Act 4, Scene 6

Another part of the field.

[Alarum. Enter King Henry and his train, with prisoners.]
King Henry V
2287 Well have we done, thrice valiant countrymen.
2288 But all's not done; yet keep the French the field.
Duke of Exeter
2289 The Duke of York commends him to your Majesty.
King Henry V
2290 Lives he, good uncle? Thrice within this hour
2291 I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting.
2292 From helmet to the spur all blood he was.
Duke of Exeter
2293 In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie,
2294 Larding the plain; and by his bloody side,
2295 Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds,
2296 The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies.
2297 Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,
2298 Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped,
2299 And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes
2300 That bloodily did yawn upon his face.
2301 He cries aloud, "Tarry, my cousin Suffolk!
2302 My soul shall thine keep company to heaven;
2303 Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast,
2304 As in this glorious and well-foughten field
2305 We kept together in our chivalry."
2306 Upon these words I came and cheer'd him up.
2307 He smil'd me in the face, raught me his hand,
2308 And, with a feeble gripe, says, "Dear my lord,
2309 Commend my service to my sovereign."
2310 So did he turn and over Suffolk's neck
2311 He threw his wounded arm and kiss'd his lips;
2312 And so espous'd to death, with blood he seal'd
2313 A testament of noble-ending love.
2314 The pretty and sweet manner of it forc'd
2315 Those waters from me which I would have stopp'd;
2316 But I had not so much of man in me,
2317 And all my mother came into mine eyes
2318 And gave me up to tears.
King Henry V
2319 I blame you not;
2320 For, hearing this, I must perforce compound
2321 With mistful eyes, or they will issue too.
[Alarum.]
King Henry V
2322 But hark! what new alarum is this same?
2323 The French have reinforc'd their scatter'd men.
2324 Then every soldier kill his prisoners;
2325 Give the word through.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 2294archaic vocab
“Larding the plain”
'Larding' comes from the cooking term for threading strips of fat through lean meat to keep it moist; here Exeter uses it as a grim metaphor — York's blood richly soaks and 'bastes' the ground. The word turns the battlefield earth into something that has received the slain duke's body, and all its blood, as an offering.
TLN 2307archaic vocab
“raught me his hand”
'Raught' is the archaic past tense of 'reach.' Exeter means York reached out and took — or offered — his hand. Modern readers would expect 'reached,' but Shakespeare's contemporaries used both forms; by the seventeenth century 'raught' was already becoming old-fashioned.
TLN 2312rhetorical device
“espous'd to death, with blood he seal'd A testament”
Exeter stacks three legal and ceremonial terms — 'espous'd' (married), 'seal'd' (authenticated a document with a wax seal), and 'testament' (a legal will) — to describe York dying in Suffolk's arms. The effect is to re-describe a battlefield death as a solemn marriage contract, with blood instead of a wax seal. York has formally bound himself to his dead kinsman, as spouses are bound to each other.
TLN 2317archaic vocab
“all my mother came into mine eyes And gave me up to tears”
Exeter does not mean his actual mother. 'The mother' was an Elizabethan medical term for a powerful suffocating emotion, sometimes called hysterica passio, thought to rise from the womb (Latin matrix, 'mother') and cause uncontrollable weeping or choking — even in men. Exeter is saying that his feminine, emotional side overwhelmed his soldierly self-control.
TLN 2324historical topical
“Then every soldier kill his prisoners”
Hearing a fresh French alarm, Henry orders every English soldier to execute his French prisoners immediately. The order was controversial even in Shakespeare's day: Holinshed records it as a real command at Agincourt and explains it as a military necessity — the English feared that thousands of prisoners at their backs would re-arm and attack if a renewed French assault succeeded. The play justifies it twice: here by the new alarum, and in 4.7 by the French slaughter of the unarmed boys guarding the English baggage.
historical The Battle of Agincourt (1415)