Most of these passages are well known:  there is one, which we do not remember to have seen noticed, and yet it is no whit inferior to the rest in heroic beauty.  It is the account of the deaths of York and Suffolk.

   Exeter.  The duke of York commends him to your majesty.

   K. Henry.  Lives he, good uncle? thrice within this hour,
     I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting;
     From helmet to the spur all blood he was.

   Exeter.  In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie,
     Larding the plain; and by his bloody side
     (Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds)
     The noble earl of Suffolk also lies. 
     Suffolk first died:  and York, all haggled o’er,
     Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep’d,
     And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes,
     That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
     And cries aloud—­Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk! 
     My soul shall thine keep company to heaven: 
     Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly a-breast;
     As, in this glorious and well-foughten field,
     We kept together in our chivalry! 
     Upon these words I came, and cheer’d him up: 
     He smil’d me in the face, raught me his hand,
     And, with a feeble gripe, says—­Dear my lord,
     Commend my service to my sovereign. 
     So did he turn, and over Suffolk’s neck
     He threw his wounded arm, and kiss’d his lips;
     And so, espous’d to death, with blood he seal’d
     A testament of noble-ending love.

But we must have done with splendid quotations.  The behaviour of the king, in the difficult and doubtful circumstances in which he is placed, is as patient and modest as it is spirited and lofty in his prosperous fortune.  The character of the French nobles is also very admirably depicted; and the Dauphin’s praise of his horse shows the vanity of that class of persons in a very striking point of view.  Shakespeare always accompanies a foolish prince with a satirical courtier, as we see in this instance.  The comic parts of Henry V are very inferior to those of Henry IV.  Falstaff is dead, and without him.  Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph are satellites without a sun.  Fluellen the Welshman is the most entertaining character in the piece.  He is good-natured, brave, choleric, and pedantic.  His parallel between Alexander and Harry of Monmouth, and his desire to have ‘some disputations’ with Captain Macmorris on the discipline of the Roman wars, in the heat of the battle, are never to be forgotten.  His treatment of Pistol is as good as Pistol’s treatment of his French prisoner.  There are two other remarkable prose passages in this play:  the conversation of Henry in disguise with the three sentinels on the duties of a soldier, and his courtship of Katherine in broken French.  We like them both exceedingly, though the first savours perhaps too much of the king, and the last too little of the lover.