No More Learning

KING HENRY. A friend.
WILLIAMS. Under what captain serve you?
KING HENRY. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.
WILLIAMS. A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I pray
you, what thinks he of our estate?
KING HENRY. Even as men wreck'd upon a sand, that look to be wash'd
off the next tide.
BATES. He hath not told his thought to the King?
KING HENRY. No; nor it is not meet he should.
For though I speak it
to you, I think the King is but a man as I am: the violet smells
to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to
me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid
by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his
affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop,
they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of
fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish
as ours are; yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any
appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his
army.
BATES. He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as
cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the
neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so
we were quit here.
KING HENRY. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King: I
think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.
BATES. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be
ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.
KING HENRY. I dare say you love him not so ill to wish him here
alone, howsoever you speak this, to feel other men's minds;
methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King's
company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.
WILLIAMS. That's more than we know.
BATES. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough if
we know we are the King's subjects. If his cause be wrong, our
obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.
WILLIAMS.