Pist. Must I bite?

Flu. Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question too, and ambiguities.

Pist. By this leek, I will most horribly revenge: I eat and eat, I swear

Flu. Eat, I pray you will you have some more sauce to your leek? there is not enough leek to swear by.

Pist. Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see I eat.

Flu. Much good do you, scauld knave, heartily. Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at 'em; that is all.

Pist. Good.

Flu. Ay, leeks is good: hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate.

Pist. Me a groat!

Flu. Yes, verily and in truth, you shall take it; or I have another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat.

Pist. I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.

Flu. If I owe you any thing, I will pay you in cudgels: you shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God b' wi' keep you, and heal your pate.

50

60

you, and

70

[Exit.

Pist. All hell shall stir for this. Gow. Go, go; you are a counterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he 80 78. gleeking, scoffing.

could not therefore handle an English cudgel:
you find it otherwise; and henceforth let a Welsh
correction teach you a good English condition.
Fare ye well.
[Exit.

Pist. Doth Fortune play the huswife with me
now?

News have I, that my Nell is dead i' the spital
Of malady of France;

And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.
Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs
Honour is cudgelled. Well, bawd I'll turn,
And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.
To England will I steal, and there I'll steal:
And patches will I get unto these cudgell'd scars,
And swear I got them in the Gallia wars. [Exit.

SCENE II. France. A royal palace.

Enter, at one door, KING HENRY, EXETER, BED-
FORD, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, WARWICK,
WESTMORELAND, and other Lords; at another,
the FRENCH KING, QUEEN ISABEL, the PRIN-
CESS KATHARINE, ALICE and other Ladies; the
DUKE OF BURGUNDY, and his train.

K. Hen. Peace to this meeting, wherefore we
are met!

83. condition, behaviour. 85. huswife, jilt.

86. Nell. Ff. have Doll': but only Pistol's wife, the former Mrs. Quickly, can be meant, though Shakespeare, who 'never blotted a line,' may have left uncorrected an original slip of

the pen.

Sc. 2. The scene of Henry's betrothal, according to Holinshed, was 'S. Peter's Church'

at Troyes.

Clarence.

90

Clarence's name has not hitherto been included in the stage direction or among the dramatis personæ, since he does not speak; but v. 84 implies that he is present. Huntingdon, who is addressed in the next line, is included among the other Lords.'

1. wherefore, for which (viz. peace).

Unto our brother France, and to our sister,
Health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes
To our most fair and princely cousin Katharine ;
And, as a branch and member of this royalty,
By whom this great assembly is contrived,
We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy;

And, princes French, and peers, health to you all! Fr. King. Right joyous are we to behold your face,

Most worthy brother England; fairly met:
So are you, princes English, every one.

Q. Isa. So happy be the issue, brother England,
Of this good day and of this gracious meeting,
As we are now glad to behold your eyes;
Your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them
Against the French, that met them in their bent,
The fatal balls of murdering basilisks:
The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,
Have lost their quality, and that this day
Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.
K. Hen. To cry amen to that, thus we appear.
Q. Isa. You English princes all, I do salute
you.

Bur. My duty to you both, on equal love,
Great Kings of France and England! That I
have labour'd,

With all my wits, my pains and strong endeavours,
To bring your most imperial majesties

Unto this bar and royal interview,

Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.

II. So are

ΙΟ

20

you, princes play upon the two senses: (1) a

English; Ff1-3 SO are you princess (English).'

16. bent, the direction (or aim) of an eye-glance (or a cannon-shot).

17. basilisks; used with a

fabulous animal whose glances slew; (2) a large cannon.

19 Have; the plural by attraction after 'looks.'

27. bar, place of confer

ence.

Since then my office hath so far prevail'd
That, face to face and royal eye to eye,
You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me,
If I demand, before this royal view,
What rub or what impediment there is,
Why that the naked, poor and mangled Peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties and joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in it own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach'd,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory
Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts
That should deracinate such savagery;
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.

And as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,
Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,

30

40

50

found occasionally elsewhere in F1.

42. even-pleach'd, trimmed to form an even surface.

49. burnet, a herb used in stanching wounds.

52. kecksies, dry hemlockstalks.

K

The sciences that should become our country;
But grow like savages,-as soldiers will
That nothing do but meditate on blood,—
To swearing and stern looks, defused attire
And every thing that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favour
You are assembled: and my speech entreats
That I may know the let, why gentle Peace
Should not expel these inconveniences
And bless us with her former qualities.

K. Hen. If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the
peace,

Whose want gives growth to the imperfections
Which you have cited, you must buy that peace
With full accord to all our just demands;
Whose tenours and particular effects

You have enscheduled briefly in your hands.
Bur. The king hath heard them; to the which

as yet

There is no answer made.

K. Hen.
Well then the peace,
Which you before so urged, lies in his answer.
Fr. King. I have but with a cursorary eye
O'erglanced the articles: pleaseth your grace
To appoint some of your council presently
To sit with us once more, with better heed
To re-survey them, we will suddenly
Pass our accept and peremptory answer.
K. Hen. Brother, we shall.

61. defused, disordered.
63. reduce, bring back.
81. suddenly, promptly.
82. Pass our accept and
peremptory answer, (probably)
give the answer upon which we
definitely and finally agree.
'Accept' has commonly been
understood acceptance'; but

60

70

80

not

Go, uncle Exeter, the French king does guarantee that he will accept the articles, merely that he will give a definite decision. Hence Mr. W. A. Wright's proposal to understand' accept' as a participle, ('the answer which we have accepted as decisive') is preferable.

H