SCENE I.—France. An English Court of Guard.

Gow. Nay, that's right; but why wear you your leek to-day? Saint Davy's day is past 25.

FLU. There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things: I will tell you, as my friend, captain Gower: The rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol,-which you and yourself, and all the 'orld, know to be no petter than a fellow, look you now, of no merits,-he is come to me, and prings me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek: it was in a place where I could not breed no contentions with him; but I will be so pold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.

Enter PISTOL.

Gow. Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.

FLU. Tis no matter for his swellings, nor his turkey-cocks.-Got pless you, ancient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, Got pless you!

PIST. Ha! art thou Bedlam? dost thou thirst, base Trojan,

To have me fold up Parca's fatal web?

Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.

FLU. I peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek; because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections, and your appetites, and your digestions, does not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.

PIST. Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.

FLU. There is one goat for you. knave, as eat it?

PIST. Base Trojan, thou shalt die.

[Strikes him.] Will you be so goot, scald

FLU. You say very true, scald knave, when Got's will is: I will desire you to live in the mean time, and eat your victuals; come, there is sauce for it. [Striking him again.] You called me yesterday, mountain-squire, but I will make you to-day a squire of low degree. I pray you, fall to; if you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek.

Gow. Enough, captain; you have astonished him.

FLU. I say, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will peat his pate four days:-Bite, I pray you; it is goot for your green wound, and your ploody coxcomb.

PIST. Must I bite?

FLU. Yes, certainly; and out of doubt, and out of questions too, and ambiguities. PIST. By this leek, I will most horribly revenge; I eat—and eat—I swear. FLU. Eat, I pray you: Will you have some more sauce to your leek? there is not enough leek to swear by.

PIST. Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see, I eat.

FLU. Much goot do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, 'pray you, throw none away; the skin is goot for your proken coxcomb. When you take occasions

to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at 'em; that is all. PIST. Good.

FLU. Ay, leeks is goot:-Hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate.

PIST. Me a groat!

FLU. Yes, verily, and in truth, you shall take it; or I have another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat.

PIST. I take thy groat, in earnest of revenge.

FLU. If I owe you anything, I will pay you in cudgels; you shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God be wi' you, and keep you, and heal your pate.

[Exit.

• Astonished him—stunned him with the blow, says Johnson; Mason explains it confounded him. Johnson was clearly right: astonished is still a pugilistic term, in the precise sense in which Gower uses it.

⚫ The modern editions, I eat, and eke I swear; the folio, “I eat and eat I swear." In printing “ I eat—and eat—I swear," we do not deviate from the words of the original. Fluellen stands over Pistol with his cudgel, who says, "I eat;"-Fluellen makes a motion as if again to strike him, when he repeats, "and eat." He then mutters, "I swear;" to which Fluellen adds, “Eat, I pray you there is not enough leek to swear by.”

PIST. All hell shall stir for this.
Gow. Go, go; you are a counterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an
ancient tradition,-begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a
memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not avouch in your
deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and galling at this
gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English
in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel: you
find it otherwise; and, henceforth, let a Welsh correction teach you a good
English condition. Fare ye well.

PIST. Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now?
News have I that my Nella is dead i' the spital

Of malady of France;

And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.
Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs
Honour is cudgell'd. Well, bawd I'll turn,
And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.
To England will I steal, and there I'll steal :
And patches will I get unto these cudgell'd scars,
And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.

[Exit.

[Exit.

SCENE II.-Troyes, in Champagne. An Apartment in the French King's

Palace.

Enter at one door, KING HENRY, BEDFORD, GLOSTER, EXETER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and other Lords; at another, the French KING, QUEEN ISABEL, the PRINCESS KATHARINE, Lords, Ladies, &c., the DUKE OF BURGUNDY, and his Train.

K. HEN. Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met!

Unto our brother France, and to our sister,

Health and fair time of day:-joy and good wishes

To our most fair and princely cousin Katharine;

And (as a branch and member of this royalty,
By whom this great assembly is contriv`d)

We do salute you, duke of Burgundy ;—

And, princes French, and peers, health to you all!
FR. KING. Right joyous are we to behold your face,
Most worthy brother England; fairly met:-
So are you, princes English, every one.

• Nell. The folio gives Doll-clearly an error.

The editors leave cudgell'd out, without any apology for deviating from the text. True, the word is not in the quarto: but the whole scene has been remodelled.

e

Fifty-six lines, following this, are not found at all in the quarto. The reader will see that the speech of Burgundy is one of the finest in the play; and is philosophically meant to show the price at which glory is purchased.

Q. ISA. So happy be the issue, brother England,
Of this good day, and of this gracious meeting,
As we are now glad to behold your eyes;

Your eyes,
which hitherto have borne in them
Against the French, that met them in their bent,
The fatal balls of murthering basilisks:
The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,
Have lost their quality; and that this day
Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.
K. HEN. To cry amen to that, thus we appear.
Q. ISA. You English princes all, I do salute you.
BUR. My duty to you both, on equal love,

Great kings of France and England! That I have labour'd
With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours,

To bring your most imperial majesties

Unto this bar and royal interview,

Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.

Since then my office hath so far prevail'd

That face to face, and royal eye to eye,

You have congreeted; let it not disgrace me,

If I demand, before this royal view,
What rub, or what impediment, there is,
Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
Should not, in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas! she hath from France too long been chas'd;
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned dies: her hedges even-pleach'd,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs: her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,
Doth root upon; while that the coulter rusts,
That should deracinate such savagery:
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems

But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility:

And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,

As the folio has all-a reading entirely destructive of the oratorical beauty of the passage.

Defective in their natures, grow to wildness;
Even so our houses, and ourselves, and children,
Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country;
But
grow, like savages,- -as soldiers will,
That nothing do but meditate on blood,-
To swearing, and stern looks, diffus'd attire,
And everything that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favoura
You are assembled; and my speech entreats
That I may know the let, why gentle peace
Should not expel these inconveniences,
And bless us with her former qualities.

K. HEN. If, duke of Burgundy, you would the peace,
Whose want gives growth to the imperfections

Which have cited, you
you

must buy that peace

With full accord to all our just demands;

Whose tenors and particular effects

You have, enschedul'd briefly, in your hands.

BUR. The king hath heard them; to the which, as yet,
There is no answer made.

K. HEN.

Well, then, the peace,
Which you before so urg'd, lies in his answer.
FR. KING. I have but with a cursorary eye

O'er-glanc'd the articles: pleaseth your grace
To appoint some of your council presently
To sit with us once more, with better heed
To re-survey them, we will, suddenly,
Pass our accept and peremptory answerb.
K. HEN. Brother, we shall.-Go, uncle Exeter,-
And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloster,-
Warwick, and Huntington,-go with the king:
And take with you free power to ratify,
Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best
Shall see advantageable for our dignity,
Anything in, or out of, our demands;

And we'll consign thereto.-Will you, fair sister,
Go with the princes, or stay here with us?
Q. ISA. Our gracious brother, I will go with them;

• Favour-appearance.

This passage has been considered obscure; and some would read "pass or except." The difficulty has arisen from a misconception of the meaning of accept and answer. Our accept is our consent to certain of the articles: our peremptory answer is our undelaying statement of objections to other articles. In the quarto we have nothing of accept; but

"We shall return our peremptory answer."