This scene functions as sharp comic relief embedded within the high-stakes violence of Agincourt, yet it is comic relief with a serious undertow. Shakespeare deploys the language barrier as the scene's central dramatic engine: Pistol's catastrophic mishearing of French words — interpreting Dieu as a proper name, moi as brass coinage, and bras as an insult — generates sustained wordplay while simultaneously exposing his ignorance and pretension. The misunderstandings are not merely farcical; they dramatise the gulf between nations that the entire play has been negotiating, reducing it to the level of a street bully and a terrified prisoner.Pistol is one of Shakespeare's most sustained studies in hollow heroism. His rhetoric is inflated — "I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat / In drops of crimson blood" — yet the Boy's closing soliloquy punctures every syllable of it. The proverb "the empty vessel makes the greatest sound" functions as the scene's thematic thesis, and the Boy's calm, lucid prose stands in pointed contrast to Pistol's blustering verse, marking the Boy as the scene's true moral intelligence despite his social insignificance.The Boy's reference to Bardolph and Nym — both hanged for theft — quietly reinforces the play's insistence that...
Act IV, Scene 4
Scene Summary
On the battlefield, Pistol captures a French Soldier and, unable to understand him, demands a ransom at swordpoint. The Boy serves as interpreter, relaying the soldier's pleas and his offer of two hundred crowns. Pistol, mishearing French words as insults and boasting wildly, eventually agrees to spare the man's life in exchange for the promised crowns, and the French Soldier departs showering him with extravagant praise.
Left alone, the Boy delivers a deflating aside: Pistol's loud bravado conceals a hollow heart, and he invokes the proverb that empty vessels make the greatest sound. He notes that Bardolph and Nym, for all their faults, showed more genuine courage than Pistol, and both have been hanged. The Boy then observes with alarm that the English baggage train is guarded by nothing but boys, foreshadowing danger to come.
"I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.'" — Boy (4.4)
"Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring devil i' the old play, that every one may pare his nails with a wooden dagger; and they are both hanged." — Boy (4.4)
"the French might have a good prey of us, if he knew of it; for there is none to guard it but boys." — Boy (4.4)
"O, Signieur Dew should be a gentleman: Perpend my words, O Signieur Dew, and mark; O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox, Except, O signieur, thou do give to me Egregious ransom." — Pistol (4.4)
"As I suck blood, I will some mercy show. Follow me!" — Pistol (4.4)
"I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat In drops of crimson blood." — Pistol (4.4)
"Master Fer! I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him: discuss the same in French unto him." — Pistol (4.4)
Click any tag to explore where it appears across the play, then ask the Bard to explain how it works in this scene.
