Act 4, Scene 1

The English camp at Agincourt.

[Enter Chorus.]
Chorus
1660 Now entertain conjecture of a time
1661 When creeping murmur and the poring dark
1662 Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
1663 From camp to camp through the foul womb of night
1664 The hum of either army stilly sounds,
1665 That the fix'd sentinels almost receive
1666 The secret whispers of each other's watch;
1667 Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
1668 Each battle sees the other's umber'd face;
1669 Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs
1670 Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents
1671 The armourers, accomplishing the knights,
1672 With busy hammers closing rivets up,
1673 Give dreadful note of preparation.
1674 The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,
1675 And the third hour of drowsy morning name.
1676 Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,
1677 The confident and over-lusty French
1678 Do the low-rated English play at dice;
1679 And chide the cripple tardy-gaited Night
1680 Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp
1681 So tediously away. The poor condemned English,
1682 Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires
1683 Sit patiently and inly ruminate
1684 The morning's danger; and their gesture sad,
1685 Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats,
1686 Presented them unto the gazing moon
1687 So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold
1688 The royal captain of this ruin'd band
1689 Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,
1690 Let him cry, "Praise and glory on his head!"
1691 For forth he goes and visits all his host,
1692 Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,
1693 And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.
1694 Upon his royal face there is no note
1695 How dread an army hath enrounded him;
1696 Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour
1697 Unto the weary and all-watched night,
1698 But freshly looks, and over-bears attaint
1699 With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty;
1700 That every wretch, pining and pale before,
1701 Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.
1702 A largess universal like the sun
1703 His liberal eye doth give to every one,
1704 Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all
1705 Behold, as may unworthiness define,
1706 A little touch of Harry in the night.
1707 And so our scene must to the battle fly,
1708 Where—O for pity!—we shall much disgrace
1709 With four or five most vile and ragged foils,
1710 Right ill-dispos'd in brawl ridiculous,
1711 The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,
1712 Minding true things by what their mock'ries be.
[Exit.]
[Enter King Henry, Bedford, and Gloucester.]
King Henry V
1713 Gloucester, 'tis true that we are in great danger;
1714 The greater therefore should our courage be.
1715 Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty!
1716 There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
1717 Would men observingly distil it out;
1718 For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
1719 Which is both healthful and good husbandry.
1720 Besides, they are our outward consciences,
1721 And preachers to us all, admonishing
1722 That we should dress us fairly for our end.
1723 Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
1724 And make a moral of the devil himself.
[Enter Erpingham.]
King Henry V
1725 Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham:
1726 A good soft pillow for that good white head
1727 Were better than a churlish turf of France.
Sir Thomas Erpingham
1728 Not so, my liege; this lodging likes me better,
1729 Since I may say, "Now lie I like a king."
King Henry V
1730 'Tis good for men to love their present pains
1731 Upon example; so the spirit is eased;
1732 And when the mind is quick'ned, out of doubt,
1733 The organs, though defunct and dead before,
1734 Break up their drowsy grave and newly move,
1735 With casted slough and fresh legerity.
1736 Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers both,
1737 Commend me to the princes in our camp;
1738 Do my good morrow to them, and anon
1739 Desire them all to my pavilion.
Duke of Gloucester
1740 We shall, my liege.
Sir Thomas Erpingham
1741 Shall I attend your Grace?
King Henry V
1742 No, my good knight;
1743 Go with my brothers to my lords of England.
1744 I and my bosom must debate a while,
1745 And then I would no other company.
Sir Thomas Erpingham
1746 The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!
[Exeunt [all but King.]
King Henry V
1747 God-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak'st cheerfully.
[Enter Pistol.]
Pistol
1748 Qui va la?
King Henry V
1749 A friend.
Pistol
1750 Discuss unto me; art thou officer?
1751 Or art thou base, common, and popular?
King Henry V
1752 I am a gentleman of a company.
Pistol
1753 Trail'st thou the puissant pike?
King Henry V
1754 Even so. What are you?
Pistol
1755 As good a gentleman as the Emperor.
King Henry V
1756 Then you are a better than the King.
Pistol
1757 The King's a bawcock, and a heart of gold,
1758 A lad of life, an imp of fame;
1759 Of parents good, of fist most valiant.
1760 I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string
1761 I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?
King Henry V
1762 Harry le Roy.
Pistol
1763 Le Roy! a Cornish name. Art thou of Cornish crew?
King Henry V
1764 No, I am a Welshman.
Pistol
1765 Know'st thou Fluellen?
King Henry V
1766 Yes.
Pistol
1767 Tell him I'll knock his leek about his pate
1768 Upon Saint Davy's day.
King Henry V
1769 Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest
1770 he knock that about yours.
Pistol
1771 Art thou his friend?
King Henry V
1772 And his kinsman too.
Pistol
1773 The figo for thee, then!
King Henry V
1774 I thank you. God be with you!
Pistol
1775 My name is Pistol call'd.
[Exit.]
King Henry V
1776 It sorts well with your fierceness.
[Enter Fluellen and Gower.]
Gower
1777 Captain Fluellen!
Fluellen
1778 So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak lower. It is the greatest
1779 admiration in the universal world, when the true and aunchient
1780 prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept. If you would take
Fluellen
1781 the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great, you
1782 shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle taddle nor
1783 pibble pabble in Pompey's camp. I warrant you, you shall find the
1784 ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it,
1785 and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise.
Gower
1786 Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.
Fluellen
1787 If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it
1788 meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a
1789 fool and a prating coxcomb? In your own conscience, now?
Gower
1790 I will speak lower.
Fluellen
1791 I pray you and beseech you that you will.
[Exeunt [Gower and Fluellen.]
King Henry V
1792 Though it appear a little out of fashion,
1793 There is much care and valour in this Welshman.
[Enter three soldiers, John Bates, Alexander Court, And Michael Williams.]
Alexander Court
1794 Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks
1795 yonder?
John Bates
1796 I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the
1797 approach of day.
Michael Williams
1798 We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think
1799 we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?
King Henry V
1800 A friend.
Michael Williams
1801 Under what captain serve you?
King Henry V
1802 Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.
Michael Williams
1803 A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I
1804 pray you, what thinks he of our estate?
King Henry V
1805 Even as men wreck'd upon a sand, that look to be
1806 wash'd off the next tide.
John Bates
1807 He hath not told his thought to the King?
King Henry V
1808 No; nor it is not meet he should. For though I speak it to you,
1809 I think the King is but a man as I am. The violet smells to him
1810 as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all
1811 his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by,
1812 in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections
1813 are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop
1814 with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of fears as we
1815 do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are;
1816 yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of
1817 fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.
John Bates
1818 He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as
1819 cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the
1820 neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so
1821 we were quit here.
King Henry V
1822 By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King: I think he
1823 would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.
John Bates
1824 Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be
1825 ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.
King Henry V
1826 I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone,
1827 howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds. Methinks
1828 I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King's company,
1829 his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.
Michael Williams
1830 That's more than we know.
John Bates
1831 Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if
1832 we know we are the King's subjects. If his cause be wrong, our
1833 obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.
Michael Williams
1834 But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy
1835 reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp'd
1836 off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all,
1837 "We died at such a place"; some swearing, some crying for a
1838 surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the
1839 debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard
1840 there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they
1841 charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument?
1842 Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter
1843 for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against
1844 all proportion of subjection.
King Henry V
1845 So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do
1846 sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness,
1847 by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him; or
1848 if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of
1849 money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconcil'd
1850 iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of
1851 the servant's damnation. But this is not so. The King is not
1852 bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father
1853 of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not
1854 their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is
1855 no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the
1856 arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.
1857 Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and
1858 contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals
1859 of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before
1860 gored the gentle bosom of Peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if
1861 these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment,
1862 though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God.
1863 War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here men are
1864 punish'd for before-breach of the King's laws in now the King's
1865 quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away;
1866 and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die
1867 unprovided, no more is the King guilty of their damnation than he
1868 was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now
1869 visited. Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's
1870 soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as
1871 every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience;
1872 and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was
1873 blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that
1874 escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an
1875 offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to
1876 teach others how they should prepare.
Michael Williams
1877 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head,
1878 the King is not to answer for it.
John Bates
1879 I do not desire he should answer for me; and yet I determine to
1880 fight lustily for him.
King Henry V
1881 I myself heard the King say he would not be ransom'd.
Michael Williams
1882 Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our
1883 throats are cut, he may be ransom'd, and we ne'er the wiser.
King Henry V
1884 If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
Michael Williams
1885 You pay him then. That's a perilous shot out of an elder-gun,
1886 that a poor and a private displeasure can do against a monarch!
1887 You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in
1888 his face with a peacock's feather. You'll never trust his word
1889 after! Come, 'tis a foolish saying.
King Henry V
1890 Your reproof is something too round. I should be angry with
1891 you, if the time were convenient.
Michael Williams
1892 Let it be a quarrel between us if you live.
King Henry V
1893 I embrace it.
Michael Williams
1894 How shall I know thee again?
King Henry V
1895 Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet;
1896 then, if ever thou dar'st acknowledge it, I will make it my
1897 quarrel.
Michael Williams
1898 Here's my glove; give me another of thine.
King Henry V
1899 There.
Michael Williams
1900 This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou come to me
1901 and say, after to-morrow, "This is my glove," by this hand I
1902 will take thee a box on the ear.
King Henry V
1903 If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.
Michael Williams
1904 Thou dar'st as well be hang'd.
King Henry V
1905 Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King's company.
Michael Williams
1906 Keep thy word; fare thee well.
John Bates
1907 Be friends, you English fools, be friends. We have
1908 French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon.
[Exeunt soldiers.]
King Henry V
1909 Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one
1910 they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders; but it
1911 is no English treason to cut French crowns, and to-morrow the
1912 King himself will be a clipper.
1913 Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls,
1914 Our debts, our careful wives,
1915 Our children, and our sins lay on the King!
1916 We must bear all. O hard condition,
1917 Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath
1918 Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel
1919 But his own wringing! What infinite heart's-ease
1920 Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
1921 And what have kings, that privates have not too,
1922 Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
1923 And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony?
1924 What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
1925 Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
1926 What are thy rents? What are thy comings in?
1927 O Ceremony, show me but thy worth!
1928 What is thy soul of adoration?
1929 Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,
1930 Creating awe and fear in other men?
1931 Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd
1932 Than they in fearing.
1933 What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
1934 But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
1935 And bid thy Ceremony give thee cure!
1936 Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
1937 With titles blown from adulation?
1938 Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
1939 Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
1940 Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
1941 That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;
1942 I am a king that find thee, and I know
1943 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,
1944 The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
1945 The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
1946 The farced title running 'fore the King,
1947 The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
1948 That beats upon the high shore of this world,
1949 No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous Ceremony,—
1950 Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
1951 Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
1952 Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
1953 Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread,
1954 Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
1955 But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
1956 Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
1957 Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
1958 Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
1959 And follows so the ever-running year,
1960 With profitable labour, to his grave:
1961 And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
1962 Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
1963 Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
1964 The slave, a member of the country's peace,
1965 Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots
1966 What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace,
1967 Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
[Enter Erpingham.]
Sir Thomas Erpingham
1968 My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,
1969 Seek through your camp to find you.
King Henry V
1970 Good old knight,
1971 Collect them all together at my tent.
1972 I'll be before thee.
Sir Thomas Erpingham
1973 I shall do't, my lord.
[Exit.]
King Henry V
1974 O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts.
1975 Possess them not with fear. Take from them now
1976 The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
1977 Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
1978 O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
1979 My father made in compassing the crown!
1980 I Richard's body have interred new,
1981 And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears
1982 Than from it issued forced drops of blood.
1983 Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
1984 Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold up
1985 Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
1986 Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
1987 Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;
1988 Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
1989 Since that my penitence comes after all,
1990 Imploring pardon.
[Enter Gloucester.]
Duke of Gloucester
1991 My liege!
King Henry V
1992 My brother Gloucester's voice? Ay;
1993 I know thy errand, I will go with thee.
1994 The day, my friends, and all things stay for me.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1660archaic vocab
“entertain conjecture of a time”
'Entertain conjecture' means 'let your imagination work' or 'form a mental picture.' The Chorus is asking the audience to picture the scene rather than see it staged. 'Entertain' often means simply 'hold' or 'admit to the mind' in Elizabethan English.
historical The 'wooden O' and the Chorus's apology
TLN 1667archaic vocab
“paly flames”
'Paly' means 'pale' — the campfires are burning low and giving off a wan, pallid light. 'Umber'd' in the next line means 'shadowed' or 'darkened,' from the brown pigment umber. The two words together paint the scene: pale fire barely illuminating dark faces.
TLN 1671archaic vocab
“armourers, accomplishing the knights”
'Accomplishing' here means 'completing' or 'equipping' — the armourers are finishing the knights' armour for battle, closing and riveting the last pieces onto their lords. It has nothing to do with achievement; it means 'furnishing completely.'
TLN 1677historical topical
“confident and over-lusty French”
The French outnumber the English roughly five to one on the eve of Agincourt, and their commanders are so confident of victory that they spend the night gambling over English prisoners they have not yet taken. 'Over-lusty' means excessively eager and vigorous. The Chorus presents the French as dangerously overconfident — and makes the English look more heroic for it.
historical The Battle of Agincourt (1415)
TLN 1682rhetorical device
“Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires”
The Chorus compares the English soldiers sitting quietly by their fires to animals waiting to be sacrificed — an image from ancient religious ritual where a beast is kept calm before slaughter. It calls attention to how helpless and doomed the English appear, making their eventual victory all the more extraordinary.
TLN 1694rhetorical device
“Upon his royal face there is no note”
The Chorus describes Henry as showing no outward sign of fear even though a huge enemy army has surrounded him ('enrounded'). 'Overbears attaint / With cheerful semblance' means his cheerful appearance overwhelms any look of distress. The passage argues that a king's outward bearing can transform the morale of an army.
TLN 1702rhetorical device
“A largess universal like the sun”
'Largess' means a gift freely given, especially a public gift of money or goods from a lord to those below him. Comparing the King's gaze to the sun is a standard image of royal generosity — the sun shines on everyone without distinction. The phrase 'mean and gentle all' means both the lowly ('mean') and the noble ('gentle') receive the same warmth.
classical Hyperion
TLN 1716rhetorical device
“There is some soul of goodness in things evil”
Henry opens with a paradox: even bad things, if studied carefully, can teach something good. He works through the logic: the threat of the French army ('our bad neighbour') makes the English rise early, which is healthy, teaches them to be ready for death, and — as he puts it — lets a man 'gather honey from the weed.' The speech is a brief formal argument building from a general maxim to concrete application.
TLN 1735archaic vocab
“casted slough and fresh legerity”
'Slough' (rhymes with 'stuff') is the dead skin a snake sheds when it grows; to cast a slough is to shed an old skin and emerge renewed. 'Legerity' means lightness of body, quickness, agility. Henry argues that hardship works on the mind like a snake's moult — it forces the spirit to shed deadness and move with fresh energy.
TLN 1748cultural context
“Qui va la?”
Pistol challenges the disguised King with the French military sentry's challenge: 'Who goes there?' He uses French — the language of the enemy — partly to sound impressive and official, partly because English soldiers at Agincourt would have heard it constantly on patrol. The irony is that Pistol, the blustering coward, mistakes his own king for an enemy.
TLN 1753archaic vocab
“Trail'st thou the puissant pike?”
Pistol is asking whether the stranger is a foot-soldier who carries a pike. 'Puissant' means 'powerful' or 'mighty' (from French puissant). 'Trail' a pike means to carry the long spear horizontally, close to the ground, in the at-ease or marching position — as opposed to raising it to fight. The question amounts to 'Are you an ordinary infantryman?'
TLN 1757archaic vocab
“The King's a bawcock, and a heart of gold”
'Bawcock' is a term of warm admiration — roughly 'fine fellow' or 'good cock' (from French beau coq, handsome rooster). 'Imp of fame' means a scion or offspring of glory — 'imp' in this period meant a young shoot or a child of noble stock, not something wicked. Pistol, not knowing he is speaking to the King himself, praises him extravagantly.
TLN 1762wordplay
“Harry le Roy”
The disguised Henry gives his name as 'Harry le Roy.' He is indeed Harry (Henry), and 'le Roy' is French for 'the King' — so he has told Pistol his real identity in plain French, which Pistol promptly mishears as a Cornish surname. The joke is that the King is hiding in plain sight.
TLN 1767historical topical
“knock his leek about his pate”
Pistol threatens to beat Fluellen over the head with a leek on Saint Davy's (David's) Day — 1 March, the feast day of the patron saint of Wales. Welsh soldiers wore leeks in their caps on Saint David's Day as a national emblem, a custom Fluellen upholds and that becomes the source of the Pistol-versus-Fluellen plot. Pistol's insult is about to rebound on him badly.
TLN 1773archaic vocab
“The figo for thee, then!”
The 'fig' or 'figo' (from Italian fico, fig) was an obscene gesture of contempt made by thrusting the thumb between two fingers — roughly equivalent to a modern middle-finger insult. Pistol is giving the disguised King a graphic insult when he learns that the stranger is Fluellen's friend. Henry's reply — 'I thank you' — is deadpan irony.
TLN 1779historical topical
“aunchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars”
Fluellen's eccentric spelling-pronunciations ('aunchient' for 'ancient,' 'prerogatifes' for 'prerogatives') are Shakespeare's way of writing a Welsh accent — the Welsh who spoke English as a second language often substituted sounds like 'f' for 'v' and added a different stress pattern. The content is serious: Fluellen is citing the classical 'law of arms,' the chivalric code governing how wars should be properly conducted.
TLN 1781historical topical
“wars of Pompey the Great”
Fluellen's constant benchmark for good military practice is the classical Roman general Pompey the Great, who commanded a vast army and is famous in Plutarch's Life for strict discipline. Fluellen uses Pompey — and Rome generally — as the standard of correct soldiering, against which he measures (and finds wanting) everything he sees in Henry's army.
historical Pompey the Great
TLN 1809historical topical
“The violet smells to him as it doth to me”
The disguised Henry argues that a king's senses are no different from any man's: he smells the violet, sees the sky ('the element'), feels fear the same way. 'His ceremonies laid by' means once the formal trappings of kingship are set aside, 'in his nakedness he appears but a man.' This is the play's central philosophical question: what makes a king different from a common man?
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1836biblical allusion
“cry all, 'We died at such a place'”
Williams imagines the dead soldiers reassembling at the Last Judgment ('the latter day') and accusing the King of sending them to a needless death. In Christian teaching, the dead would rise bodily at the end of the world to be judged. Williams's image — dismembered limbs joining back together, the dead crying out their grievances — turns the Resurrection into a soldiers' tribunal against the king.
TLN 1863archaic vocab
“War is his beadle, war is his vengeance”
A 'beadle' was a parish official whose job included rounding up petty offenders and administering corporal punishment — essentially an enforcer of local law. Henry argues that God uses war as his beadle: those soldiers who have escaped earthly justice for crimes (murder, seduction, robbery) run into God's own punishment on the battlefield. War is God's instrument of vengeance, not the king's moral responsibility.
TLN 1869historical topical
“Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own”
Henry draws a sharp line between the soldier's public duty (obedience to the king — which the king may lawfully command) and his private soul (which belongs to God alone and for which the king cannot answer). This separates the king's war-command from the individual's personal moral preparation for death: washing one's conscience clean is each person's own responsibility.
TLN 1885archaic vocab
“a perilous shot out of an elder-gun”
An 'elder-gun' (also called a pop-gun or elder-squirt) was a toy made from a hollow elder-tree twig, used by children to shoot dried peas or pellets. Williams is mocking the disguised Henry's threat not to trust the King's word: a private soldier's displeasure against a monarch is as frightening as a pea-shooter against a fortress. The comparison reduces Henry's bold words to childish impotence.
TLN 1895historical topical
“Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet”
A 'gage' is a pledge or token — here a glove — that both parties in a quarrel hold as a guarantee that they will meet to settle the dispute. Wearing it visibly in the cap ('bonnet') signals to all that the holder is pledged to a fight. The two men exchange gloves, each wearing the other's as a marker. This is the knightly challenge ritual — a 'gage of battle' — applied comically at the soldier level.
historical Trial by combat and the gage
TLN 1910wordplay
“they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders”
Henry puns on 'French crowns': the coin (the crown, or ecu) and the king's crown (as head of state). He says the French may wager twenty-to-one on beating the English, because they carry French crowns on their shoulders — meaning the French heads (crowned heads) are on their bodies, not yet cut off. But tomorrow 'the King himself will be a clipper' — clipping coins (trimming the edges of coins was a crime; to 'clip' a crown was also to cut off a king's head).
TLN 1916rhetorical device
“O hard condition, Twin-born with greatness”
Henry's soliloquy on ceremony begins with a complaint: the 'hard condition' of kingship — its burdens, its exposure to every fool's opinion ('the breath of every fool') — is born at the same moment as greatness itself. You cannot have the power without the weight. 'Subject to the breath of every fool' means a king must hear, and apparently absorb, any reproach from those beneath him, like the soldiers who have just argued with him.
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1923archaic vocab
“thou idol Ceremony”
'Idol' here does not mean simply 'something worshipped' — it means a false god, an empty image that people bow to without real substance behind it. Henry is accusing Ceremony (the whole apparatus of royal pomp) of being a hollow sham. 'What are thy rents?' treats Ceremony as a landlord demanding tribute — what does it actually give in return for the awe and service people offer it?
TLN 1943historical topical
“'tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball”
Henry lists the objects of the coronation ceremony: the balm (holy anointing oil rubbed on the new king's head, hands, and breast at crowning), the sceptre (the royal staff of command), the ball or orb (the golden globe surmounted by a cross, symbolizing dominion over the world), the mace (a symbol of legal authority), the crown imperial, and the embroidered robe. Together these are the regalia — the sacred objects that make a private person into a king.
historical The divine right of kings
TLN 1946archaic vocab
“The farced title running 'fore the King”
'Farced' means stuffed or padded — as in a turkey stuffed with forcemeat ('farce' and 'farce' share this root). The 'farced title' is the bloated string of honorifics that precedes the King's name on formal documents and proclamations, stuffed full of grandiose titles. Henry is calling his own royal style a piece of theatrical padding.
TLN 1956classical allusion
“Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse”
Phoebus (a title of Apollo) and Hyperion were both names for the sun-god, imagined as driving a chariot of fiery horses across the sky each day. 'Sweating in the eye of Phoebus' means working all day in the blazing sun. At day's end the sun-god must be helped back onto his horse for the next morning — the slave's daily labour mirrors the cosmic cycle. 'Elysium' was the paradise of the blessed dead in classical mythology.
classical Hyperion
TLN 1978historical topical
“think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown”
Henry is praying that God will not punish his soldiers for his father's sin: Henry IV (formerly Bolingbroke) had seized the crown by deposing and causing the death of Richard II in 1399 — a crime Henry V has spent money on chantry priests and prayers to expiate. 'Compassing' means obtaining by devious means, plotting to acquire. The guilt still haunts the Lancastrian dynasty.
historical Edward III and his seven sons
TLN 1983historical topical
“Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay”
Henry says he has paid 500 poor men to pray daily for Richard II's soul and has built two chantry chapels where priests sing masses for Richard perpetually. A 'chantry' was an endowed chapel — usually attached to a larger church — where priests were paid to say masses for the souls of specific dead people, believed to reduce their time in purgatory. These are acts of Catholic devotional penance.