But all my mother came into mine eyes, K. Hen. [Alarum. But, hark! what new alarum is this same? [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 throat1. O, 'tis a gallant king! 2 'But all my mother came into my eyes, And gave me up to tears.' Thus the quarto. The folio reads 'And all,' &c. But has here the force of but that. This thought was apparently in Milton's mind in the following passage, Paradise Lost, book ix:— His best of --compassion quell'd And Dryden in ban, and gave All for Love, Act i: I have not wept this forty years; but now My mother comes afresh into my eyes, I cannot help her softness.' The 1 'Caused every soldier to cut his prisoner's throat. 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. 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.ne Flu. Why, I pray you, is not pig, great? The pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all 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 Alexander2 is kill his friend 2 As Alexander,' &c. Steevens thinks that Shakspeare here ridicules the parallels of Plutarch, he appears to have been well read in Sir Thomas North's Translation. 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 am forget his name3. Gow. Sir John Falstaff. Flu. That is he: I can tell you, there is goot men born at Monmouth. Gow. Here comes his majesty. Alarum. Enter KING HENRY, with a Part of the English Forces; WARWICK, 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 skirr5 away, as swift as stones Enforced from the old Assyrian slings: Besides, we'll cut the throats of those we have6: 3 Johnson observes that this is the last time Falstaff can make sport. The poet was loath to part with him, and has continued bis memory as long as he could. He did not, how 4 Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. ever, obtain that title till 1417, two years after the era of this play. ši. e. scour away. To run swiftly in various directions. It has the same meaning in Macbeth, Act v. Sc. iii. Skirr the country round.' 6 Besides, we'll cut the throats of those we have.' Johnson accuses the poet of having made the king cut the throats of bis 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 And not a man of them, that we shall take, Enter MONTJOY. Exe. Here comes t the herald of the French, my liege. Glo. His eyes es are humbler than they us'd to be. K. Hen. How now, what means this, herald? know'st thou not, That I have fin'd these bones of mine for ransome? Com'st thou again for ransome? Mont. No, great king: I come to thee for charitable licence, That we may wander o'er this bloody field, To book our dead, and then to bury them; To sort our nobles from our common men; For many of our princes (woe the while!) Lie drown'd and soak'd in mercenary blood (So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs In blood of princes); and their wounded steeds Fret fetlock deep in gore, and, with wild rage, Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters, Killing them twice. O, give us leave, great king, 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 battaile 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. |