Henry V

Gloucester, it’s true that we are in great danger. But our courage should only be the greater for that. Good morning, brother Bedford. God Almighty, there must be some essential goodness even in evil, if men would only look for it. In our case, our bad neighbors over their make us early risers, a healthy and sensible thing to be. Besides, they act as outward consciences and preachers to us all, a visible reminder that we should prepare ourselves for death. Think like that, and you’ll manage to get honey out of a common weed and find a moral lesson in the devil himself.

Good morning, old Sir Thomas Erpingham! A nice, soft pillow would be a more suitable place to lay that good white head than France’s hard, cold ground.

Not at all, my liege. I prefer these quarters, since they allow me to say, “Now I live like a king.”

It’s good for men to be given an example of how to take pleasure in discomfort. It eases the spirit. And when the mind is engaged, the rest of the body, dead and dull before, wakes up and comes to life with a new nimbleness and sensitivity, like a snake shedding its dead skin. Lend me your cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers, give my regards to the princes in our camp. Say good day to them from me and ask them to come to my tent.

We shall, my liege.

Shall I accompany your Grace?

No, my good knight. Go with my brothers to my English peers. I need to be alone with my thoughts for a while and don’t want any company.

The Lord in heaven bless you, noble Harry!

Bless you, old soul! Your words cheer my heart.

(speaking in French) Who goes there?

A friend.

Declare yourself to me. Are you an officer? Or are you low, vulgar, and of the common people?

I am a gentleman of a company.

Do you carry a pike?

Exactly. What about you?

I’m as good a gentleman as the emperor.

Then you’re a better man than the king.

The king’s a dear boy with a heart of gold, he’s a lively lad, a wag, born of fine parents, good with his fists. I kiss his dirty shoe, and from the bottom of my heart I love the lovely boy. What is your name?

Harry le Roy.

Le Roy? That’s a Cornish name. Are you with a Cornish company?

No, I am a Welshman.

Do you know Fluellen?

Yes.

Tell him I’ll take the leek out of his hat on Saint Davy’s Day and slap his head with it.

You’d better not wear your dagger in your cap that day, or he might slap your head with it.

Are you his friend?

Yes, and his relative, too.

Then I’m giving you the finger.

Thank you. God be with you.

My name is Pistol.

The name suits your fierceness.

Captain Fluellen!

In the name of Jesus Christ, keep it down! It never ceases to amaze me the way people ignore the correct, traditional principles and rules of war. If you would take the trouble to study the tactics of Pompey the Great, I can tell you that you would find no tittle-tattle or pibble-pabble in Pompey’s camp. I tell you, you would find the rituals of war and, I promise you, its ceremonies and its solicitudes and its forms and its gravity and its discipline all to be quite counter to all this noise.

But the enemy is loud. You can hear them all night long.

And if the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating idiot, does that mean, you think, that we should also be an ass and a fool and a prating idiot? Think about it.

I will lower my voice.

I’d be very glad if you would.

Though he seems a little old-fashioned, there is much care and courage in this Welshman.

Brother John Bates, isn’t that dawn breaking over there?

I think it is. But we have no great reason to long for day.

That’s the beginning of the day we see, but I don’t think we’ll see the end of it.—Who goes there?

A friend.

What captain do you serve?

Sir Thomas Erpingham.

A veteran commander and a very kind gentleman. Tell me, what does he think of our situation?

We’re men beached on the sand, hoping to be washed out by the next tide.

He hasn’t told this to the king, has he?

No, nor would it be right for him to. Though it’s not my place to say so, I think the king is, after all, only a man, the same as me. The violet smells to him the same as it does to me. The sky appears to him much as it does to me, and all his senses are those of a mortal man. Without his fine clothes, the king appears just like any other naked man. And though his feelings may be pitched higher than ours, when they plummet, they plummet that much farther. Therefore, when he has reason to fear, as we do, his fears are without question of the same order. Still, it stands to reason that he mustn’t betray his fear, as it might dishearten his army.

He can act as brave as he wants, but I believe on a cold night like this he wishes he were neck-deep in the Thames, and I wish he were, too, and I with him, whatever the danger, so long as we were far away from here.

I’ll tell you truly what I think about the king in my heart. I don’t think he wants to be anywhere but where he is.

Then I wish he were here alone. He’d be sure to be ransomed, and many a poor man’s life saved.

Oh, I’m sure you don’t dislike him so much as to wish he were here alone, even though you say this to find out how the rest of us feel. I don’t think there’s anywhere I’d rather die than in the king’s company, as his cause is just and honorable.

That’s more than we know.

Yes, and more than we should seek to know. It’s enough that we know we’re the king’s subjects. If his cause is wrong, our obedience to the king clears us of responsibility for it.

But if the cause is not just, the king himself will have a lot to answer for, when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in battle shall join together on Judgment Day crying, “We died at such and such a place.” Some will be swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some for the wives that are destitute without them, some about the debts they owed, some for their children left unprovided for. I think few die well who die in battle. How can a person expect to resolve anything in a Christian manner when they’ve passed their lives killing? Now, if these men don’t die in a state of grace, it will be a heavy charge against the king who led them into battle, whom they, as his subjects, could not disobey.

The king isn’t responsible for the particular end each soldier comes to, nor is the father responsible for his son’s final end or the master for his servant’s. The father and the master and the king didn’t order their subordinates’ deaths when they ordered their services. Besides, there’s no king, however pure his cause, who, if it comes to a trial by combat, can rely on using completely blameless soldiers. Perhaps some may be guilty of plotting murder, some of seducing maidens with lies and then abandoning them; some, of looting and stealing before they were even hired as soldiers. Even if these men have escaped the law and punishment at home, they cannot escape God. War is God’s agent of justice. War is vengeance. So there are men here who have broken the king’s law earlier and are punished now in his war. When they feared death, they escaped with their lives; and now where they imagine they’re safe, they perish. So, if they die unprepared, the king is no more guilty of their damnation than he was guilty of the earlier crimes they’re finally being punished for. Every subject’s duty is the king’s, but every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore, every soldier should do as any man who is sick in his bed would do: clear his conscience of any stain. Then if he dies, his death serves him. Or, if he doesn’t die, the time he spent preparing himself was at least blessed. And in the case of the man who survives, one could be forgiven for supposing that God spared him exactly because he was so ready to die; now he can live to appreciate God’s greatness and teach others to prepare.By this reasoning, if a son is sent by his father on business and drowns at sea while still in a state of sin, his wickedness is his father’s fault. Or if a servant, carrying a sum of money for his master, is attacked by robbers and dies without confessing his sins, we can say that the master’s business is to blame for the servant’s damnation. But that isn’t so.

It’s clear, every man must take responsibility for the manner of his own death. The king is not responsible for it.

I don’t expect him to answer for me, and yet I’m determined to fight vigorously for him.

I myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed.

Sure, he said so to make us fight cheerfully. But when our throats are cut, he could be ransomed without our being any the wiser.

If I live to see it, I’ll never trust his word again.

Yeah, right, go get him. That’s a lame threat from a toy gun, a poor individual’s private displeasure with a monarch. You may as well try to turn the sun to ice by fanning its face with a peacock feather. You’ll “never trust his word again.” Come on, that was a stupid thing to say.

Your scolding is somewhat overblown. I’d be angry with you if the occasion allowed.

Let it be a quarrel between us, if you live.

I’m game.

How will I recognize you in the future?

Give me some trinket of yours, and I will wear it in my hat. Then, if you dare to acknowledge it, I’ll take up my quarrel with you.

Here’s my glove; give me one of yours.

Here.

I’ll also wear this in my cap. If you come to me after tomorrow and say, “That’s my glove,” I swear by this hand, I will take it and give you a box on the ear.

If I ever see it, I will challenge you.

You may as well undertake to be hanged.

I’ll do it even if I find you in the company of the king himself.

Keep your word. Farewell.

Be friends, you English fools, be friends: we have enough enemies on the French side, if either of you could count.

Indeed, the French can bet twenty French crowns to one that they’ll beat us, they have such an army. But it’s no treason for an Englishman to cut off a French crown—a head, I mean—and tomorrow the king himself will do some snipping.

Upon the king! “Let’s lay everything upon the king: our lives, our souls, our debts, our anxious wives, our children, and our sins.” I must bear responsibility for all of it. What a painful condition responsibility is. It goes along with being born to greatness, but it makes you get badmouthed by every fool who only has his own suffering to care about. What infinite peace do king’s give up that private men enjoy? What do kings have that private men do not, besides the pomp of their position? And what is this useless ceremony of kings? What kind of god is ceremony, which suffers more than its worshippers do? What income, what profit does it bring in? Oh, ceremony, only show me your value! Why are you adored? Do you amount to anything besides position, status, and ritual, which inspire awe and fear in others? You’re less happy, being feared, than they are in fearing you. What do you get to drink, instead of sweet obedience, but poisonous flattery? Try being sick, great greatness, and see if ceremony can cure you! Do you think fiery fever can be put out by the windy puff of titles? Will it be chased away by bowing and scraping? You can command a beggar to bow on bended knee, but can you take possession of his health? No, vain illusion, so intricately bound up with a king’s rest. I who understand you, gorgeous ceremony, because I’m a king and I know that neither the balm, the scepter, and the ball, the robe layered in gold and pearls, the fancy title that precedes the king, the throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp that beats upon the high shore of this world —not all of these put together, not all of these laid down at night in an imperial bed, can cause the king to rest so soundly as does the miserable wretch who turns in at night with a full stomach and an empty mind, fed on the bread of his daily struggle. He never wakes to horrifying darkness, born of hell, but sweats in the hot sun from dawn to

dusk and all night long sleeps in peace. Come morning, he wakes and helps the sun into his chariot and so wears out the ever-rolling years until his death. Apart from ceremony, this poor creature who spends his days in toil and his nights in sleep is better off than the king. The peasant enjoys his country’s peace without ever worrying his dull head about the vigil the king must keep to maintain that peace.

My lord, your noble subjects are looking for you all over the camp. They’re anxious to see you.

Good old knight, gather them all together at my tent. I’ll meet you there.

Consider it done, my lord.

Oh God of battles, bolster my soldiers’ courage. Don’t let them know fear. Rob them of the ability to count before the numbers against them overwhelm their courage. And just for today, Oh, Lord, just today don’t think of the crime my father committed in seizing the crown! I’ve transferred Richard’s body to a new grave and on it poured more tears of remorse than it has shed drops of blood. I’ve hired five hundred almsmen to hold up their withered hands to heaven, praying for my pardon twice a day throughout the year. And I’ve built two chapels where solemn priests sing continually for Richard’s soul. I will do more, though nothing I can do is any good since this remorse comes after the crime, asking for pardon.

My liege.

My brother Gloucester’s voice? Yes, I know why you’ve come. I’ll go with you. The day, my friends, and everything await me.