Enter three soldiers, JOHN BATES, ALEXANDER COURT, and MICHAEL WILLIAMS COURT Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder? BATES I think it be: but we have no great cause to desire the approach of day. WILLIAMS We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there? KING HENRY V A friend. WILLIAMS Under what captain serve you? KING HENRY V Under Sir Thomas Erpingham. WILLIAMS A good old commander and a most kind gentleman:
Ipray you, what thinks he of our estate? KING HENRY V Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed off the next tide. BATES He hath not told his thought to the king? KING HENRY V No; nor it is not meet he should. For, though Ispeak it to you, I think the king is but a man, as Iam: the violet smells to him as it doth to me:
the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions: his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man;and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army. BATES He may show what outward courage he will;but Ibelieve, as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here. KING HENRY V By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king:
I think he would not wish himself any where but where he is. BATES Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved. KING HENRY V I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds: methinks I could not die any where so contented as in the king's company; his cause being just and his quarrel honourable. WILLIAMS That's more than we know. BATES Ay, or more than we should seek after;for we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects:
if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us. WILLIAMS But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection. KING HENRY V So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation: but this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder;some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance;so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where they feared the death, they have borne life away;and where they would be safe, they perish: then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited.
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:
and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare. WILLIAMS 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the king is not to answer it. BATES But I do not desire he should answer for me; and yet I determine to fight lustily for him. KING HENRY V I myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed. WILLIAMS Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully:
but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we ne'er the wiser. KING HENRY V If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after. WILLIAMS You pay him then. That's a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch! you may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather. You'll never trust his word after! come, 'tis a foolish saying. KING HENRY V Your reproof is something too round:
