though 'tis no wisdom to confess so much
1500 Unto an enemy of craft and vantage,
1501 My people are with sickness much enfeebled,
1502 My numbers lessen'd, and those few I have
1503 Almost no better than so many French;
1504 Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,
1505 I thought upon one pair of English legs
1506 Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God,
1507 That I do brag thus! This your air of France
1508 Hath blown that vice in me. I must repent.
1509 Go therefore, tell thy master here I am;
1510 My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk,
1511 My army but a weak and sickly guard;
1512 Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,
1513 Though France himself and such another neighbour
1514 Stand in our way. There's for thy labour, Montjoy.
1515 Go, bid thy master well advise himself.
1516 If we may pass, we will; if we be hind'red,
1517 We shall your tawny ground with your red blood
1518 Discolour; and so, Montjoy, fare you well.
1519 The sum of all our answer is but this:
1520 We would not seek a battle, as we are;
1521 Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it.
1522 So tell your master.
Montjoy
1523 I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.
[Exit.]
Duke of Gloucester
1524 I hope they will not come upon us now.
King Henry V
1525 We are in God's hands, brother, not in theirs.
1526 March to the bridge; it now draws toward night.
1527 Beyond the river we'll encamp ourselves,
1528 And on to-morrow bid them march away.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1378classical allusion
“as magnanimous as Agamemnon”
Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae and commander-in-chief of the Greek forces in the Trojan War — the supreme exemplar of a great general. Fluellen is heaping the highest classical praise he can think of on the Duke of Exeter for holding the bridge.
TLN 1384classical allusion
“as valiant a man as Mark Antony”
Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius) was Julius Caesar's most famous general and later one of the rulers of the Roman world — a soldier of legendary bravery. Fluellen gives Pistol the highest classical compliment for military courage, which Gower immediately punctures by revealing that Pistol is a fraud.
TLN 1396classical allusion
“giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel, That goddess blind, That stands upon the rolling restless stone”
Pistol speaks in bombastic stage-rhetoric to describe Bardolph's bad luck: Fortune was imagined as a blind goddess spinning a great wheel that lifts people up and flings them down at random. The 'rolling restless stone' is the sphere she stands on, showing she is never stable. Here the alliteration ('Fortune's furious fickle') parodies the over-the-top theatrical style Pistol always uses.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1399rhetorical device
“Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore his eyes”
Fluellen interrupts Pistol's flowery speech to give a pedantic lecture on how Fortune is depicted in paintings and emblems: blindfolded (showing she favors no one), holding a wheel (showing she is changeable), standing on a round stone (showing she is unstable). He is giving the moral — the lesson — that the image is meant to teach.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1408archaic vocab
“he hath stolen a pax”
A 'pax' (Latin for 'peace') was a small tablet — usually of gold, silver, or ivory — bearing an image of Christ or a saint, which worshippers kissed during Mass as a sign of Christian fellowship. Bardolph has robbed a church of this sacred object, which is why Henry's officers treat the theft as a capital offense.
TLN 1415rhetorical device
“let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord”
Pistol's florid language here piles two images on top of each other: 'vital thread' alludes to the three Fates of Greek myth, who spun, measured, and cut the thread of every human life at death, while 'penny cord' is plain English for the cheap hangman's rope. The contrast between mythological grandeur and cheap reality is typical of Pistol's hollow bombast.
TLN 1433historical topical
“a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to the wars, to grace himself at his return into London”
Gower describes a real Elizabethan social type: the fake veteran who picks up enough jargon ('where services were done; at such and such a sconce') to pass himself off in London taverns as a battle-hardened soldier. 'A gull' means a dupe or a person easily fooled — here used ironically for someone who gulls others.
TLN 1446wordplay
“I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind”
To 'find a hole in someone's coat' was an Elizabethan idiom meaning to find a fault or vulnerable point in them — to catch them in a weakness. Fluellen is calmly promising that when he finds proof of Pistol's cowardice or dishonesty, he will speak his mind plainly. The phrase also puns literally on a worn or tattered coat as a sign of poverty or disrepute.
TLN 1468historical topical
“in our marches through the country, there be nothing compell'd from the villages, nothing taken but paid for”
Henry issues a standing order against plundering French civilians: soldiers must pay for whatever they take, and must not insult the French inhabitants. The execution of Bardolph for stealing a church vessel (just reported by Fluellen) is the first enforcement of this policy. Holinshed records Henry issuing identical orders on the historical march from Harfleur to Agincourt.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1473historical topical
“You know me by my habit”
A herald wore a distinctive embroidered coat called a 'tabard' or 'habit' blazoned with the arms of the ruler he served — in Montjoy's case, the royal arms of France. By that coat alone, he was immediately identifiable as an official ambassador protected by the law of nations, and Henry's reply ('Well then I know thee') confirms he recognizes the role instantly.
TLN 1498archaic vocab
“Without impeachment”
'Impeachment' here does not mean a legal charge against a public official (the modern sense). In Elizabethan English it meant hindrance, obstruction, or interference. Henry is saying he wants to march to Calais without being stopped or blocked by the French.
TLN 1510archaic vocab
“My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk”
Henry uses 'trunk' to mean his own body — the physical frame or torso that houses his soul. He is telling Montjoy that his only ransom, if captured, is his sick, weakened body: he has no money to offer. The self-deprecating claim is part of a rhetorical strategy of honest understatement that makes the challenge to fight all the more pointed.