This scene functions as a comic subplot that simultaneously mirrors and undercuts the heroic martial world being constructed around Henry V. Shakespeare deploys the tavern crew — Nym, Pistol, Bardolph, and the Hostess — as a carnivalesque counterpoint to the nobility's rhetoric of honour and brotherhood. Where Henry speaks of a band of brothers united by glory, these men nearly kill each other over a woman and eight shillings, reconciling only when profit is promised.Nym's speech is dominated by the repeated phrase "the humour of it," a comic verbal tic that parodies the Elizabethan discourse of humours while also exposing his essential passivity and evasiveness. His sentences trail into tautology — "things must be as they may" — suggesting a character who lacks the will or language to assert himself directly. This contrasts sharply with Pistol's bombastic, pseudo-Marlovian rhetoric, full of classical allusions and theatrical fury, which is itself a parody of heroic diction.Pistol's language is a sustained exercise in mock-heroic inflation. Phrases like "The grave doth gape, and doting death is near" echo the grandiloquent style of Tamburlaine, yet the context — a street brawl over a marriage — deflates every syllable. Shakespeare uses this bathos to interrogate the...
Act II, Scene 1
Scene Summary
On a London street, Corporal Nym and Lieutenant Bardolph meet and discuss the quarrel between Nym and Ancient Pistol, who has married Nell Quickly despite her prior betrothal to Nym. When Pistol and the Hostess arrive, Nym and Pistol draw swords and trade insults, while Bardolph threatens to kill whoever strikes first. The dispute is eventually settled when Pistol promises Nym a noble in cash.
A Boy interrupts to report that Sir John Falstaff is gravely ill and begs the company to attend him. The Hostess confirms Falstaff's decline, attributing it to the king's rejection of him. The scene closes with the low-life soldiers agreeing to set aside their quarrel and travel together to France, pausing to lament Falstaff's broken heart.
"I dare not fight; but I will wink and hold out mine iron: it is a simple one; but what though? it will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man's sword will: and there's an end." — Nym (2.1)
"things must be as they may: men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say knives have edges." — Nym (2.1)
"The 'solus' in thy teeth, and in thy throat, / And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, / And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!" — Pistol (2.1)
"The king has killed his heart." — Hostess (2.1)
"I'll live by Nym, and Nym shall live by me; / Is not this just? for I shall sutler be / Unto the camp, and profits will accrue." — Pistol (2.1)
"The king hath run bad humours on the knight; that's the even of it." — Nym (2.1)
"Base is the slave that pays." — Pistol (2.1)
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