Suits not in native colours with the truth..
Under this conjuration speak, my lord;

For we will hear, note and believe in heart

That what you speak is in your conscience wash'd
As pure as sin with baptism.

When in answer Canterbury has made his exposition of the Salic law, the King still forces his council to look all round the question to the furthest consequences of action. There comes at last a point where deliberation may crystallise into decisive resolution. Now are we well resolved; and, by God's help, And yours, the noble sinews of our power, France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe, Or break it all to pieces.

Not until now, when the rights of the question have been debated in calmness to a settlement, does Henry admit the embassy from the Dauphin. He listens to the studied insult with dignity; in answer, he first meets the jester on his own ground and outjests him.

When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set

Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.

Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler

That all the courts of France will be disturb'd

With chaces.

The hint at the wildness of his youth Henry turns against the Dauphin.

But, his indignation excited at such playing with edge tools of war and national devastation, Henry goes on to the thought that the jest has turned tennis-balls to gun-stones :

For many a thousand widows

Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down. . .
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,

When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.

It is important, for the ideal character of the whole picture, that this incident is held back to its proper place. Calm deliberation has yielded to decisive resolution; only then may the adversary's insolence be used to carry forward resolution to the white heat of passion.

For a moment there is an obstruction in the current of events, and heroism is seen against a background of treason. What gives dramatic impressiveness to the second act is this, that the evil is just as broad and ideal as is the good against which it is arrayed : the passage that follows reads as a counterpart to the bishops' expatiation upon Henry's perfections.

Whatsoever cunning fiend it was

That wrought upon thee so preposterously
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence.

Show men dutiful?

Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?

Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet,
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem:
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued

With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.

From the third act the character of Henry is seen concentrated in action: he who was so "modest in exception "" can now be "terrible in constant resolution." Here, as ever, the force of the character seems to lie in its balance: the most opposite qualities blend in unity of purpose.

In

peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage . .
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height.

As the spirit of peace can be made a foil for the spirit of war, so in Henry mercy lends wings to fury; in the general conduct of war Henry acts on the principle that "when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom the gentler gamester is the soonest winner," and for that very reason on the eve of storm and assault he can hold over the hesitating foe the inevitable horrors of the flesh'd soldier, in liberty of bloody hand ranging with conscience wide as hell. The manysided nature of the King has drawn to him all types and orders of men; those descended from fathers of war-proof he bids dishonour not their mothers, the good yeomen "whose limbs were made in England" he calls upon to show the mettle of their pasture; the varied ranks around their leader stand "like greyhounds in the slips straining upon the start." Where in preceding reigns history has been war of factions, we have in the war of this play English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, all blending into a harmony of national prowess and enthusiasm, Welsh Fluellen leading the hero worship with his fantastic glorification of Alexander of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth.1

But the fulness of Henry's character can be brought out only by trouble. From the centre of the play we hear of pestilence

1 Henry the Fifth IV. vii.

and famine the famous night piece that ushers in the fourth act presents the "poor condemned English," on the night before the battle, sitting patiently like sacrifices by their camp fires, while the overwhelming hosts of the enemy are staking to the throw of the dice their captives of the morrow.

O now, who will behold

The royal captain of this ruin'd band

Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,

Let him cry, Praise and glory on his head!'

For forth he goes and visits all his host,

Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends and countrymen.
Upon his royal face there is no note

How dread an army hath enrounded him;
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour
Unto the weary and all-watched night,
But freshly looks and overbears attaint
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty:
That every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.

Through the whole of the terrible crisis the force of the army is the spirit of its King, responsive to every note heard around him, adequate to every call. He greets with dignity a group of his nobles, pointing to the first streaks of dawn:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil . . .
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers.

He turns to accost a venerable figure.

Henry. Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham:
A good soft pillow for that good white head
Were better than a churlish turf of France.
Not so, my liege: this lodging likes me better,
Since I may say, "Now lie I like a King."

Erp.

With familiarity that charms the old man Henry borrows his cloak, and in muffled disguise continues his passage through the host.

He has a bout of camp wit with the unsuspecting Pistol, and hears his own praises in the old Eastcheap slang. He marks some pedantic fussiness of Fluellen as he passes along, and sees beneath it good qualities to be noted for the future. Then he gets into a long chat with a company of English soldiers, and delights to keep in play the irony of the discussion about the KING: how

Though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me.

If the cause be not good, the King hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day. . .

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.

The thrill that goes through the circle by the camp fire at these last words changes to laughter and rough sarcasm, when Henry slips for a moment into a royal tone that seems out of keeping with his disguise; in another moment the King, half angry and half amused, finds himself shoved out of the circle, with a gage in his hand which he has sworn to fight out after the battle. But, left alone, he realises with acute anguish the weight of responsibility all are putting upon "the King"; and how this King is but a single human heart, hidden under the thin veil of ceremony. A call to battle is heard, and self-consciousness for an instant becomes an agony of penitence—not for his own sins, but for his father's,