K. HEN. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation: but this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers : some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God: war is His beadle, war is His vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish: then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damna147 sinfully miscarry] perish in sin, die without repenting of their sins. 161 contrived] actually committed, perpetrated.

165-166 native punishment] punishment in their native country. 172 unprovided] sc. with religious rites, unprepared spiritually.

tion than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.

WILL. 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the king is not to answer it.

BATES. I do not desire he should answer for me; and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.

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

WILL. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we ne'er the wiser.

K. HEN. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.

WILL. You pay him then. That's a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and a private displeasure can do against a monarch! you may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather. You'll never trust his word after! come, 't is a foolish saying.

177 mote] Malone's correction of the Folio reading moth, which was commonly pronounced "mote. "

196 an elder-gun] a pop-gun made of elder-wood, a toy gun.

183

189

200

K. HEN. Your reproof is something too round: I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient. WILL. Let it be a quarrel between us, if

K. HEN. I embrace it.

WILL. How shall I know thee again?

you live.

K. HEN. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet: then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.

WILL. Here's my glove: give me another of thine.
K. HEN. There.

WILL. This will I also wear in my cap: if ever thou come to me and say, after to-morrow, after to-morrow," This is my glove," by this hand, I will take thee a box on the ear.

K. HEN. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.
WILL. Thou darest as well be hanged.

K. HEN. Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the king's company.

WILL. Keep thy word: fare thee well.

210

BATES. Be friends, you English fools, be friends: we have French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon.221 K. HEN. Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one, they will beat us; for they bear them on their shoulders: but it is no English treason to cut French crowns, and to-morrow the king himself will be a clipper. [Exeunt Soldiers.

Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,

201 round blunt, outspoken.

206 gage] pledge.

207 bonnet] military headgear.

224-225 cut French crowns] an allusion to the felonious practice of clip

ping coin of the realm, with a quibble on crowns in the sense of heads.

Our debts, our careful wives,

Our children and our sins lay on the king!
We must bear all. O hard condition,
Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath
Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel
But his own wringing! What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony ?
And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?

Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?

Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd

Than they in fearing.

What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!

Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?

Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

227 careful] anxious, full of care or anxiety.

231-232 whose sense. . . wringing] who has no feeling for any suffering save that which wrings his own heart, that which he endures himself.

241 thy soul of adoration] the essential virtue which men adore in thee. 250 blown from adulation] blown from the lips of flatterers.

230

240

250

Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;

I am a king that find thee, and I know
"T is not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind

Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,

256 balm] oil used at the king's coronation.
259 farced] stuffed, swollen, pompous.

266 distressful] earned by the pain of hard work.

268 a lackey] a running footman.

271 help Hyperion to his horse] Hyperion is here the sun-god, and is

identical with "Phoebus" of line 269.

Ovid calls the sun by the Shakespeare represents the

same title in Metamorphoses, xiv, 406.
early riser as helping the sun to mount his horse, an unique varia-
tion on the ordinary myth, which figures the sun as driver of a
chariot. Shakespeare's habit of accenting "Hyperion" on the
second syllable defies classical usage, which places the accent on
the third syllable, but is the common Elizabethan practice.

760176

260

270