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.
Ca, ha! he bounds from the earth,
When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk:
he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it;
He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.
And of the heat of the ginger.
He is pure air and fire; 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.
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.
Constable Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress
shrewdly shook your back.
RAMBURES My lord constable, the armour that I saw
in your tent to-night, are those stars or suns upon it?
Constable Stars, my lord.
DAUPHIN Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope.
Constable That may be…
DAUPHIN Will it never be day?
I will trot to-morrow a mile, and
my way shall be paved with English faces.
RAMBURES Who will go to hazard
with me for twenty prisoners?
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 He never did harm, that I heard of.
Constable Nor will do none to-morrow:
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
[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 Grandpre.
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
head-pieces.
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: 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 to-morrow 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] Act 3.6 | Chorus Act 4