The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  Are proudly royalizèd by his sons,

  And on the hill behind stands certain death

  In pay and service with Châtillion.

  PRINCE OF WALES

  Death’s name is much more mighty than his deeds.

  Thy parcelling this power hath made it more

  Than all the world! Call it but a power.

  As many sands as these, my hands, can hold

  Are but my handful of so many sands,

  Eas‘ly ta’en up and quickly thrown away.

  But if I stand to count them, sand by sand,

  The number would confound my memory,

  And make a thousand millions of a task

  Which, briefly, is no more in deed than one.

  These quarters, squadrons and these regiments

  Before, behind us, and on either hand,

  Are but a power. When we name a man,

  His hand, his foot, his head hath several strengths,

  And, being all but one self-instanced strength,

  Why, all this many, Audley, is but one,

  And we can call it all but one man’s strength.

  He that hath far to go tells it by miles;

  If he should tell the steps it kills his heart.

  The drops are infinite that make a flood,

  And yet, thou know’st, we call it but a rain.

  There is but one France, and one king of France:

  That France hath no more kings, and that same king

  Hath but the puissant legion of one king.

  And we have one. Then apprehend no odds,

  For one to one is fair equality.

  Enter a Herald from Jean King of France

  What tidings, messenger? Be plain and brief.

  HERALD

  The King of France, my sovereign lord and master,

  Greets by me his foe, the Prince of Wales.

  If thou call forth a hundred men of name—

  Of lords, knights, squires and English gentlemen—

  And with thyself and those, kneel at his feet,

  He straight will fold his bloody colours up

  And ransom shall redeem lives forfeited.

  If not, this day shall drink more English blood

  Than e’er was buried in our British earth.

  What is thy answer to his proffered mercy?

  PRINCE OF WALES

  This heaven that covers France contains the mercy

  That draws from me submissive orisons.

  That such base breath should vanish from my lips

  To urge the plea of mercy to a man,

  The Lord forbid. Return and tell thy King:

  My tongue is made of steel, and it shall beg

  My mercy on his coward burgonet.

  Tell him my colours are as red as his,

  My men as bold, our English arms as strong.

  Return him my defiance in his face.

  HERALD I go.

  Exit

  Enter a Herald from the Dauphin (Prince Charles of Normandy)

  PRINCE OF WALES What news with thee?

  SECOND HERALD

  The Duke of Normandy, my lord and master,

  Pitying thy youth is so engirt with peril,

  By me hath sent a nimble-jointed jennet,

  As swift as ever yet thou didst bestride,

  And therewithal he counsels thee to fly,

  Else death himself hath sworn that thou shalt die.

  PRINCE OF WALES

  Back with the beast unto the beast that sent him!

  Tell him I cannot sit a coward’s horse.

  Bid him today bestride the jade himself,

  For I will stain my horse quite o‘er with blood

  And double-gild my spurs, but I will catch him.

  So tell the cap’ring boy, and get thee gone.

  SECOND HERALD I go.

  Exit

  Enter a Herald from Prince Philippe, carrying a book

  THIRD HERALD

  Edward of Wales, Philippe, the second son

  To the most mighty Christian King of France,

  Seeing thy body’s living date expired,

  All full of charity and Christian love

  He offers the book to the Prince

  Commends this book full fairly fraught with prayers

  To thy fair hand, and for thy hour of life

  Entreats thee that thou meditate therein,

  And arm thy soul for her long journey towards.

  Thus have I done his bidding and return.

  PRINCE OF WALES

  Herald of Philippe, greet thy lord from me.

  All good that he can send I can receive.

  But think’st thou not the unadvised boy

  Hath wronged himself in thus far tendering me?

  Haply he cannot pray without the book;

  I think him no divine extemporal.

  Then render back this commonplace of prayer

  To do himself good in adversity.

  Besides, he knows not my sins’ quality,

  And therefore knows no prayers for my avail.

  Ere night his prayer may be to pray to God

  To put it in my heart to hear his prayer.

  So tell the courtly wanton, and be gone.

  THIRD HERALD I go. Exit

  PRINCE OF WALES

  How confident their strength and number makes them!

  Now, Audley, sound those silver wings of thine,

  And let those milk-white messengers of time

  Show thy time’s learning in this dangerous time.

  Thyself art bruised and bit with many broils,

  And stratagems fore-past with iron pens

  Are texted in thine honourable face.

  Thou art a married man in this distress,

  But danger woos me as a blushing maid.

  Teach me an answer to this perilous time.

  AUDLEY

  To die is all as common as to live.

  The one enchased the other holds in chase.

  For from the instant we begin to live,

  We do pursue and hunt the time to die.

  First bud we, then we blow, and after seed,

  Then presently we fall, and as a shade

  Follows the body, so we follow death.

  If then we hunt for death why do we fear it?

  If we fear it, why do we follow it?

  If we do follow it, how can we shun it?

  If we do fear, with fear we do but aid

  The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner.

  If we fear not, then no resolved proffer

  Can overthrow the limit of our fate.

  For whether ripe or rotten, drop we shall,

  As we do draw the lottery of our doom.

  PRINCE OF WALES

  Ah, good old man! A thousand thousand armours

  These words of thine have buckled on my back.

  Ah, what an idiot hast thou made of life

  To seek the thing it fears, and how disgraced

  Th‘imperial victory of murd’ring death,

  Since all the lives his conquering arrows strike

  Seek him, and he not them, to shame his glory.

  I will not give a penny for a life,

  Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death,

  Since for to live is but to seek to die,

  And dying but beginning of new life.

  Let come the hour when he that rules it will.

  To live or die I hold indifferent still.

  Exeunt

  Sc. 13 Enter Jean King of France and the Dauphin

  KING OF FRANCE

  A sudden darkness hath defaced the sky,

  The winds are crept into their caves for fear,

  The leaves move not, the world is hushed and still,

  The birds cease singing and the wand’ring brooks

  Murmur no wonted greeting to their shores.

  Silence attends some wonder and expecteth

  That heaven should pronounce some prophe
cy.

  Where or from whom proceeds this silence, Charles?

  DAUPHIN

  Our men with open mouths and staring eyes

  Look on each other as they did attend

  Each other’s words, and yet no creature speaks.

  A tongue-tied fear hath made a midnight hour,

  And speeches sleep through all the waking regions.

  KING OF FRANCE

  But now the pompous sun in all his pride

  Looked through his golden coach upon the world,

  And, on a sudden, hath he hid himself,

  That now the under earth is as a grave,

  Dark, deadly, silent and uncomfortable.

  A clamour of ravens

  Hark, what a deadly outcry do I hear!

  Enter Prince Philippe

  DAUPHIN

  Here comes my brother Philippe—

  KING OF FRANCE All dismayed.

  (To Philippe) What fearful words are those thy looks presage?

  PRINCE PHILIPPE A flight, a flight—

  KING OF FRANCE

  Coward, what flight? Thou liest. There needs no flight.

  PRINCE PHILIPPE A flight—

  KING OF FRANCE

  Awake thy craven powers, and tell on

  The substance of that very fear in deed

  Which is so ghastly printed in thy face.

  What is the matter?

  PRINCE PHILIPPE

  A flight of ugly ravens

  Do croak and hover o’er our soldiers’ heads,

  And keep in triangles and cornered squares,

  Right as our forces are embattelèd.

  With their approach there came this sudden fog

  Which now hath hid the airy floor of heaven,

  And made at noon a night unnatural

  Upon the quaking and dismayed world.

  In brief, our soldiers have let fall their arms,

  And stand like metamorphosed images,

  Bloodless and pale, one gazing on another.

  KING OF FRANCE ⌈aside⌉

  Ay, now I call to mind the prophecy—

  But I must give no utterance to a fear.

  (To Philippe) Return, and hearten up these yielding souls!

  Tell them the ravens, seeing them in arms—

  So many fair against a famished few—

  Come but to dine upon their handiwork,

  And prey upon the carrion that they kill.

  For when we see a horse laid down to die—

  Although not dead—the ravenous birds

  Sit watching the departure of his life.

  Even so these ravens, for the carcasses

  Of those poor English that are marked to die,

  Hover about, and if they cry to us

  ’Tis but for meat that we must kill for them.

  Away, and comfort up my soldiers,

  And sound the trumpets and at once dispatch

  This little business of a silly fraud. Exit Prince Philippe

  Another noise. Enter the Earl of Salisbury brought in by a French Captain

  FRENCH CAPTAIN

  Behold, my liege, this knight and forty more,

  Of whom the better part are slain and fled,

  With all endeavour sought to break our ranks

  And make their way to the encompassed Prince.

  Dispose of him as please your majesty.

  KING OF FRANCE

  Go, and the next bough, soldier, that thou seest,

  Disgrace it with his body presently,

  Fore I do hold a tree in France too good

  To be the gallows of an English thief.

  EARL OF SALISBURY (to the Dauphin)

  My lord of Normandy, I have your pass

  And warrant for my safety through this land.

  DAUPHIN

  Villiers procured it for thee, did he not?

  EARL OF SALISBURY He did.

  DAUPHIN

  And it is current. Thou shalt freely pass.

  KING OF FRANCE

  Ay, freely to the gallows to be hanged Without denial or impediment! Away with him.

  DAUPHIN

  I hope your highness will not so disgrace me,

  And dash the virtue of my seal at arms.

  He hath my never-broken name to show,

  Charàctered with this princely hand of mine.

  And rather let me leave to be a prince

  Than break the stable verdict of a prince.

  I do beseech you, let him pass in quiet.

  KING OF FRANCE

  Thou and thy word lie both in my command.

  What canst thou promise that I cannot break?

  Which of these twain is greater infamy—

  To disobey thy father or thyself?

  Thy word, nor no man’s, may exceed his power,

  Nor that same man doth never break his word

  That keeps it to the utmost of his power.

  The breach of faith dwells in the soul’s consent,

  Which, if thyself without consent do break,

  Thou art not charged with the breach of faith.

  Go, hang him; for thy licence lies in me,

  And my constraint stands the excuse for thee.

  DAUPHIN

  What, am I not a soldier in my word?

  Then arms, adieu, and let them fight that list.

  Shall I not give my girdle from my waist

  But with a guardian I shall be controlled

  To say I may not give my things away?

  Upon my soul, had Edward Prince of Wales

  Engaged his word, writ down his noble hand,

  For all your knights to pass his father’s land,

  The royal King, to grace his warlike son,

  Would not alone safe conduct give to them,

  But with all bounty feasted them and theirs.

  KING OF FRANCE

  Dwell’st thou on precedents? Then be it so.

  (To Salisbury) Say, Englishman, of what degree thou art.

  EARL OF SALISBURY

  An earl in England, though a prisoner here.

  And those that know me, call me Salisbury.

  KING OF FRANCE

  Then, Salisbury, say whither thou art bound.

  EARL OF SALISBURY

  To Calais, where my liege, King Edward, is.

  KING OF FRANCE

  To Calais, Salisbury? Then to Calais pack,

  And bid thy King prepare a noble grave

  To put his princely son, black Edward, in.

  And as thou travell’st westward from this place,

  Some two leagues hence there is a lofty hill,

  Whose top seems topless, for the embracing sky

  Doth hide his high head in her azure bosom,

  Upon whose tall top, when thy foot attains,

  Look back upon the humble vale beneath—

  Humble of late, but now made proud with arms—

  And thence behold the wretched Prince of Wales

  Hooped with a band of iron round about.

  After which sight, to Calais spur amain,

  And say the Prince was smothered and not slain.

  And tell thy King, this is not all his ill,

  For I will greet him ere he thinks I will.

  Away, be gone. The smoke but of our shot

  Will choke our foes, though bullets hit them not.

  Exeunt

  Sc. 14 Alarum. Enter Edward Prince of Wales and the Comte d’Artois

  COMTE D’ARTOIS

  How fares your grace? Are you not shot, my lord?

  PRINCE OF WALES

  No, dear Artois, but choked with dust and smoke,

  And stepped aside for breath and fresher air.

  COMTE D’ARTOIS

  Breathe then, and to it again!The amazed French Are quite distract with gazing on the crows, And, were our quivers full of shafts again, Your grace should see a glorious day of this. O, for more arrows, Lord—that’s our one want!

  PRINCE OF WALES

&nb
sp; Courage, Artois! A fig for feathered shafts

  When feathered fowls do bandy on our side!

  What need we fight and sweat and keep a coil

  When railing crows outscold our adversaries?

  Up, up, Artois! The ground itself is armed

  With fire-containing flint. Command our bows

  To hurl away their parti-coloured yew,

  And to it with stones! Away, Artois, away!

  My soul doth prophesy we win the day.

  Exeunt

  Sc. 15 Alarum. Enter Jean King of France

  KING OF FRANCE

  Our multitudes are in themselves confounded,

  Dismayed and distraught. Swift-starting fear

  Hath buzzed a cold dismay through all our army,

  And every petty disadvantage prompts

  The fear-possessed abject soul to fly.

  Myself, whose spirit is steel to their dull lead,

  What with recalling of the prophecy,

  And that our native stones from English arms

  Rebel against us, find myself attainted

  With strong surprise of weak and yielding fear.

  Enter the Dauphin

  DAUPHIN

  Fly, father, fly! The French do kill the French:

  Some that would stand let drive at some that fly;

  Our drums strike nothing but discouragement;

  Our trumpets sound dishonour and retire;

  The spirit of fear, that feareth naught but death,

  Cowardly works confusion on itself.

  Enter Prince Philippe

  PRINCE PHILIPPE

  Pluck out your eyes and see not this day’s shame!

  An arm hath beat an army. One poor David

  Hath, with a stone, foiled twenty stout Goliaths.

  Some twenty naked starvelings with small flints

  Hath driven back a puissant host of men

  Arrayed and fenced in all accomplements.

  KING OF FRANCE

  Mort dieu! They quoit at us and kill us up!

  No less than forty thousand wicked elders

  Have forty lean slaves this day stoned to death.

  DAUPHIN

  O, that I were some other countryman!

  This day hath set derision on the French,

  And all the world will blurt and scorn at us.

  KING OF FRANCE What, is there no hope left?

  PRINCE PHILIPPE

  No hope but death, to bury up our shame.

  KING OF FRANCE

  Make up once more with me: the twenti’th part Of those that live are men enough to quail The feeble handful on the adverse part.