And at Harfleur he is even more complaisant:
"And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, shew us here
The metal of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not,
For there is none of you so mean and base
That hath not noble luster in your eyes." (Act 3, Sc. 1.)
The rank and file always fare well before a battle.
"Oh, it's 'Tommy this' and 'Tommy that' an' 'Tommy, go away';
But it's 'Thank you, Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins to play."
I should like to add some instances from Shakespeare's works of serious and estimable behavior on the part of individuals representing the lower classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the part of their "betters," but I have been unable to find any, and the meager list must end here.
But to return to Tommy Atkins. He is no longer Mr. Atkins after the battle. Montjoy, the French herald, comes to the English king under a flag of truce and asks that they be permitted to bury their dead and
"Sort our nobles from our common men;
For many of our princes (wo the while!)
Lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood;
So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs
In blood of princes." (Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 7.)
With equal courtesy Richard III., on Bosworth field, speaks of his opponents to the gentlemen around him:
"Remember what you are to cope withal—
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretagne and base lackey peasants."
(Act 5, Sc. 3.)
But Shakespeare does not limit such epithets to armies. Having, as we have seen, a poor opinion of the lower classes, taken man by man, he thinks, if anything, still worse of them taken en masse, and at his hands a crowd of plain workingmen fares worst of all. "Hempen home-spuns," Puck calls them, and again