Gow. How now, Captain Fluellen! come you from the bridge? Flu. I assure you, there is very excellent services committed at the pridge.1 Gow. Is the Duke of Exeter safe? Flu. The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and my living, and my uttermost power: he is not any hurt in the 'orld; but iantly, with excellent discipline. at the pridge, Got be praised and plessed! keeps the pridge most valThere is an auncient there I think in my very conscience he is as val iant a man as Mark Antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the 'orld; but I did see him do gallant service. Gow. What do you call him? Flu. He is call'd Auncient Pistol. Gow. I know him not. Flu. Here is the man. Enter PISTOL. Pist. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours: The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well. 1 After Henry had passed the Somme, the French endeavoured to intercept him in his passage to Calais; and for that purpose attempted to break down the only bridge that there was over the small river of Ternois. But Henry, having notice of their design, sent a part of his troops before him, who, attacking and putting the French to flight, preserved the bridge till the whole English army arrived and passed over it. Flu. Ay, I praise Got; and I have merited some love at his hands. Pist. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart, Of buxom 2 valour, hath, by cruel fate, And giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel, That goddess blind, That stands upon the rolling, restless stone, Fortune is Flu. By your patience, Auncient Pistol. painted plind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is plind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation: and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it: Fortune is an excellent moral. Pist. Fortune is Bardolph's foe, and frowns on him; Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free, For pax of little price. Therefore, go speak; the duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord and vile reproach : 2 In the Saxon and our elder English, buxom meant pliant, yielding, obedient; but it was also used for lusty, rampant. Pistol would be more likely to take the popular sense than one founded on etymology. 3 The pax is said to have been a small piece of plate, sometimes with the Crucifixion engraved or embossed upon it, which at a certain point in the Mass was offered to the laity to be kissed: Osculatorium was another name for it. Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite. Flu. Auncient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning. Pist. Why, then rejoice therefore. Flu. Certainly, auncient, it is not a thing to rejoice at: for if, look you, he were my prother, I would desire the duke to use his goot pleasure, and put him to execution; for discipline ought to be used. Pist. Die and be damn'd! and fico for thy friendship! Pist. The fig of Spain !4 Flu. Very goot. [Exit. Gow. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; I remember him now; a cutpurse. Flu. I'll assure you, 'a utter'd as prave 'ords at the pridge as you shall see in a Summer's day. But it is very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve. Gow. Why, 'tis a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to the wars, to grace himself, at his return into London, under the form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great commanders' names: and they will learn you by rote where services were done; at such and such a sconce,5 at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgraced, what terms the enemy stood 4 What is here called "the fig of Spain" was by no means confined to that country, nor did it originate there. It was a coarse gesture of contemptuous insult, made by thrusting the thumb between the middle and fore fingers, so as to form a rude likeness to a certain disease which was called the ficus as far back at least as the days of classic Rome. 5 A sconce was a blockhouse or chief fortress, for the most part round in fashion of a head; hence the head is ludicrously called a sconce; a lantern was also called a sconce, because of its round form. on; and this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with new-coined oaths: and what a beard of the general's cut, and a horrid suit of the camp, will do among foaming bottles and ale-washed wits, is wonderful to be thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or else you may be marvellously mistook. Flu. I tell you what, Captain Gower; I do perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the 'orld he is if I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind. [Drum within.] Hark you, the King is coming; and I must speak with him from the pridge.8. Enter King HENRY, GLOSTER, and Soldiers. Got pless your Majesty ! King. How now, Fluellen! camest thou from the bridge? Flu. Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of Exeter has very gallantly maintain'd the pridge: the French is gone off, look you; and there is gallant and most prave passages : marry, th' athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced to retire, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge: I can tell your Majesty, the duke is a prave man. King. What men have you lost, Fluellen? Flu. The perdition of th' athversary hath been very great, reasonable great: marry, for my part, I think the duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church,—one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the 6 The English used to be very particular about the cut of their beards. Certain ranks and callings had their peculiar style; and soldiers appear to have affected what was called the spade cut and the stilletto cut. 7 Nothing was more common than such huffcap pretending braggarts as Pistol in the Poet's age; they are the continual subject of satire to his contemporaries. 8 "I must tell him what was done at the bridge." man his face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o' fire; and his lips plows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire's out. King. We would have all such offenders so cut off: and we give express charge that, in our marches through the country, there be nothing compell'd from the villages, nothing taken but paid for,1o none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner. 10 Tucket sounds. Enter MONTJOY. Mont. You know me by my habit.11 King. Well, then I know thee: what shall I know of thee? Mont. My master's mind. King. Unfold it. Mont. Thus says my King: Say thou to Harry of England: Though we seem'd dead, we did but sleep; advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him, we could have rebuked him at Harfleur, but that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full ripe: 12 now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial. England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance. Bid him, therefore, consider of his ransom; which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested; which, in weight to re-answer, his 9 Bubukles are blotches or botches; whelks are pustules or wheals. 10 That is, nothing taken without being paid for. This use of but with the force of without occurs repeatedly. See Hamlet, page 68, note 3. 11 The person of a herald being, by the laws of war, inviolable, was distinguished by a richly-emblazoned dress. 12 The implied image is of a sore, as a boil or carbuncle, which is best let alone till it has come to a head. — Cue is used in the sense of turn. |