Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard."
The first line is most excellent, but Shakespeare found it in the old
play, and the bragging which follows is hardly bettered by the pious
imprecation.
Nor does the scene with the conspirators seem to me any better. The
soldier-king would not have preached at them for sixty lines before
condemning them. Nor would he have sentenced them with this
extraordinary mixture of priggishness and pious pity:
"K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy. Hear your
sentence.
* * * * *
Touching our person seek we no revenge;
But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death,
The task whereof, God of His mercy give
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences!"
This "poor miserable wretches" would go better with a generous pardon,
and such forgiving would be more in Shakespeare's nature. Throughout
this play the necessity of speaking through the soldier-king embarrasses
the poet, and the infusion of the poet's sympathy and emotion makes the
puppet ridiculous. Henry's speech before Harfleur has been praised on
all hands; not by the professors and critics merely, but by those who
deserve attention. Carlyle finds deathless valour in the saying: "Ye,
good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England," and not deathless valour
merely, but "noble patriotism" as well; "a true English heart breathes,
calm and strong through the whole business ... this man (Shakespeare)
too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that." I find no valour in
it, deathless or otherwise; but the make-believe of valour, the
completest proof that valour was absent. Here are the words:
"K. Hen. Once more unto the breach, dear friends,
once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
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