Monday, March 12, 2007

The dauphin's horse

I'm re-reading King Henry V for my Shakespeare essay and came across a fun passage where the Dauphin is praising his horse. It is fairly long so I may have to truncate it a bit but here it is:

Dauphin:...I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns... he bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, chez les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
Orleans: He's of the colour of the nutmeg.
Dauphin: And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts... It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch and his countenance enforces homage...Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey: it is a theme as fluent as the sea: turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all: 'tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign's sovereign to ride on and for the world, familiar to us and unknown, to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at him.

What praise! I would like to have a horse like his!

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