The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  Upon the error that you heard debated.

  But Margaret was in some fault for this,

  Although against her will as it appears

  In the true course of all the question.

  ANTONIO

  Well, I am glad that all things sorts so well.

  BENEDICK

  And so am I, being else by faith enforced

  To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.

  LEONATO

  Well, daughter, and you gentlewomen all,

  Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves,

  And when I send for you come hither masked.Exeunt Beatrice, Hero, Margaret, and Ursula

  The Prince and Claudio promised by this hour

  To visit me. You know your office, brother,

  You must be father to your brother’s daughter,

  And give her to young Claudio.

  ANTONIO

  Which I will do with confirmed countenance.

  BENEDICK

  Friar, I must entreat your pains, I think.

  FRIAR To do what, signor?

  BENEDICK

  To bind me or undo me, one of them.

  Signor Leonato, truth it is, good signor,

  Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.

  LEONATO

  That eye my daughter lent her, ’tis most true.

  BENEDICK

  And I do with an eye of love requite her.

  LEONATO

  The sight whereof I think you had from me,

  From Claudio and the Prince. But what’s your will?

  BENEDICK

  Your answer, sir, is enigmatical.

  But for my will, my will is your good will

  May stand with ours this day to be conjoined

  In the state of honourable marriage,

  In which, good Friar, I shall desire your help.

  LEONATO

  My heart is with your liking.

  FRIAR And my help.

  Here comes the Prince and Claudio.Enter Don Pedro and Claudio with attendants

  DON PEDRO

  Good morrow to this fair assembly.

  LEONATO

  Good morrow, Prince. Good morrow, Claudio.

  We here attend you. Are you yet determined

  Today to marry with my brother’s daughter?

  CLAUDIO

  I’ll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope.

  LEONATO

  Call her forth, brother, here’s the Friar ready.Exit Antonio

  DON PEDRO

  Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what’s the matter

  That you have such a February face,

  So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?

  CLAUDIO

  I think he thinks upon the savage bull.

  Tush, fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns with gold,

  And all Europa shall rejoice at thee

  As once Europa did at lusty Jove

  When he would play the noble beast in love.

  BENEDICK

  Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low,

  And some such strange bull leapt your father’s cow

  And got a calf in that same noble feat

  Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.Enter Antonio with Hero, Beatrice, Margaret, and Ursula, masked

  CLAUDIO

  For this I owe you. Here comes other reck’nings.

  Which is the lady I must seize upon?

  ⌈ANTONIO⌉

  This same is she, and I do give you her.

  CLAUDIO

  Why then, she’s mine. Sweet, let me see your face. 55

  LEONATO

  No, that you shall not till you take her hand

  Before this Friar and swear to marry her.

  CLAUDIO (to Hero)

  Give me your hand before this holy friar.

  I am your husband if you like of me.

  HERO (unmasking)

  And when I lived I was your other wife;

  And when you loved, you were my other husband.

  CLAUDIO

  Another Hero!

  HERO Nothing certainer.

  One Hero died defiled, but I do live,

  And surely as I live, I am a maid.

  DON PEDRO

  The former Hero, Hero that is dead!

  LEONATO

  She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived.

  FRIAR

  All this amazement can I qualify

  When after that the holy rites are ended

  I’ll tell you largely of fair Hero’s death.

  Meantime, let wonder seem familiar,

  And to the chapel let us presently.

  BENEDICK

  Soft and fair, Friar, which is Beatrice?

  BEATRICE (unmasking)

  I answer to that name, what is your will?

  BENEDICK

  Do not you love me?

  BEATRICE Why no, no more than reason.

  BENEDICK

  Why then, your uncle and the Prince and Claudio

  Have been deceived. They swore you did.

  BEATRICE

  Do not you love me?

  BENEDICK Troth no, no more than reason.

  BEATRICE

  Why then, my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula

  Are much deceived, for they did swear you did.

  BENEDICK

  They swore that you were almost sick for me.

  BEATRICE

  They swore that you were wellnigh dead for me.

  BENEDICK

  ’Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?

  BEATRICE

  No, truly, but in friendly recompense.

  LEONATO

  Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.

  CLAUDIO

  And I’ll be sworn upon’t that he loves her,

  For here’s a paper written in his hand,

  A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,

  Fashioned to Beatrice.

  HERO And here’s another,

  Writ in my cousin’s hand, stol’n from her pocket,

  Containing her affection unto Benedick.

  BENEDICK A miracle! Here’s our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light, I take thee for pity.

  BEATRICE I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.

  BENEDICK (kissing her) Peace, I will stop your mouth.

  DON PEDRO

  How dost thou, Benedick the married man?

  BENEDICK I’ll tell thee what, Prince: a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No, if a man will be beaten with brains, a shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it, and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it. For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee, but in that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised, and love my cousin.

  CLAUDIO I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life to make thee a double dealer, which out of question thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceeding narrowly to thee.

  BENEDICK Come, come, we are friends, let’s have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts and our wives’ heels.

  LEONATO We’ll have dancing afterward.

  BENEDICK First, of my word. Therefore play, music. (To Don Pedro) Prince, thou art sad, get thee a wife, get thee a wife. There is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.

  Enter Messenger

  MESSENGER

  My lord, your brother John is ta’en in flight,

  And brought with armed men back to Messina.

  BENEDICK Think not on him till tomorrow, I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him. Strike up, pipers.Dance, and exeunt

  HENRY V

  THE
Chorus to Act 5 of Henry V contains an uncharacteristic, direct topical reference:Were now the General of our gracious Empress—

  As in good time he may—from Ireland coming,

  Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,

  How many would the peaceful city quit

  To welcome him!

  ‘The General’ must be the Earl of Essex, whose ‘Empress’—Queen Elizabeth—had sent him on an Irish campaign on 27 March 1599; he returned, disgraced, on 28 September. Plans for his campaign had been known at least since the previous November; the idea that he might return in triumph would have been meaningless after September 1599, and it seems likely that Shakespeare completed his play during 1599, probably in the spring. It appeared in print, in a short and debased text, in (probably) August 1600, when it was said to have ‘been sundry times played by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain his servants’. Although this text (which omits the Choruses) seems to have been put together from memory by actors playing in an abbreviated adaptation, the Shakespearian text behind it appears to have been in a later state than the generally superior text printed from Shakespeare’s own papers in the 1623 Folio. Our edition draws on the 1600 quarto in the attempt to represent the play as acted by Shakespeare’s company. The principal difference is the reversion to historical authenticity in the substitution at Agincourt of the Duke of Bourbon for the Dauphin.

  As in the two plays about Henry IV, Shakespeare is indebted to The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (printed 1598). Other Elizabethan plays about Henry V, now lost, may have influenced him; he certainly used the chronicle histories of Edward Hall (1542) and Holinshed (1577, revised and enlarged in 1587).

  From the ‘civil broils’ of the earlier history plays, Shakespeare turns to portray a country united in war against France. Each act is prefaced by a Chorus, speaking some of the play’s finest poetry, and giving it an epic quality. Henry V, ‘star of England’, is Shakespeare’s most heroic warrior king, but (like his predecessors) has an introspective side, and is aware of the crime by which his father came to the throne. We are reminded of his ‘wilder days’, and see that the transition from ‘madcap prince’ to the ‘mirror of all Christian kings’ involves loss: although the epilogue to 2 Henry IV had suggested that Sir John would reappear, he is only, though poignantly, an off-stage presence. Yet Shakespeare’s infusion of comic form into historical narrative reaches its natural conclusion in this play. Sir John’s cronies, Pistol, Bardolph, Nim, and Mistress Quickly, reappear to provide a counterpart to the heroic action, and Shakespeare invents comic episodes involving an Englishman (Gower), a Welshman (Fluellen), an Irishman (MacMorris), and a Scot (Jamy). The play also has romance elements, in the almost incredible extent of the English victory over the French and in the disguised Henry’s comradely mingling with his soldiers, as well as in his courtship of the French princess. The play’s romantic and heroic aspects have made it popular especially in times of war and have aroused accusations of jingoism, but the horrors of war are vividly depicted, and the Chorus’s closing speech reminds us that Henry died young, and that his son’s protector ‘lost France and made his England bleed’.

  THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

  The Life of Henry the Fifth

  Prologue Enter Chorus as Prologue CHORUS

  O for a muse of fire, that would ascend

  The brightest heaven of invention:

  A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,

  And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.

  Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

  Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,

  Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire

  Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,

  The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared

  On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

  So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold

  The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram

  Within this wooden O the very casques

  That did affright the air at Agincourt?

  O pardon: since a crooked figure may

  Attest in little place a million,

  And let us, ciphers to this great account,

  On your imaginary forces work.

  Suppose within the girdle of these walls

  Are now confined two mighty monarchies,

  Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts

  The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.

  Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:

  Into a thousand parts divide one man,

  And make imaginary puissance.

  Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them,

  Printing their proud hoofs i‘th’ receiving earth;

  For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,

  Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,

  Turning th’accomplishment of many years

  Into an hourglass—for the which supply,

  Admit me Chorus to this history,

  Who Prologue-like your humble patience pray

  Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. Exit

  1.1 Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely

  CANTERBURY

  My lord, I’ll tell you. That self bill is urged

  Which in th’eleventh year of the last king’s reign

  Was like, and had indeed against us passed,

  But that the scrambling and unquiet time

  Did push it out of farther question.

  ELY

  But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?

  CANTERBURY

  It must be thought on. If it pass against us,

  We lose the better half of our possession,

  For all the temporal lands which men devout

  By testament have given to the Church

  Would they strip from us—being valued thus:

  As much as would maintain, to the King’s honour,

  Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,

  Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;

  And, to relief of lazars and weak age,

  Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,

  A hundred almshouses right well supplied;

  And to the coffers of the King beside

  A thousand pounds by th’ year. Thus runs the bill.

  ELY This would drink deep.

  CANTERBURY ’Twould drink the cup and all.

  ELY But what prevention?

  CANTERBURY

  The King is full of grace and fair regard.

  ELY

  And a true lover of the holy Church.

  CANTERBURY

  The courses of his youth promised it not.

  The breath no sooner left his father’s body

  But that his wildness, mortified in him,

  Seemed to die too. Yea, at that very moment

  Consideration like an angel came

  And whipped th‘offending Adam out of him,

  Leaving his body as a paradise

  T’envelop and contain celestial spirits.

  Never was such a sudden scholar made;

  Never came reformation in a flood

  With such a heady currance scouring faults;

  Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness

  So soon did lose his seat—and all at once—

  As in this king.

  ELY

  We are blessed in the change.

  CANTERBURY

  Hear him but reason in divinity

  And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

  You would desire the King were made a prelate;

  Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

  You would say it hath been all-in-all his study;

  List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

  A fearful battle rendered you in music;

  Turn him to any cause of policy,

  The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

  Familiar as his garter—that when
he speaks,

  The air, a chartered libertine, is still,

  And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears

  To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences:

  So that the art and practic part of life

  Must be the mistress to this theoric.

  Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,

  Since his addiction was to courses vain,

  His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow,

  His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports,

  And never noted in him any study,

  Any retirement, any sequestration

  From open haunts and popularity.

  ELY

  The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,

  And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best

  Neighboured by fruit of baser quality;

  And so the Prince obscured his contemplation

  Under the veil of wildness—which, no doubt,

  Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,

  Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

  CANTERBURY

  It must be so, for miracles are ceased,

  And therefore we must needs admit the means

  How things are perfected.

  ELY

  But, my good lord,

  How now for mitigation of this bill

  Urged by the Commons? Doth his majesty

  Incline to it, or no?

  CANTERBURY He seems indifferent,

  Or rather swaying more upon our part

  Than cherishing th’exhibitors against us;

  For I have made an offer to his majesty,

  Upon our spiritual convocation

  And in regard of causes now in hand,

  Which I have opened to his grace at large:

  As touching France, to give a greater sum

  Than ever at one time the clergy yet

  Did to his predecessors part withal.

  ELY

  How did this offer seem received, my lord?

  CANTERBURY

  With good acceptance of his majesty,

  Save that there was not time enough to hear,

  As I perceived his grace would fain have done,

  The severals and unhidden passages

  Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms,

  And generally to the crown and seat of France,

  Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.

  ELY

  What was th’impediment that broke this off?