just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 'How now, Sir John!' quoth I:

'what, man! be o' good cheer.' So a' cried out 'God, God, God!' three or four times. Now I, 20 to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.

Nym. They say he cried out of sack.

Host. Ay, that a' did.

Bard. And of women.

Host. Nay, that a' did not.

Boy. Yes, that a' did; and said they were devils incarnate.

Host. A' could never abide carnation; 'twas a colour he never liked.

Boy. A' said once, the devil would have him about women.

30

Host. A' did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic, and talked 40 of the whore of Babylon.

13. at the turning o' the tide; according to a current belief, death took place only during the ebb.

14. fumble with the sheets, a supposed symptom of approaching death.

17. a' babbled of green fields; Theobald's famous correction of Ff and a Table of greene

fields.' Delius, almost alone among recent editors, retains the Folio reading, on account of Mrs. Quickly's habitual proneness to nonsense. But her nonsense is always intelligible.

29. of, 'on,' at; he cried out against it.

40. rheumatic, i. e. lunatic.

Boy. Do you not remember, a' saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose, and a' said it was a black soul burning in hell-fire?

Bard. Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that fire that's all the riches I got in his service. Nym. Shall we shog? the king will be gone from Southampton.

Pist. Come, let's away. My love, give me thy lips.

Look to my chattels and my movables:

Let senses rule; the word is 'Pitch and Pay:'
Trust none;

For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes,
And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck:

Therefore, Caveto be thy counsellor.

Go, clear thy crystals.

Yoke-fellows in arms,

Let us to France; like horse-leeches, my boys,
To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!

Boy. And that's but unwholesome food, they say.

Pist. Touch her soft mouth, and march.
Bard. Farewell, hostess.

[Kissing her.

Nym. I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but, adieu.

Pist. Let housewifery appear: keep close, I

thee command. Host. Farewell; adieu.

47. shog, be off.

51. Pitch and Pay,' 'pay down' ready money; originally it seems a phrase of the London cloth-trade, meaning 'pitch' (or deposit) the cloth in the clothhall, and pay (as a statute

[Exeunt.

50

60

required) at the same time the fee or hallage.

54. hold-fast is the only dog. Douce quotes a contemporary proverb: Brag is a good dog, but Hold-fast is a better.'

VOL. VII

49

E

SCENE IV. France. The KING'S palace.

Flourish.

Enter the FRENCH KING, the DAUPHIN, the DUKES OF BERRI and BRETAGNE, the CONSTABLE, and others.

Fr. King. Thus comes the English with full power upon us;

And more than carefully it us concerns

To answer royally in our defences.

Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Bretagne,
Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,
And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,
To line and new repair our towns of war
With men of courage and with means defendant;
For England his approaches makes as fierce
As waters to the sucking of a gulf.

It fits us then to be as provident

As fear may teach us out of late examples
Left by the fatal and neglected English
Upon our fields.

Dau.

My most redoubted father,
It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe;
For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
But that defences, musters, preparations,

Should be maintain'd, assembled and collected,
As were a war in expectation.

Therefore, I say 'tis meet we all go forth

To view the sick and feeble parts of France:
And let us do it with no show of fear;

No, with no more than if we heard that England

ΤΟ

20

13. fatal and neglected, made light of to our ruin.

Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance:
For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd,
Her sceptre so fantastically borne

By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
That fear attends her not.

Con.
O peace, Prince Dauphin!
You are too much mistaken in this king:
Question your grace the late ambassadors,
With what great state he heard their embassy,
How well supplied with noble counsellors,
How modest in exception, and withal
How terrible in constant resolution,
And you shall find his vanities forespent
Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
Covering discretion with a coat of folly;
As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
That shall first spring and be most delicate.

Dau. Well, 'tis not so, my lord high constable;
But though we think it so, it is no matter:
In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh
The enemy more mighty than he seems:
So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
Which of a weak and niggardly projection
Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
A little cloth.

Fr. King. Think we King Harry strong;
And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet

him.

The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;

28. humorous, whimsical. 34. modest in exception, temperate in raising objection.

37. the Roman Brutus; the assailant of Tarquin; cf. Lucrece, 11. 1809-15.

46. of a weak and niggardly

30

40

50

projection, if planned on a mean scale. The subject of 'doth' is the 'projector,' implied in 'projection.'

50. flesh'd; to 'flesh' was to give a hound its first taste of the flesh of the animal it was being trained to hunt. L.

And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths:
Witness our too much memorable shame
When Cressy battle fatally was struck,

And all our princes captived by the hand

Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;

Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain
standing,

Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun,
Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him,
Mangle the work of nature and deface

The patterns that by God and by French fathers
Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
The native mightiness and fate of him.

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. Ambassadors from Harry King of England

Do crave admittance to your majesty.

Fr. King. We'll give them present audience.
Go, and bring them.

[Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords.

You see this chase is hotly follow'd, friends.

Dau. Turn head, and stop pursuit; for coward dogs

Most spend their mouths when what they seem

to threaten

Runs far before them.

Good my sovereign,

Take up the English short, and let them know

54. struck, fought (battle being from 'battre'; cf. Ger. 'eine Schlacht schlagen').

57. his mountain sire. Probably a bold image for 'his mighty father,' in keeping with

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70

the following line, which makes the setting sun his crown.

70. Most spend their mouths, give tongue loudest; a technical term of hunting.