Orl. Will it never be morning?

Dau. My Lord of Orleans, and my Lord High-Constable, you talk of horse and armour,

Orl. You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.

1 le

Dau. What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ça, ha! he bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs;1 cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes. Orl. He's of the colour of the nutmeg. Dau. And of the heat of the ginger. Perseus he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him,2 but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is, indeed, a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts.3

It is a beast for

Con. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.

Dau. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage. Orl. No more, cousin.

1 Alluding to the bounding of tennis-balls, which were stuffed with hair. 2 Alluding to the ancient doctrine that men and animals, as well as other things, were all made up of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, and that the higher natures were rendered so by the preponderance of the two latter in their composition. Thus, in Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2, the heroine says, "I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life." The Poet has divers allusions to the doctrine.

3 It appears from this that jade and horse were sometimes used simply as equivalent terms. On the other hand, beast is here meant to convey a note of contempt, like the Latin jumentum, as of an animal fit only for the cart or packsaddle.

Dau. Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey: it is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all : 'tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign's sovereign to ride on; and for the world, familiar to us and unknown, to lay apart their particular functions, and wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise, and began thus: Wonder of Nature,—

Orl. I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress. Dau. Then did they imitate that which I composed to my courser; for my horse is my mistress.

Orl. Your mistress bears well.

Dau. Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular mistress.

Con. Ma foi, methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back.

Dau. So, perhaps, did yours.

Con. Mine was not bridled.

Dau. I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears her own hair.4

Con. I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to my mistress.

Dau. Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier5: thou makest use of any thing.

4 Referring to the custom which some ladies had, as, it is said, some still have, of wearing hair not their own. The Dauphin is jibing and flouting the Constable upon the presumed qualities of the lady whom he calls his mistress. See The Merchant, page 142, note 19.

5 It has been remarked that Shakespeare was habitually conversant with his Bible: we have here a strong presumptive proof that he read it, at least occasionally, in French. This passage will be found almost literally in the Geneva Bible, 1588. 2 Peter, ii. 22.

Con. Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress; or any

such proverb, so little kin to the

purpose.

Ram. My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent to-night, are those stars or suns upon it?

Con. Stars, my lord.

Dau. Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope.

Con. And yet my sky shall not want.

Dau. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and 'twere more honour some were away.

Con. Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted.

Dau. Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it never be day? — I will trot to-morrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English faces.

Con. I will not say so, for fear I should be faced out of my way but I would it were morning; for I would fain be about the ears of the English.

Ram. Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners? Con. You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them.

Dau. "Tis midnight; I'll go arm myself.

Orl. The Dauphin longs for morning.
Ram. He longs to eat the English.
Con. I think he will eat all he kills.

[Exit.

Orl. By the white hand of my lady, he's a gallant prince.
Con. Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath.
Orl. He is, simply, the most active gentleman of France.
Con. Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.7
Orl. He never did harm, that I heard of.

6 To tread out an oath is to dance it out, probably.

7 Here, as often, still is continually or always.

Con. Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name still.

Orl. I know him to be valiant.

Con. I was told that by one that knows him better than you.

Orl. What's he?

Con. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he cared not who knew it.

Orl. He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.

Con. By my faith, sir, but it is; never any body saw it but his lacquey: 'tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.8

Orl. Ill-will never said well.

Con. I will cap that proverb with-There is flattery in friendship.

Orl. And I will take up that with― Give the Devil his due. Con. Well placed: there stands your friend for the Devil: have at the very eye of that proverb, with—A pox of the Devil.

Orl. You are the better at proverbs, by how much—A fool's bolt9 is soon shot.

Con. You have shot over.

Orl. 'Tis not the first time you were overshot.10

Enter a Messenger.

8 This pun depends upon the equivocal use of bate. When a hawk is unhooded, her first action is to bate, that is, beat her wings, or flutter. The Constable would insinuate that the Dauphin's courage, when he prepares for encounter, will bate, that is, soon diminish or evaporate. Hooded is blindfolded.

9 A bolt was a short, thick, blunt arrow, for shooting near objects, and so requiring little or no skill. See Much Ado, page 25, note 6.

10 Overshot, here, probably means disgraced or put to shame; though one of its meanings is intoxicated.

Mess. My Lord High-Constable, the English lie within.

fifteen hundred paces of your tents.

Con. Who hath measured the ground?

Mess. The Lord Grandpré.

Con. A valiant and most expert gentleman.—Would it were day! Alas, poor Harry of England! he longs not for the dawning, as we do.

Orl. What a wretched and peevish 11 fellow is this King of England, to mope with his fat-brain'd followers so far out of his knowledge!

Con. If the English had any apprehension,12 they would run away.

Orl. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces.

Ram. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.

Orl. Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have their heads crush'd like rotten apples! You may as well say, that's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

Con. Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming-on, leaving their wits with their wives: and then give them great meals of beef, and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves, and fight like devils.

Orl. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.

11 Peevish was often used in the sense of mad or foolish. So in The Comedy of Errors, iv. 1: “How now! a madman? why, thou peevish sheep, what ship of Epidamnum stays for me?"- To mope is to move or act languidly or drowsily, or as in a half-conscious state. - The Poet uses fatbrain'd and fat-witted for dull or stupid.

12 Apprehension for mental quickness, intelligence, or aptness to perceive; as to apprehend is, properly, to grasp, seize, or lay hold of.