If I demand, before this royal view,

What rub or what impediment there is,

Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenty, and joyful births,
Should not, in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased!
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unprunèd dies; her hedges even-pleach'd,5
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,
Do root upon, while that the coulter rusts,
That should deracinate 6 such savagery;
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.

And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,

Even so our houses, and ourselves and children,

5 Pleached, plaited, platted are all words of the same meaning, like the Latin plicitum; folded together, or interwoven. So in Much Ado About Nothing, iii. I; "The pleached bower, where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, forbid the sun to enter."

6 To deracinate is to force up by the roots.

7 Not defective in their productive virtue, for they grew to wildness; but defective in their proper virtue, which was to serve man with food and support.

Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,

The sciences that should become our country;
But grow, like savages,

as soldiers will,

That nothing do but meditate on blood,

8

To swearing, and stern looks, defused attire,
And every thing that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favour,9
You are assembled: and my speech entreats
That I may know the let,10 why gentle Peace
Should not expel these inconveniences,
And bless us with her former qualities.

K. Hen. If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace,
Whose want gives growth to th' imperfections
Which you have cited, you must buy that peace
With full accord to all our just demands;

Whose tenours and particular effects

You have, enscheduled briefly, in your hands.

Bur. The King hath heard them; to the which as yet There is no answer made.

K. Hen.

Well, then, the peace,
Which you before so urged, lies in his answer.
Fr. King. I have but with a cursorary 11 eye
O'erglanced the articles: pleaseth your Grace
T'appoint some of your Council presently
To sit with us once more, with better heed

8 It appears from Florio's Dictionary, that diffused, or defused, was used for confused. Defused attire is therefore disordered or dishevelled attire. 9 Favour here means comeliness of appearance. — To reduce is to restore or bring back; a sense of the word now obsolete, but legitimate from the Latin reduco.

10 This is the ancient let, meaning hindrance or obstruction.

11 Cursorary appears to be a word of the Poet's own coining, no other instance of it being known. Cursory had not syllables enough for the place.

To re-survey them, we will suddenly

Pass our accept 12 and peremptory answer.

K. Hen. Brother, we shall. - Go, uncle Exeter,
And brother Clarence, - and you, brother Gloster,
Warwick, and Huntingdon,13-go with the King;
And take with you free power to ratify,
Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best
Shall see advantageable 14 for our dignity,
Any thing in or out of our demands;

And we'll consign thereto. — Will you, fair sister,
Go with the princes, or stay here with us?

Q. Isa. Our gracious brother, I will go with them:
Haply a woman's voice may do some good,

When articles too nicely urged be stood on.

K. Hen. Yet leave our cousin Catharine here with us:

She is our capital demand, comprised

Within the fore-rank of our articles.

Q. Isa. She hath good leave..

K. Hen.

Will

[Exeunt all but HENRY, CATHARINE, and ALICE. Fair Catharine, and most fair!

you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms

Such as will enter at a lady's ear,

And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?

12 Suddenly in the sense of quickly or speedily. Often so. To pass, as the word is here used, is, apparently, to fix, conclude, or agree upon. So in The Taming of the Shrew, iv. 2: "To pass assurance of a dower in marriage." Accept, if the text be right, is merely a shortened form of acceptance. Shakespeare uses the same freedom in many words. See Critical Notes.

18 John Holland, Earl of Huntington, who afterwards married the widow of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. Neither Huntingdon nor Clarence is in the list of Dramatis Personæ, as neither of them speaks a word.

14 Advantageable for advantageous, just as, elsewhere, disputable for disputatious. This confusion of active and passive forms, both in adjectives and participles, occurs very often. See As You Like It, page 66, note 5.

Cath. Your Majesty shall mock at me; I cannot speak your England.

K. Hen. O fair Catharine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?

Cath. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is like me.

K. Hen. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.

Cath. Que dit il? que je suis semblable à les anges?

Alice. Oui, vraiment, sauf votre Grace, ainsi dit-il.

K. Hen. I said so, dear Catharine; and I must not blush to affirm it.

Cath. O bon Dieu ! les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies.

K. Hen. What says she, fair one? that the tongues of men are full of deceit?

Alice. Oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits, dat is de Princess.

K. Hen. The Princess is the better Englishwoman. I'faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding: I am glad thou canst speak no better English; for, if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king, that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say, I love you; then, if you urge me further than to say, Do you, in faith? I wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i'faith, do; and so clap hands and a bargain: how say you, lady?

Cath. Sauf votre Honneur, me understand vell.

K. Hen. Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for your sake, Kate, why, you undid me: for the one, I have neither words nor measure; and for the other, I have no

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strength in measure,15 yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. Or, if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher, and sit like a jackan-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love of any thing he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier: if thou canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And, while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; 16 for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; 17 straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curl'd pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow but a good heart, Kate, is the Sun and the Moon; or, rather, the Sun, and not the Moon; for it shines

a

15 Measure is here used in the sense of dancing. To tread or dance a measure, was a common phrase. See Much Ado, page 42, note 5.

16 Uncoined constancy probably means an affection that has never " gone forth"; a heart like virgin gold, that has never had any image stamped upon it.

17 Will fall away, leaving "his youthful hose a world too wide for his shrunk shank."