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K. Hen. I pray thee, bear my former answer back; Bid them achieve me, and then sell my bones. Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus? The man, that once did sell the lion's skin

While the beast liv'd, was kill'd with hunting him.
A many of our bodies shall, no doubt,

Find native graves; upon the which, I trust,
Shall witness live in brass 12 of this day's work :
And those that leave their valiant bones in France,
Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,
They shall be fam'd; for there the sun shall greet them,
And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;
Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,
The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.
Mark then abounding valour in our English 13;

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12 i. e. in brazen plates anciently let into tombstones.
Mark then abounding valour in our English;
That being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,
Break out into a second course of mischief,
Killing in relapse of mortality.'

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Theobald, with over busy zeal for emendation, changed abounding into a bounding, and found the allusion exceedingly beautiful, comparing the revival of the English valour to the rebounding of a cannon ball. There is, as usual, an idle controversy between Malone and Steevens, the one preferring the old reading; and the other, from a spirit of opposition to his rival, which ever guided him, supporting Theobald's alteration. Malone grounded his opinion upon the reading of the quarto, abundant valour,' a phrase used again by Shakspeare in King Richard III. But neither of them saw that the very construction shows Theobald's alteration to be wrong. It is plain that none of the commentators understood the passage; for Johnson acknowledges that he does not know what to make of killing in relapse of mortality, of the meaning of which Steevens also displays his ignorance in attempting to explain it. The sense of the passage is clearly this: Mark then how valour abounds in our English; that (who) being dead, like an almost spent bullet glancing upon some object, break out into a second course of mischief, killing even in their mortal relapse to mother earth.' This putrid valour, as Johnson pleasantly calls it, is common to the descriptions of other poets. Steevens refers to Lucan, lib. vii. v. 821, and to Corneille, who has imitated Lucan in the first speech of his Pompée, where we find—

'Et dont les troncs pourris exhalent dans les vents,
De quoi faire la guerre au reste des vivants.'

That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,
Break out into a second course of mischief,
Killing in relapse of mortality.

Let me speak proudly ;-Tell the Constable,
We are but warriors for the working-day :
Our gayness, and our gilt 14, are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There's not a piece of feather in our host
(Good argument, I hope, we shall not fly),
And time hath worn us into slovenry:
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim:
And my poor soldiers tell me—yet ere night
They'll be in fresher robes; or they will pluck
The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads,
And turn them out of service. If they do this
(As, if God please, they shall), my ransome then
Will soon be levied, Herald, save thou thy labour;
Come thou no more for ransome, gentle herald;
They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints;
Which if they have as I will leave 'em to them,
Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.

Mont. Ishall, King Harry. And so fare thee well: Thou never shalt hear herald any more.

[Exit. K. Hen. I fear, thou'lt once more come again for

ransome.

Enter the Duke of York 15.

York. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg The leading of the vaward 16.

14 i. e. golden show, superficial gilding. 15 The duke of York.' This Edward duke of York has already appeared in King Richard II. under the title of duke of Aumerle. He was the son of Edmond Langley, the duke of York of the same play, who was the fifth son of King Edward III. Richard, earl of Cambridge, who appears in the second act of this play, was younger brother to this Edward duke of York. 16 The vaward is the vanguard.

K. Hen. Take it, brave York.-Now, soldiers,

march away :—

And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV. The Field of Battle.

Alarums: Excursions. Enter French Soldier, PisTOL, and Boy.

Pist. Yield, cur.

Fr. Sol. Je pense, que vous estes le gentilhomme de bonne qualité.

Pist. Quality? Callino, castore me1! art thou a gentleman? What is thy name? discuss.

Fr. Sol. O seigneur Dieu!

Pist. O, signieur Dew should be a gentleman:Perpend my words, O signieur Dew, and mark ;O signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox2, Except, O signieur, thou do give to me Egregious ransome.

Fr. Sol. O, prennez miséricorde! ayez pitié de moy! Pist. Moy shall not serve, I will have forty moys;

1. Callino, castore me!' The jargon of the old copies where these words are printed Qualitie calmie custure me-was changed by former editors into Quality, call you me? construe me.' Malone found Calen o custure me, mentioned as the burthen of a song in A Handfull of Plesant Delites,' 1584. And Mr. Boswell discovered that it was an old Irish song, which is printed in Playford's Musical Companion, 1667 or 1673 :—

Callino, Callino, Callino, castore me,

Eva ee, eva ee, loo, loo, loo lee.'

The words are said to mean 'Little girl of my heart for ever and ever.' C They have, it is true (says Mr. Boswell), no great connection with the poor Frenchman's supplications, nor were they meant to have any, Pistol, instead of attending to him, contemptuously hums a tune.'

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Fox is an old cant word for applied to the old English

thou diest on point of fox.' a sword. Generally old fox; it was broadsword. Thus in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair :-'à fellow that knows nothing but a basket hilt and an old fox in it.'

For I will fetch thy rim3 out at throat,

In drops of crimson blood.

Fr. Sol. Est-il impossible d'eschapper la force de

ton bras?

Pist. Brass, cur!

Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat,
Offer'st me brass?

Fr. Sol. O pardonnez moy!

Pist. Say'st thou me so? is that a ton of moys1?Come hither, boy; Ask me this slave in French, What is his name.

Boy. Escoutez; Comment estes-vous appellé?
Fr. Sol. Monsieur le Fer.

Boy. He says, his name is-master Fer.

Pist. Master Fer! I'll fer him, and firk 5 him, and ferret him :-discuss the same in French unto him.

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3 For I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat.' Pistol is not very scrupulous in the nicety of his language, he uses rim (rymme) for the intestines generally. It is not very clear what our ancestors meant by it; Bishop Wilkins defines it the membrane of the belly;' Florio makes it the omentum, ' a fat pannicle, caule, sewet, rim, or kell wherein the bowels are lapt.' Holmes, in his Acad. of Armory, calls the peritonæum 'the paunch or rim of the belly.' Which is defined by others to be the inner rine of the belly.' It was not therefore the diaphragm or midriff, as Steevens supposed. Philemon Holland in his Translation of Pliny's Natural History, b. 37, c. ix. p. 321, several times mentions the rim of the paunch.' And in Chapman's version of the fourteenth Iliad :

strook him in this belly's rimme.' Capel boldly pronounced rim to mean money! and Mason would read ryno, a cant term for money, invented long after Shakspeare's time!

4 Pistol's moy is probably a vulgar corruption of moydore (itself a corruption of moeda d'oro), at least we have no better solution to offer. The moydore was current in England for about 27s. 5 To firk is to beat or scourge; fouetter, to yerk and to jerk are words of the same import :

nay, I will firk

My silly novice, as he was never firk'd

Since midwives bound his noddle.'-Ram Alley.

There has been much discussion concerning the ignorance of the

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Boy. I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.

Pist. Bid him prepare, for I will cut his throat. Fr. Sol. Que dit-il, monsieur?

Boy. Il me commande de vous dire que vous faites vous prest; car ce soldat icy est disposé tout à cette heure de couper vostre gorge.

Pist. Ouy, couper gorge, par ma foy, pesant,
Unless thou give me crowns, brave crowns;
Or, mangled shalt thou be by this my sword.

Fr. Sol. O, je vous supplie pour l'amour de Dieu, me pardonner! Je suis gentilhomme de bonne maison : gardez ma vie, et je vous donneray deux cents escus. Pist. What are his words?

Boy. He prays you to save his life: he is a gentleman of a good house; and, for his ransome, he will give you two hundred crowns.

Pist. Tell him,-my fury shall abate, and I The crowns will take.

Fr. Sol. Petit monsieur, que dit-il?

Boy. Encore qu'il est contre son jurement, de pardonner aucun prisonnier; neantmoins, pour les escus que vous l'avez promis, il est content de vous donner la liberté, le franchisement.

Fr. Sol. Sur mes genoux, je vous donne mille remerciemens: et je m'estime heureux que je suis tombé entre les mains d'un chevalier, je pense, le plus brave, valiant, et très distingué seigneur d'Angle

terre.

Pist. Expound unto me, boy.

proper pronunciation of the French language evinced by the writer of this scene in Pistol's replies. Some have doubted whether Shakspeare wrote it, and suspected that it was supplied by another hand. Be this as it may, surely an ignorance of the true pronunciation of the language was not inconsistent with a sufficient acquaintance with it for literary purposes. In those times it would possibly have been difficult to acquire the pronunciation in England.

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