Henry IV, Part I

Bardolph, go ahead of us to Coventry, and fill me a bottle of wine. Our army will keep marching, and we’ll make it to Sutton Coldfield tonight.

Will you give me some money, captain?

Spend your own.

If I buy you this bottle, that makes me an angel.

Well, if this bottle earns you an angel, then keep it for your troubles. If you earn twenty angels, then keep them all; I’m good for it. Tell my lieutenant Peto to meet me at the city limit.

I will, captain. Farewell.

If I’m not ashamed of my soldiers, then I’m a pickled fish. I’ve taken terrible advantage of my position. I’ve pressed a hundred and fifty soldiers into service, and for that, the treasury has paid me over three hundred pounds. I recruited only well-to-do property owners and rich farmer’s sons. I looked for men who were engaged to be married, who were already halfway through their preparations. I found a whole supply of pampered cowards who would rather listen to the devil than a military march; who feared the sound of gunfire more than a wounded bird or a maimed duck might. I recruited only the soft-hearted, who each had as much courage as could fit on a pin head and bribed me to avoid fighting. So now, my battalion is made up of flag bearers, corporals, lieutenants, and crooks as ragged as Lazarus in those paintings where the dogs are licking the sores on his body. I have men who’ve never been soldiers: servants dismissed for their dishonesty; youngest sons with no hope of an inheritance; runaway apprentice bartenders; unemployed stable boys. When the world is calm and peaceful, these men are blisters on society. They’re ten times more ragged than an old, tattered flag, and they’re the kind of men I have to replace the ones who bribed me. You’d think I had a hundred and fifty men who’d just come from pig farming, who eat scraps and garbage. One madman saw us on the march and told me that it looked as if I’d unloaded all the gallows and drafted all the dead bodies. No one’s ever seen such a group of scarecrows. I’m not going to march through Coventry with them tonight, that’s for sure. They march with their legs wide apart, as though they had chains on their ankles. Which makes sense, since I drafted most of them out of jails. There’s only a shirt and a half in the whole group, and the half-shirt is really just two napkins sewn together and thrown over the shoulders like a cape. And the whole shirt, to tell the truth, was stolen from a tavern owner in St. Alban’s, or maybe that drunken innkeeper in Daventry. But that doesn’t matter. They’ll be able to steal plenty of clothing from the hedges, where the washers hang the laundry out to dry.

What’s up, swollen Jack! What’s up, quilt?

Hello there, Hal, you crazy boy! What in the devil’s name are you doing in Warwickshire? And Lord Westmoreland, I beg your pardon. I thought you were already at Shrewsbury.

You’re right, Sir John; it’s about time I got there, and you, too. But my army’s already there. The King is waiting for us, so we must march all night.

Don’t worry about me. I’m as focused as a cat looking for cream to steal.

Steal cream is right—you’ve stolen so much that it’s turned you into butter. But tell me, Jack, whose soldiers are those?

Mine, Hal, mine.

I never saw such pitiful-looking losers.

Now, now: they’re good enough to die. Cannon fodder, cannon fodder—they’ll fill a mass grave as well as better men would. They’re just men, just men.

Maybe so, Sir John, but I think they look terribly poor and bare; they look like beggars.

Well, I don’t know where they got their poverty, but their bareness—or their bare-bonedness—well, they didn’t get that from me.

That’s for sure. Unless you think several inches of fat over your ribs makes you “bare-boned.” But hurry up, sirrah: Percy is already at the battlefield.

What, has the King already made camp?

He has, Sir John: I’m afraid we may be too late.

Well, a hungry guest arrives early for a feast, but a poor soldier arrives late to a battle.