Act 5, Scene 1

France. The English camp.

[Enter Chorus.]
Chorus
2610 Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story,
2611 That I may prompt them; and of such as have,
2612 I humbly pray them to admit the excuse
2613 Of time, of numbers, and due course of things,
2614 Which cannot in their huge and proper life
2615 Be here presented. Now we bear the King
2616 Toward Calais; grant him there; there seen,
2617 Heave him away upon your winged thoughts
2618 Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach
2619 Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys,
2620 Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep-mouth'd sea,
2621 Which like a mighty whiffler 'fore the King
2622 Seems to prepare his way. So let him land,
2623 And solemnly see him set on to London.
2624 So swift a pace hath thought that even now
2625 You may imagine him upon Blackheath,
2626 Where that his lords desire him to have borne
2627 His bruised helmet and his bended sword
2628 Before him through the city. He forbids it,
2629 Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride;
2630 Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent
2631 Quite from himself to God. But now behold,
2632 In the quick forge and working-house of thought,
2633 How London doth pour out her citizens!
2634 The mayor and all his brethren in best sort,
2635 Like to the senators of the antique Rome,
2636 With the plebeians swarming at their heels,
2637 Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in;
2638 As, by a lower but loving likelihood,
2639 Were now the general of our gracious empress,
2640 As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
2641 Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
2642 How many would the peaceful city quit,
2643 To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause,
2644 Did they this Harry. Now in London place him;
2645 As yet the lamentation of the French
2646 Invites the King of England's stay at home,—
2647 The Emperor's coming in behalf of France,
2648 To order peace between them;—and omit
2649 All the occurrences, whatever chanc'd,
2650 Till Harry's back-return again to France.
2651 There must we bring him; and myself have play'd
2652 The interim, by rememb'ring you 'tis past.
2653 Then brook abridgment, and your eyes advance
2654 After your thoughts, straight back again to France.
[Exit.]
[Enter Fluellen and Gower.]
Gower
2655 Nay, that's right; but why wear you your leek to-day?
2656 Saint Davy's day is past.
Fluellen
2657 There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all
2658 things. I will tell you asse my friend, Captain Gower. The
2659 rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol, which
2660 you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a
2661 fellow, look you now, of no merits, he is come to me and prings
2662 me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek.
2663 It was in a place where I could not breed no contention with him;
2664 but I will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once
2665 again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.
[Enter Pistol.]
Gower
2666 Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.
Fluellen
2667 'Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks. God
2668 pless you, Aunchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God
2669 pless you!
Pistol
2670 Ha! art thou bedlam? Dost thou thirst, base Troyan,
2671 To have me fold up Parca's fatal web?
2672 Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.
Fluellen
2673 I peseech you heartily, scurfy, lousy knave, at my desires,
2674 and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this
2675 leek. Because, look you, you do not love it, nor your
2676 affections and your appetites and your digestions doo's not
2677 agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.
Pistol
2678 Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.
Fluellen
2679 There is one goat for you.
[Strikes him.]
Fluellen
2680 Will you be so
2681 good, scald knave, as eat it?
Pistol
2682 Base Troyan, thou shalt die.
Fluellen
2683 You say very true, scald knave, when God's will is. I will
2684 desire you to live in the mean time, and eat your victuals.
2685 Come, there is sauce for it.
[Strikes him.]
Fluellen
2686 You call'd me
2687 yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you to-day a
2688 squire of low degree. I pray you, fall to; if you can mock
2689 a leek, you can eat a leek.
Gower
2690 Enough, captain; you have astonish'd him.
Fluellen
2691 I say, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will
2692 peat his pate four days. Bite, I pray you; it is good for
2693 your green wound and your ploody coxcomb.
Pistol
2694 Must I bite?
Fluellen
2695 Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question
2696 too, and ambiguities.
Pistol
2697 By this leek, I will most horribly revenge. I eat and
2698 eat, I swear—
Fluellen
2699 Eat, I pray you. Will you have some more sauce to
2700 your leek? There is not enough leek to swear by.
Pistol
2701 Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see I eat.
Fluellen
2702 Much good do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, pray you,
2703 throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb.
2704 When you take occasions to see leeks herefter, I pray you,
2705 mock at 'em; that is all.
Pistol
2706 Good.
Fluellen
2707 Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat to heal
2708 your pate.
Pistol
2709 Me a groat!
Fluellen
2710 Yes, verily and in truth you shall take it; or I have
2711 another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat.
Pistol
2712 I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.
Fluellen
2713 If I owe you anything I will pay you in cudgels. You
2714 shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels.
2715 God be wi' you, and keep you, and heal your pate.
[Exit.]
Pistol
2716 All hell shall stir for this.
Gower
2717 Go, go; you are a couterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock
2718 at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and
2719 worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not
2720 avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking
2721 and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought,
2722 because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could
2723 not therefore handle an English cudgel. You find it otherwise;
2724 and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English
2725 condition. Fare ye well.
[Exit.]
Pistol
2726 Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now?
2727 News have I, that my Doll is dead i' the spital
2728 Of malady of France;
2729 And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.
2730 Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs
2731 Honour is cudgell'd. Well, bawd I'll turn,
2732 And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.
2733 To England will I steal, and there I'll steal;
2734 And patches will I get unto these cudgell'd scars,
2735 And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.
[Exit.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2621archaic vocab
“like a mighty whiffler 'fore the King”
A whiffler was an official who walked at the head of a royal procession to clear the crowd and make way for the sovereign. The sea is imagined as a gigantic royal usher parting before Henry, preparing his path home from France.
TLN 2635classical allusion
“senators of the antique Rome, With the plebeians swarming at their heels, Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in”
The Chorus compares Henry's triumphal return to London to a Roman general's triumph: London's mayor and aldermen are cast as senators, the crowd as plebeians, and Henry as a conquering Caesar. This was the highest honour the Roman Republic or Empire could offer a victorious general.
historical The Roman Triumph
TLN 2639historical topical
“the general of our gracious empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword”
This is the most precisely datable line Shakespeare ever wrote. The 'general of our gracious empress' almost certainly refers to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, whom Queen Elizabeth sent to Ireland in March 1599 to suppress Tyrone's rebellion. Shakespeare imagines Essex returning victorious with 'rebellion broached on his sword' — rebellion spitted like meat on a skewer. Essex left London to huge crowds but returned in September 1599 without victory, having made an unauthorised truce. This Chorus was therefore written between March and September 1599.
TLN 2655cultural context
“why wear you your leek to-day? Saint Davy's day is past.”
Saint David (Dewi Sant) is the patron saint of Wales, and his feast day, 1 March, is the occasion when Welsh people traditionally wear a leek in their hats as a badge of national pride. The scene is set after the battle and the peace negotiations — clearly past 1 March — so Gower is puzzled that Fluellen is still wearing his leek. Fluellen's answer explains the personal grievance: Pistol mocked him for the custom, and he is wearing the leek as a visible challenge until he can settle accounts.
TLN 2670archaic vocab
“art thou bedlam? Dost thou thirst, base Troyan”
'Bedlam' is a shortened form of Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London, England's first asylum for the mentally ill, whose name became slang for madness itself. Pistol uses it as an insult: 'Are you out of your mind?' The word 'Troyan' (Trojan) was an Elizabethan slang term for a rogue, a dissolute fellow, or a low companion — used here as an insult but carrying the irony that Pistol himself is the swaggering blowhard.
TLN 2671classical allusion
“fold up Parca's fatal web”
Parca (plural Parcae) was the Roman name for the Fates — three goddesses who spun, measured, and cut the thread of every mortal's life. Pistol threatens Fluellen with death in grandiose, theatrical terms: to 'fold up' the Fates' 'fatal web' is to wind up and end the fabric of a life.
TLN 2678historical topical
“Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.”
Cadwallader (Welsh: Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon) was a seventh-century Welsh king, the last to claim sovereignty over all Britain. He became a figure of national legend and prophecy — Welsh tradition held that he would one day return to restore the British kingdom. Pistol's line mocks Welsh national pride by pairing the great legendary king with the cliché of Wales as a land of goats, meaning 'I will not do this even for the greatest Welsh hero and all his followers.'
TLN 2687wordplay
“yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you to-day a squire of low degree”
Fluellen turns Pistol's earlier insult into a pun. Pistol had called him a 'mountain-squire' — a contemptuous joke on Wales as a land of bare mountains, implying Fluellen is a low-born provincial nobody. Fluellen counters that he will make Pistol a 'squire of low degree' — that is, he will beat him down to ground level ('low degree' meaning both low social standing and physically low, knocked flat on the ground).
TLN 2692archaic vocab
“good for your green wound and your ploody coxcomb”
A 'coxcomb' is a fool's cap — the cap with a cockscomb (rooster's crest) worn by a court jester — and by extension it meant the head itself, often in the sense of a fool's head. Fluellen tells Pistol the leek-skin is good for his 'bloody coxcomb,' meaning his bleeding head (cracked by the cudgel blows), but with the obvious extra insult that Pistol is a fool.
TLN 2720archaic vocab
“I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice.”
'Gleeking' means mocking or scoffing — jeering at someone with sharp, cutting words. 'Galling' means chafing or irritating, rubbing someone raw with contempt. Gower is rebuking Pistol for repeatedly sneering at Fluellen behind the Welshman's back — taking cheap shots at a man he would not dare challenge openly.
TLN 2726classical allusion
“Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now?”
Fortune here is the classical goddess of luck and fate, imagined as a 'huswife' (housewife) — but in Elizabethan slang 'huswife' also meant a hussy or a woman of loose character (the same word as 'hussy'). So Pistol asks: Is Fortune playing the slut with me now, cheating and debasing me? It is a compressed version of the traditional image of Fortune as an unreliable, fickle woman who gives and snatches away.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 2727cultural context
“my Doll is dead i' the spital Of malady of France”
A 'spital' (short for 'hospital') was one of London's charitable institutions for the sick and destitute. The 'malady of France' was a common Elizabethan term for syphilis — also called the French pox, the French disease, or the Neapolitan disease, each nation blaming another for its origin. Pistol learns that Doll Tearsheet, his companion from the Eastcheap tavern world, has died in a venereal disease ward.
TLN 2733wordplay
“To England will I steal, and there I'll steal”
Pistol puns on two senses of 'steal': to slip away secretly (go stealthily to England), and to commit theft once he gets there. The couplet condenses his plan — sneak home, turn cutpurse — into one mordant joke at his own expense. The pun is deliberate and self-aware: Pistol knows exactly what he is.