Act 3

Scene VII

The French camp, near Agincourt.

	Enter the Constable of France, the Lord Rambures, Orleans, Dauphin* with others.*
Constable	Tut! I have the best armour of the world. Would it were day!
Orleans	You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due.
Constable	It is the best horse of Europe.
Orleans	Will it never be morning?
Dauphin	My Lord of Orleans, and my lord high constable, you talk of horse and armour?
Orleans	You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.
Dauphin	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; le 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.
Orleans	He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.
Dauphin	And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts.
Constable	Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.
Dauphin	It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch and his countenance enforces homage.
Orleans	No more, cousin.
Dauphin	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,”⁠—
Orleans	I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s mistress.
Dauphin	Then did they imitate that which I composed to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.
Orleans	Your mistress bears well.
Dauphin	Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular mistress.
Constable	Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back.
Dauphin	So perhaps did yours.
Constable	Mine was not bridled.
Dauphin	O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode, like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off, and in your strait strossers.
Constable	You have good judgment in horsemanship.
Dauphin	Be warned by me, then: they that ride so and ride not warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my mistress.
Constable	I had as lief have my mistress a jade.
Dauphin	I tell thee, constable, my mistress wears his own hair.
Constable	I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to my mistress.
Dauphin	“Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier:” thou makest use of anything.
Constable	Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose.
Rambures	My lord constable, the armour that I saw in your tent tonight, are those stars or suns upon it?
Constable	Stars, my lord.
Dauphin	Some of them will fall tomorrow, I hope.
Constable	And yet my sky shall not want.
Dauphin	That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honour some were away.
Constable	Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted.
Dauphin	Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it never be day? I will trot tomorrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English faces.
Constable	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.
Rambures	Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?
Constable	You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them.
Dauphin	’Tis midnight; I’ll go arm myself. Exit.
Orleans	The Dauphin longs for morning.
Rambures	He longs to eat the English.
Constable	I think he will eat all he kills.
Orleans	By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant prince.
Constable	Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath.
Orleans	He is simply the most active gentleman of France.
Constable	Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.
Orleans	He never did harm, that I heard of.
Constable	Nor will do none tomorrow: he will keep that good name still.
Orleans	I know him to be valiant.
Constable	I was told that by one that knows him better than you.
Orleans	What’s he?
Constable	Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he cared not who knew it.
Orleans	He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.
Constable	By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but his lackey: ’tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.
Orleans	Ill will never said well.
Constable	I will cap that proverb with “There is flattery in friendship.”
Orleans	And I will take up that with “Give the devil his due.”
Constable	Well placed: there stands your friend for the devil: have at the very eye of that proverb with “A pox of the devil.”
Orleans	You are the better at proverbs, by how much “A fool’s bolt is soon shot.”
Constable	You have shot over.
Orleans	’Tis not the first time you were overshot.
	Enter a Messenger.
Messenger	My lord high constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents.
Constable	Who hath measured the ground?
Messenger	The Lord Grandpré.
Constable	A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day! Alas, poor Harry of England! he longs not for the dawning as we do.
Orleans	What a wretched and peevish fellow is this king of England, to mope with his fat-brained followers so far out of his knowledge!
Constable	If the English had any apprehension, they would run away.
Orleans	That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy headpieces.
Rambures	That island of England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.
Orleans	Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads crushed like rotten apples! You may as well say, that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
Constable	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.
Orleans	Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.
Constable	Then shall we find tomorrow they have only stomachs to eat and none to fight. Now is it time to arm: come, shall we about it?
Orleans	It is now two o’clock: but, let me see, by ten We shall have each a hundred Englishmen. Exeunt.