Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base...."
And so on for another twenty lines. Now consider this stuff: first comes
the reflection, more suitable to the philosopher than the man of action,
"in peace there's nothing so becomes a man..."; then the soldier-king
wishes his men to "imitate" the tiger's looks, to "disguise fair
nature," and "lend the eye a terrible aspect." But the man who feels the
tiger's rage tries to control the aspect of it: he does not put on the
frown--that's Pistol's way. The whole thing is mere poetic description
of how an angry man looks and not of how a brave man feels, and that it
should have deceived Carlyle, surprises me. The truth is that as soon as
Shakespeare has to find, I will not say a magical expression for
courage, but even an adequate and worthy expression, he fails
absolutely. And is the patriotism in "Ye, good yeomen, whose limbs were
made in England" a "noble patriotism"? or is it the simplest, the
crudest, the least justifiable form of patriotism? There is a noble
patriotism founded on the high and generous things done by men of one's
own blood, just as there is the vain and empty self-glorification of
"limbs made in England," as if English limbs were better than those made
in Timbuctoo.
In the third scene of the fourth act, just before the battle, Henry
talks at his best, or rather Shakespeare's best: and we catch the true
accent of courage. Westmoreland wishes
..."That we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!"
but Henry lives on a higher plane:
"No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honour."
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