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K. Hen.

My brother Gloster's voice?-Ay;

I know thy errand, I will go with thee:-
The day, my friends, and all things stay for me.

SCENE II.

The French Camp.

[Exeunt.

Enter Dauphin, ORLEANS, RAMBURES, and Others. Orl. The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords. Dau. Montez a cheval:-My horse! valet! lacquay! ha!

Orl. O brave spirit!

Dau. Via!-les eaux et la terre

Orl. Rien puis? l'air et le feu

Dau. Ciel! cousin Orleans.

Enter Constable.

Now, my lord Constable!

Con. Hark, how our steeds for present service neigh. Dau. Mount them, and make incision in their hides; That their hot blood may spin in English eyes, And dout them with superfous courage: Ha!

4 Via! les eaux et la terre-] is an old hortatory exclamation, as allons! Johnson.

This dialogue will be best explained by referring to the seventh scene of the preceding Act, in which the Dauphin, speaking in admiration of his horse, says: "When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air:-It is a beast for Perseus; he is pure air and fire, and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him." He now, seeing his horse at a distance, attempts to say the same thing in French: "Les eaux et la terre," the waters and the earth-have no share in my horse's composition, he was going to have said; but is prevented by the Duke of Orleans, who replies-Can you add nothing more? Is he not air and fire? Yes, says the Dauphin, and even heaven itself. He had, in the former scene, called his horse Wonder of Nature. The words, however, may admit of a different interpretation. He may mean to boast that, when on horseback, he can bound over all the elements, and even soar to heaven itself. Malone.

It is not easy to determine the import of the Dauphin's words. I do not, however, think the foregoing explanation right, because it excludes variety, by presuming that what has been already said in one language, is repeated in another. Perhaps this insignificant sprig of royalty is only capering about, and uttering a "rhapsody of words" indicative of levity and high spirits, but guiltless of any precise meaning. Steevens.

Ram. What, will you have them weep our horses'

blood?

How shall we then behold their natural tears?

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. The English are embattled, you French peers. Con. To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse! Do but behold yon poor and starved band,'

And your fair show shall suck away their souls,"
Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.
There is not work enough for all our hands;
Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins,
To give each naked curtle-ax a stain,

That our French gallants shall to-day draw out,
And sheath for lack of sport: let us but blow on them,
The vapour of our valour will o'erturn them.
'Tis positive 'gainst all exceptions, lords,

That our superfluous lackeys, and our peasants,—

5 And dout them-] The first folio reads-doubt, which, perhaps, may have been used for to make to doubt; to terrifie.

Tyrwhitt.

To doubt, or (as it ought to have been spelled) dout, is a word still used in Warwickshire, and signifies to do out, or extinguish. See a note on Hamlet, Act I, sc. iv. For this information I was indebted to my late friend, the Reverend H. Homer. Steevens.

In the folio, where alone this passage is found, the word is written doubt. To dout, for to do out, is a common phrase at this day in Devonshire and the other western counties; where they often say, dout the fire, that is, put out the fire. Many other words of the same structure are used by our author; as, to don, i. e. to do on, to doff, i. e. to do off, &c. In Hamlet he has used the same phrase:

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"Doth all the noble substance of worth dout," &c. The word being provincial, the same mistake has happened in both places; doubt being printed in Hamlet instead of dout.

Mr. Pope for doubt substituted daunt, which was adopted in the subsequent editions. For the emendation now made I imagined I should have been answerable; but on looking into Mr. Rowe's edition I find he has anticipated me, and has printed the word as it is now exhibited in the text. Malone.

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suck away their souls,] This strong expression did not escape the notice of Dryden and Pope; the former having (less chastely) employed it in his Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: Sucking each others' souls while we expire:"

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and the latter, in his Eloisa to Abelard:

"Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul." Steevens.

Who, in unnecessary action, swarm
About our squares of battle,7-were enough
Το purge this field of such a hilding foe;8
Though we, upon this mountain's basis by
Took stand for idle speculation:

But that our honours must not.
A very little little let us do,

What's to say?

And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound
The tucket-sonuance,1 and the note to mount:
For our approach shall so much dare the field,
That England shall couch down in fear, and yield.
Enter GRANDPRE'.

Grand. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?
Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
Ill-favour'dly become the morning field:

Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,3

7 About our squares of battle,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

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— no practice had

"In the brave squares of war." Steevens.

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8 a hilding foe;] Hilding, or hinderling, is a low wretch.

Johnson. 9- upon this mountain's basis by -] See Henry's speech,

sc. vii:

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"Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill." Malone.

1 The tucket-sonuance, &c.] He uses terms of the field as if they were going out only to the chace for sport. To dare the field is a phrase in falconry. Birds are dared when by the falcon in the air they are terrified from rising, so that they will be sometimes taken by the hand.

Such an easy capture the lords expected to make of the English. Johnson.

2 Yon island carrions, &c.] This and the preceding description of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our historians, of Henry's army, immediately before the battle of Agincourt:

"The Englishmen were brought into great misery in this jour ney [from Harfleur to Agincourt]; their victual was in manner spent, and now could they get none:-rest could they none take, for their enemies were ever at hand to give them alarms: daily it rained, and nightly it freezed; of fewel there was great scarcity, but of fluxes great plenty; money they had enough, but wares to bestowe it upon, for their relief or comforte, had they little or none." Holinshed. Malone.

3 Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,] By their ragged curtains, are meant their colours. M. Mason.

And our air shakes them passing scornfully.
Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd host,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.
Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,

With torch-staves in their hand: and their poor jades
Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips;
The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes;
And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit5
Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless;
And their executors, the knavish crows, 6
Fly o'er them all, impatient for their hour.
Description cannot suit itself in words,
To démonstrate the life of such a battle
In life so lifeless" as it shows itself.

Con. They have said their prayers, and they stay for death.

Dau. Shall we go send them dinners, and fresh suits, And give their fasting horses provender,

And after fight with them?

Con. I stay but for my guard; On, to the field:

4 Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,

With torch-staves in their hand:] Grandpré alludes to the form of ancient candlesticks, which frequently represented human figures holding the sockets for the lights in their extended hands.

A similar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: "he showed like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff in his hand little bigger than a candle." Steevens.

5 gimmal bit] Gimmal is, in the western counties, a ring; a gimmal bit is therefore a bit of which the parts played one within another. Johnson.

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their executors, the knavish crows,] The crows who are to have the disposal of what they shall leave, their hides and their flesh. Johnson.

7 In life so lifeless -] So, in The Comedy of Errors:

"A living dead man.” Steevens.

8 I stay but for my guard;] It seems, by what follows, that guard in this place means rather something of ornament or of distinction, than a body of attendants. Johnson.

The following quotation from Holinshed, p. 554, will best elucidate this passage: "The duke of Brabant when his standard was not come, caused a banner to be taken from a trumpet and fastened upon a spear, the which he commanded to be borne before him instead of a standard."

In the second part of Heywood's Iron Age, 1632, Menelaus,

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I will the banner from a trumpet take,

after having enumerated to Pyrrhus the treasures of his father Achilles, as his myrmidons, &c. adds:

"His sword, spurs, armour, guard, pavilion."

From this last passage it should appear that guard was part of the defensive armour; perhaps what we call at present the gorget. Again, in Holinshed, p. 820: "The one bare his helmet, the second his granguard," &c. Steevens.

By his guard, I believe, the Constable means, not any part of his dress, but the guard that usually attended with his banner; to supply the want of which he afterwards says, that he will take a banner from a trumpet, and use it for his haste. It appears, from a passage in the last scene of the fourth Act, that the principal nobility, and the princes, had all their respective banners, and of course their guards:

"Of princes in this number,

"And nobles bearing banners, there be dead

"One hundred," &c. M. Mason.

Dr. Johnson and Mr. Steevens are of opinion that "guard in this place means rather something of ornament, or of distinction, than a body of attendants." But from the following passage in Holinshed, p. 554, which our author certainly had in his thoughts, it is clear, in my apprehension, that guard is here used in its ordinary sense: "When the messenger was come back to the French hoste, the men of warre put on their helmettes, and caused their trumpets to blow to the battaile. They thought themselves so sure of victory, that divers of the noble men made such haste towards the battaile, that they left many of their servants and men of warre behind them, and some of them would not once stay for their standards; as amongst other the Duke of Brabant, when his standard was not come, caused a banner to be taken from a trumpet, and fastened to a speare, the which he commanded to be borne before him, instead of a standard." The latter part only of this passage is quoted by Mr. Steevens; but the whole considered together proves, in my apprehension, that guard means here nothing more than the men of war whose duty it was to attend on the Constable of France, and among those his standard, that is, his standard-bearer. In a preceding passage Holinshed mentions, that "the Constable of France, the Marshal, &c. and other of the French nobility, came and pitched down their standards and banners in the county of St. Paule " Again: "Thus the French men being ordered under their standards and banners, made a great shew;"—or, as Hall has it: "Thus the French men were every man under his banner, only waiting," &c. It appears, from both these historians, that all the princes and nobles in the French army bore banners, and of these one hundred nad twentysix were killed in this battle.

In a subsequent part of the description of this memorable victory, Holinshed mentions that "Henry having felled the Duke of Alanson, the king's guard, contrary to his mind, outrageously slew

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