SCENE V. Another Part of the Field of Battle. Alarums.

Enter Dauphin, ORLEANS, BOURBON, Constable, RAMBURES, and others.

Con. O diable!

Orl. O seigneur !-le jour est perdu, tout est perdu! Dau. Mort de ma vie! all is confounded, all! Reproach and everlasting shame

Sits mocking in our plumes.-O meschante fortune!—
Do not run away.
[A short alarum.
Con.
Why, all our ranks are broke.
Dau. O perdurable shame!-let's stab ourselves.
Be these the wretches that we played at dice for?
Orl. Is this the king we sent to for his ransom?
Bour. Shame, and eternal shame, nothing but shame!
Let us die in fight: Once more back again;
And he that will not follow Bourbon now,
Let him go hence, and with his cap in hand,
Like a base pander, hold the chamber-door,
Whilst by a slave, no gentler than my dog,2
His fairest daughter is contaminate.

Con. Disorder, that hath spoiled us, friend us now! Let us, in heaps, go offer up our lives

Unto these English, or else die with fame.3

Orl. We are enough, yet living in the field,

To smother up the English in our throngs,

If any order might be thought upon.

Bour. The devil take order now! I'll to the throng;

Let life be short; else, shame will be too long.

[Exeunt.

1 The old copy wants the word fight, which was supplied by Malone. Theobald proposed "Let us die instant," which Steevens adopted.

2 i. e. who has no more gentility.

3 This line is from the quartos.

SCENE VI. Another Part of the Field. Alarums.

Enter KING HENRY and Forces; EXETER, and others. K. Hen. Well have we done, thrice-valiant countrymen ;

But all's not done; yet keep the French the field. Exe. The duke of York commends him to your majesty.

K. Hen. Lives he, good uncle? Thrice, within this hour,

I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting:
From helmet to the spur, all blood he was.

Exe. In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie,
Larding the plain; and by his bloody side
(Yoke-fellow to his honor-owing wounds)
The noble earl of Suffolk also lies.

Suffolk first died, and York, all haggled over,
Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped,
And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes,
That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
And cries aloud,-Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk!
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven:
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast;
As, in this glorious and well-foughten field,
We kept together in our chivalry!

Upon these words I came, and cheered him up:
He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,
And, with a feeble gripe, says,-Dear my lord,
Commend my service to my sovereign.

So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck
He threw his wounded arm, and kissed his lips,
And so, espoused to death, with blood he sealed
A testament of noble-ending love.

The pretty and sweet manner of it forced

Those waters from me, which I would have stopped; But I had not so much of man in me,

1 i. e. reached.

But all my mother came into mine eyes,
And gave me up to tears.

K. Hen.

I blame you not;

For, hearing this, I must perforce compound

With mistful eyes, or they will issue too. [Alarum. But, hark! what new alarum is this same ?

The French have reinforced their scattered men:

Then every soldier kill his prisoners;

Give the word through.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VII. Another Part of the Field. Alarums.

Enter FLUELLEN and Gower.

Flu. Kill the poys and the luggage! 'tis expressly against the law of arms: 'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offered in the 'orld: In your conscience now, is it not?

Gow. 'Tis certain, there's not a boy left alive; and the cowardly rascals, that ran from the battle, have done this slaughter: besides, they have burned and carried away all that was in the king's tent; wherefore the king, most worthily, hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner's throat. O, 'tis a gallant king!

Flu. Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, captain Gower. What call you the town's name, where Alexander the Pig was born?

Gow. Alexander the Great.

Flu. Why, I pray you, is not pig, great? The pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the mag

1 "But all my mother came into my eyes,

Thus the quarto. of but that.

And gave me up to tears."

The folio reads " And all," &c. But has here the force

2 "Caused every soldier to cut his prisoner's throat." The king killed his prisoners (says Johnson) because he expected another battle, and he had not sufficient men to guard one army and fight another. Gower's reason is, as we see, different. Shakspeare followed Holinshed, who gives both reasons for Henry's conduct, but has chosen to make the king mention one of them and Gower the other.

nanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations.

Gow. I think, Alexander the Great was born in Macedon; his father was called-Philip of Macedon, as I take it.

Flu. I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is porn. I tell you, captain,-if you look in the maps of the 'orld, I warrant you shall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth; it is called Wye, at Monmouth; but it is out of my prains, what is the name of the other river; but 'tis all one, 'tis so like as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both. If you mark Alexander's life well, Harry of Monmouth's life is come after it indifferent well; for there is figures in all things. Alexander, (God knows, and you know,) in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his pest friend, Clytus.

Gow. Our king is not like him in that; he never killed any of his friends.

Flu. It is not well done, mark you now, to take tales out of my mouth, ere it is made an end and finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of it. As Alexander is kill his friend Clytus, being in his ales and his cups; so also Harry Monmouth, being in his right wits and his goot judgments, is turn away the fat knight with the great pelly-doublet: he was full of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; I have forgot his name.

Gow. Sir John Falstaff.

Flu. That is he. I can tell you,

porn at Monmouth.

Gow. Here comes his majesty.

there is goot men

Alarum. Enter KING HENRY, with a part of the English Forces; WARWICK,1 GLOSTER, EXETER, and others.

K. Hen. I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant.-Take a trumpet, herald.
Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill;
If they will fight with us, bid them come down,
Or void the field; they do offend our sight.
If they'll do neither, we will come to them;
And make them skirr 2 away, as swift as stones
Enforced from the old Assyrian slings:

Besides, we'll cut the throats of those we have ;3
And not a man of them, that we shall take,
Shall taste our mercy.-Go, and tell them so.

1 Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. He did not, however, obtain that title till 1417, two years after the era of this play.

2 i. e. scour away. 3"Besides, we'll cut the throats of those we have." Johnson accuses the Poet of having made the king cut the throats of his prisoners twice over. Malone replies that the incongruity, if it be one, is Holinshed's, for thus the matter is stated by him. While the battle was yet going on, about six hundred horsemen, who were the first that fled, hearing that the English tents were a good way distant from the army, without a sufficient guard, entered and pillaged the king's camp. "When the outcry of the lackies and boys which ran away for fear of the Frenchmen, thus spoiling the camp, came to the king's ears, he doubting lest his enemies should gather together again and begin a new fielde, and mistrusting further that the prisoners would either be an aide to his enemies or very enemies to their takers indeed, if they were suffered to live, contrary to his accustomed gentleness, commanded by sounde of trumpet that every man upon pain of death should incontinently slea his prisoner." This was the first transaction. Holinshed proceeds-"When this lamentable slaughter was ended, the Englishmen disposed themselves in order of battayle, ready to abide a new fielde, and also to invade and newly set on their enemies. Some write, that the king perceiving his enemies in one parte to assemble together as though they meant to give a new battle for preservation of the prisoners, sent to them a herault, commanding them either to depart out of his sight, or else to come forward at once and give battaile; promising herewith, that, if they did offer to fight agayne, not only those prisoners which his people already had taken, but also so many of them as in this new conflicte, which they thus attempted, should fall into his hands, should die the death without redemption." The fact is, that notwithstanding the first order concerning the prisoners, they were not all put to death, as appears from a subsequent passage, and the concurrent testimony of various historians, upon whose authority Hume says that Henry, on discovering that his danger was not so great as he at first apprehended from the attack on his camp, "stopped the slaughter, and was still able to save a great number." It was policy in Henry to intimidate the French by threatening to kill his prisoners, and occasioned them, in fact, to lay down their arms.