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The French Camp, near Agincourt. | |
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Enter the CONSTABLE OF FRANCE, the LORD RAMBURES, the DUKE OF ORLEANS, the DAUPHIN, and Others. | |
| Con. Tut! I have the best armour of the world. Would it were day! | |
| Orl. You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due. | |
| Con. It is the best horse of Europe. | 5 |
| Orl. Will it never be morning? | |
| Dau. My Lord of Orleans, and my lord high constable, you talk of horse and armour— | |
| Orl. You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world. | |
| Dau. What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ça, ha! He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs: le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes. | |
| Orl. He’s of the colour of the nutmeg. | 10 |
| Dau. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts. | |
| Con. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse. | |
| Dau. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch and his countenance enforces homage. | |
| Orl. No more, cousin. | |
| Dau. Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey: it is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all. ’Tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign’s sovereign to ride on; and for the world—familiar to us, and unknown—to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: ‘Wonder of nature!’— | 15 |
| Orl. I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s mistress. | |
| Dau. Then did they imitate that which I composed to my courser; for my horse is my mistress. | |
| Orl. Your mistress bears well. | |
| Dau. Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular mistress. | |
| Con. Ma foi, methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back. | 20 |
| Dau. So perhaps did yours. | |
| Con. Mine was not bridled. | |
| Dau. O! then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode, like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off and in your straight strossers. | |
| Con. You have good judgment in horsemanship. | |
| Dau. Be warned by me, then: they that ride so, and ride not warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my mistress. | 25 |
| Con. I had as lief have my mistress a jade. | |
| Dau. I tell thee, constable, my mistress wears his own hair. | |
| Con. I could make as true a boast as that if I had a sow to my mistress. | |
| Dau. Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier: thou makest use of any thing. | |
| Con. Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress: or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose. | 30 |
| Ram. My lord constable, the armour that I saw in your tent to-night, are those stars or suns upon it? | |
| Con. Stars, my lord. | |
| Dau. Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope. | |
| Con. And yet my sky shall not want. | |
| Dau. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honour some were away. | 35 |
| Con. Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well were some of your brags dismounted. | |
| Dau. Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it never be day? I will trot to-morrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English faces. | |
| Con. I will not say so for fear I should be faced out of my way. But I would it were morning, for I would fain be about the ears of the English. | |
| Ram. Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners? | |
| Con. You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them. | 40 |
| Dau. ’Tis midnight: I’ll go arm myself. [Exit. | |
| Orl. The Dauphin longs for morning. | |
| Ram. He longs to eat the English. | |
| Con. I think he will eat all he kills. | |
| Orl. By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant prince. | 45 |
| Con. Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath. | |
| Orl. He is simply the most active gentleman of France. | |
| Con. Doing is activity, and he will still be doing. | |
| Orl. He never did harm, that I heard of. | |
| Con. Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name still. | 50 |
| Orl. I know him to be valiant. | |
| Con. I was told that by one that knows him better than you. | |
| Orl. What’s he? | |
| Con. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he cared not who knew it. | |
| Orl. He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him. | 55 |
| Con. By my faith, sir, but it is; never any body saw it but his lackey: ’tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate. | |
| Orl. ‘Ill will never said well.’ | |
| Con. I will cap that proverb with ‘There is flattery in friendship.’ | |
| Orl. And I will take up that with ‘Give the devil his due.’ | |
| Con. Well placed: there stands your friend for the devil: have at the very eye of that proverb, with ‘A pox of the devil.’ | 60 |
| Orl. You are the better at proverbs, by how much ‘A fool’s bolt is soon shot.’ | |
| Con. You have shot over. | |
| Orl. ’Tis not the first time you were overshot. | |
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Enter a Messenger. | |
| Mess. My lord high constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents. | 65 |
| Con. Who hath measured the ground? | |
| Mess. The Lord Grandpré. | |
| Con. A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day! Alas! poor Harry of England, he longs not for the dawning as we do. | |
| Orl. What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of England, to mope with his fatbrained followers so far out of his knowledge! | |
| Con. If the English had any apprehension they would run away. | 70 |
| Orl. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour they could never wear such heavy head-pieces. | |
| Ram. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures: their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage. | |
| Orl. Foolish curs! that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads crushed like rotten apples. You may as well say that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion. | |
| Con. Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives: and then give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils. | |
| Orl. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef. | 75 |
| Con. Then shall we find to-morrow they have only stomachs to eat and none to fight. Now is it time to arm; come, shall we about it? | |
| Orl. It is now two o’clock: but, let me see, by ten | |
| We shall have each a hundred Englishmen. [Exeunt. | |
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