Compare the First Part of King Henry IV, Act iii. Scene 3.
I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years.
In Act ii. Scene 2 the hero, on being informed how heavy are the odds against him in the field, answers,
I am glad on’t; the honour is the greater.
To which his confidant rejoins:
The danger is the greater.
And in the sixth scene of the same act the messenger observes:
I only heard the prince wish
. . . . . . .
He had fewer by a thousand men.
Could any member doubt that we had here the same hand which gave us the like debate between King Henry and Westmoreland on the eve of Agincourt? or could any member suppose that in the subsequent remark of the same military confidant, “I smell a rat, sir,” there was merely a fortuitous coincidence with Hamlet’s reflection as he “whips out his rapier”—in itself a martial proceeding—under similar circumstances to the same effect?
In the very next scene a captain observes of his own troops