Against the Scot, who will make road upon us
With all advantages.

Cant. They of those marches,' gracious sovereign, Shall be a wall sufficient to defend

Our inland from the pilfering borderers.

K. Hen. We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,

But fear the main intendment of the Scot,
Who hath been still a giddy neighbor to us.
For you shall read, that my great grandfather
Never went with his forces into France,
But that the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom
Came pouring, like the tide into a breach,
With ample and brimfulness of his force;
Galling the gleaned land with hot essays;
Girding, with grievous siege, castles and towns;
That England, being empty of defence,

Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighborhood.3 Cant. She hath been then more feared than harmed, my liege.

For hear her but exampled by herself,-
When all her chivalry hath been in France,
And she a mourning widow of her nobles,
She hath herself not only well defended,
But taken, and impounded as a stray,

The king of Scots; whom she did send to France,
To fill king Edward's fame with prisoner kings;
And make her chronicle as rich with praise,

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea

With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.

West. But there's a saying, very old and true,

If that you will France win,

Then with Scotland first begin.

For once the eagle England being in prey,
To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot

1 The marches are the borders.

2 The main intendment is the principal purpose, that he will bend his whole force against us; the Bellum in aliquem intendere of Livy.

3 The quarto reads, "at the bruit thereof."

Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs;
Playing the mouse, in absence of the cat,

To spoil and havock more than she can eat.

Exe. It follows, then, the cat must stay at home. Yet that is but a crushed necessity;1

Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries,
And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.
While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,
The advised head defends itself at home;
For government, though high, and low, and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one concent;
Congruing in a full and natural close,

Like music.

Cant.

2

True; therefore doth Heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavor in continual motion;
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience; for so work the honey bees;
Creatures, that, by a rule in nature, teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage, they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor;

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil 5 citizens kneading up the honey;

1 "Yet that is but a crushed necessity." This is the reading of the folio. The editors of late editions have adopted the reading of the quarto copy, "cursed necessity."

2 Concent is connected harmony in general, and not confined to any specific consonance. Concentio and concentus are both used by Cicero for the union of voices or instruments, in what we should now call a chorus or concert.

3 "The act of order" is the statute or law of order; as appears from the reading of the quarto. "Creatures that by awe ordain an act of order to a peopled kingdom."

4 i. e. of different degrees: if it be not an error of the press for sort, i. e. rank.

5 The civil citizens kneading up the honey." Civil is grave. See

The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors1 pale

The lazy, yawning drone. I this infer,-
That many things, having full reference
To one concent, may work contrariously;
As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Fly to one mark;

As many several ways meet in one town;
As many fresh streams run in one self-sea;
As many lines close in the dial's centre ;
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege.
Divide your happy England into four;
Whereof take you one quarter into France,
And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.
If we, with thrice that power left at home,
Cannot defend our own door from the dog,
Let us be worried; and our nation lose
The name of hardiness, and policy.

K. Hen. Call in the messengers sent from the dauphin.

[Exit an Attendant. The King ascends
his throne.

Now are we well resolved; and by God's help,
And yours, the noble sinews of our power,-
France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe,
Or break it all to pieces. Or there we'll sit,
Ruling, in large and ample empery,3

O'er France, and all her almost kingly dukedoms;
Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,

Twelfth Night, Act iii. Sc. 4. Johnson observes, to knead the honey is not physically true. The bees do, in fact, knead the wax more than the honey.

1 "Executors," for executioners. Thus also Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 38, ed. 1632:

"Tremble at an executor, and yet not feare hell-fire."

2 "Without defeat." The quartos read, "Without defect."

366 Empery." This word, which signifies dominion, is now obsolete.

Tombless, with no remembrance over them.
Either our history shall, with full mouth,
Speak freely of our acts; or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipped with a waxen epitaph.1

Enter Ambassadors of France.

Now are we well prepared to know the pleasure
Of our fair cousin dauphin; for, we hear,
Your greeting is from him, not from the king.
Amb. May it please your majesty to give us leave
Freely to render what we have in charge;

Or shall we sparingly show you far off

The dauphin's meaning, and our embassy?

K. Hen. We are no tyrant, but a Christian king; Unto whose grace our passion is as subject, As are our wretches fettered in our prisons: Therefore, with frank and with uncurbed plainness, Tell us the dauphin's mind.

Amb.

Thus, then, in few:Your highness, lately sending into France,

Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right

Of your great predecessor, king Edward the Third.
In answer of which claim, the prince our master
Says, that you savor too much of your youth;
And bids you be advised, there's nought in France,
That can be with a nimble galliard won;
You cannot revel into dukedoms there.
He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,
This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this,
Desires you, let the dukedoms that you claim,
Hear no more of you. This the dauphin speaks.

1 The quartos read, "- - with a paper epitaph." Either a paper or a waxen epitaph is an epitaph easily destroyed; one that can confer no lasting honor on the dead. Steevens thinks that the allusion is to waren tablets, as any thing written upon them was easily effaced. Mr. Gifford says, that a waren epitaph was an epitaph affixed to the hearse or grave with wax. But the expression may be merely metaphorical, and not allusive to either.

2 A galliard was an ancient sprightly dance, as its name implies.

VOL. IV.

17

K. Hen. What treasure, uncle?

Exe.

Tennis-balls, my liege.1

K. Hen. We are glad the dauphin is so pleasant

with us;

His present, and your pains, we thank you for.

When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set,
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.2
Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler,
That all the courts of France will be disturbed

3

With chaces. And we understand him well,
How he comes o'er us with our wilder days,
Not measuring what use we made of them.
We never valued this poor seat of England;
And therefore, living hence, did give ourself
To barbarous license; as 'tis ever common,
That men are merriest when they are from home.
But tell the dauphin,-I will keep my state;
Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness,
When I do rouse me in my throne of France;
For that I have laid by my majesty,5
And plodded like a man for working-days;
But I will rise there with so full a glory,
That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,
Yea, strike the dauphin blind to look on us.
And tell the pleasant prince, this mock of his
Hath turned his balls to gun-stones; and his soul
Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows

1 in the old play of King Henry V. this present consists of a gilded tun of tennis-balls, and a carpet.

2 The hazard is a place in the tennis-court, into which the ball is sometimes struck.

3 A chace at tennis is that spot where a ball falls, beyond which the adversary must strike his ball to gain a point or chace. At long tennis it is the spot where the ball leaves off rolling. We see, therefore, why the king has called himself a wrangler.

4 That is, away from this seat or throne.

5 To qualify myself for this undertaking, I have descended from my station, and studied the arts of life in a lower character.

6 "Hath turned his balls to gun-stones." When ordnance were first used, they discharged balls of stone.