How now, Captain Fluellen! come you from the bridge?

I assure you, there is very excellent services committed at the bridge.

Is the Duke of Exeter safe?

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—God be praised and

blessed!—any hurt in the world; but keeps the bridge most valiantly,

with excellent discipline. There is an anchient lieutenant there at the

pridge, I think in my very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark

Antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the world, but I did see

him do as gallant service.

What do you call him?

He is call’d Anchient Pistol.

I know him not.

Here is the man.

Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours.

The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.

Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at his hands.

Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart,

And of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate

And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel,

That goddess blind,

That stands upon the rolling restless stone—

By your patience, Anchient Pistol. Fortune is painted blind, with a

muffler afore his eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; 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.

Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him;

For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must ’a be,—

A damned death!

Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free,

And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate.

But Exeter hath given the doom of death

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.

Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.

Anchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.

Why then, rejoice therefore.

Certainly, anchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at; for if, look you,

he were my brother, I would desire the Duke to use his good pleasure,

and put him to execution; for discipline ought to be used.

Die and be damn’d! and _fico_ for thy friendship!

It is well.

The fig of Spain.

Very good.

Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal. I remember him now; a bawd,

a cutpurse.

I’ll assure you, ’a uttered as prave words 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.

Why, ’t is 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, at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who

was shot, who disgrac’d, what terms the enemy stood on; and this they

con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned

oaths: and what a beard of the general’s cut and a horrid suit of the

camp will do among foaming bottles and ale-wash’d 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.

I tell you what, Captain Gower; I do perceive he is not the man that he

would gladly make show to the world he is. If I find a hole in his

coat, I will tell him my mind. [_Drum heard._] Hark you, the King is

coming, and I must speak with him from the pridge.

God bless your Majesty!

How now, Fluellen! cam’st thou from the bridge?

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.

What men have you lost, Fluellen?

The perdition of the 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 man. His face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs,

and flames o’ fire; and his lips blows 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.

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, 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.

You know me by my habit.

Well then I know thee. What shall I know of thee?

My master’s mind.

Unfold it.

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 rebuk’d him at Harfleur, but that we thought not good to

bruise an injury till it were full ripe. 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 pettishness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too

poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too

faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our

feet, but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add defiance; and

tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his followers, whose

condemnation is pronounc’d. So far my King and master; so much my

office.

What is thy name? I know thy quality.

Montjoy.

Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,

And tell thy King I do not seek him now,

But could be willing to march on to Calais

Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth,

Though ’tis no wisdom to confess so much

Unto an enemy of craft and vantage,

My people are with sickness much enfeebled,

My numbers lessen’d, and those few I have

Almost no better than so many French;

Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,

I thought upon one pair of English legs

Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God,

That I do brag thus! This your air of France

Hath blown that vice in me. I must repent.

Go therefore, tell thy master here I am;

My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk,

My army but a weak and sickly guard;

Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,

Though France himself and such another neighbour

Stand in our way. There’s for thy labour, Montjoy.

Go, bid thy master well advise himself.

If we may pass, we will; if we be hind’red,

We shall your tawny ground with your red blood

Discolour; and so, Montjoy, fare you well.

The sum of all our answer is but this:

We would not seek a battle, as we are;

Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it.

So tell your master.

I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.

I hope they will not come upon us now.

We are in God’s hands, brother, not in theirs.

March to the bridge; it now draws toward night.

Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves,

And on tomorrow bid them march away.