First my fear; then my courtesy; last my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my courtesy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some and I will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely. If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me: if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly. One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a’ be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen.
The Life of King Henry the Fifth
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
ACT I
PROLOGUE
SCENE I. LONDON. AN ANTE-CHAMBER IN THE KING’S PALACE.
SCENE II. THE SAME. THE PRESENCE CHAMBER.
ACT II
PROLOGUE
SCENE I. LONDON. A STREET.
SCENE II. SOUTHAMPTON. A COUNCIL-CHAMBER.
SCENE III. LONDON. BEFORE A TAVERN.
SCENE IV. FRANCE. THE KING’S PALACE.
ACT III
PROLOGUE
SCENE I. FRANCE. BEFORE HARFLEUR.
SCENE II. THE SAME.
SCENE III. THE SAME. BEFORE THE GATES.
SCENE IV. THE FRENCH KING’S PALACE.
SCENE V. THE SAME.
SCENE VI. THE ENGLISH CAMP IN PICARDY.
SCENE VII. THE FRENCH CAMP, NEAR AGINCOURT:
ACT IV
PROLOGUE
SCENE I. THE ENGLISH CAMP AT AGINCOURT.
SCENE II. THE FRENCH CAMP.
SCENE III. THE ENGLISH CAMP.
SCENE IV. THE FIELD OF BATTLE.
SCENE V. ANOTHER PART OF THE FIELD.
SCENE VI. ANOTHER PART OF THE FIELD.
SCENE VII. ANOTHER PART OF THE FIELD.
SCENE VIII. BEFORE KING HENRY’S PAVILION.
ACT V
PROLOGUE
SCENE I. FRANCE. THE ENGLISH CAMP.
SCENE II. FRANCE. A ROYAL PALACE.
EPILOGUE
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
King Henry V,
Dukes of Gloucester and Bedford, brothers of the King.
Duke of Exeter, uncle to the King.
Duke of York, cousin to the King.
Earls of Salisbury, Westmoreland, Warwick and Cambridge.
Archbishop of Canterbury.
Bishop of Ely.
Lord Scroop.
Sir Thomas Grey.
Sir Thomas Erpingham.
Gower, Fluellen, Macmorris and Jamy, officers in the English army.
John Bates, Alexander Court, Michael Williams, soldiers in the English army.
Pistol, Nym, Bardolph.
Hostess Quickly, wife of Pistol.
Boy,
Herald,
Charles the Sixth, King Of France,
Louis, the Dauphin,
Dukes of Burgundy, Orleans and Bourbon.
The Constable of France.
Rambures and Grandpre, French Lords.
Governor of Harfleur.
Montjoy, a French herald.
Queen Isabel of France.
Katharine, her daughter.
Alice, maid to Katherine.
Chorus,
Ambassadors, Soldiers, Messengers, &.c.
ACT I
PROLOGUE
Enter Chorus
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,
Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit 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 accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: 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
SCENE I. LONDON. AN ANTE-CHAMBER IN THE KING’S PALACE.
Enter the Archbishop Of Canterbury, and the Bishop Of Ely
Canterbury
My lord, I’ll tell you; that self bill is urged,
Which in the eleventh year of the last king’s reign
Was like, and had indeed against us pass’d,
But that the scambling 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 the 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,
B
ut that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,
To 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 render’d 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 charter’d libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears,
To steal his sweet and honey’d 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 unletter’d, rude and shallow,
His hours fill’d 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
Neighbour’d 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 the exhibiters 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 open’d 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 the impediment that broke this off?
Canterbury
The French ambassador upon that instant
Craved audience; and the hour, I think, is come
To give him hearing: is it four o’clock?
Ely
It is.
Canterbury
Then go we in, to know his embassy;
Which I could with a ready guess declare,
Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.
Ely
I’ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.
Exeunt
SCENE II. THE SAME. THE PRESENCE CHAMBER.
Enter King Henry V, Gloucester, Bedford, Exeter, Warwick, Westmoreland, and Attendants
King Henry V
Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?
Exeter
Not here in presence.
King Henry V
Send for him, good uncle.
Westmoreland
Shall we call in the ambassador, my liege?
King Henry V
Not yet, my cousin: we would be resolved,
Before we hear him, of some things of weight
That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.
Enter the Archbishop Of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Ely
Canterbury
God and his angels guard your sacred throne
And make you long become it!
King Henry V
Sure, we thank you.
My learned lord, we pray you to proceed
And justly and religiously unfold
Why the law Salique that they have in France
Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim:
And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,
That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,
Or nicely charge your understanding soul
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
Suits not in native colours with the truth;
For God doth know how many now in health
Shall drop their blood in approbation
Of what your reverence shall incite us to.
Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war:
We charge you, in the name of God, take heed;
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
’Gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the swords
That make such waste in brief mortality.
Under this conjuration, speak, my lord;
For we will hear, note and believe in heart
That what you speak is in your conscience wash’d
As pure as sin with baptism.
Canterbury
Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers,
That owe yourselves, your lives and services
To this imperial throne. There is no bar
To make against your highness’ claim to France
But this, which they produce from Pharamond,
‘In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant:’
‘No woman shall succeed in Salique land:’
Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
The founder of this law and female bar.
Yet their own authors faithfully affirm
That the land Salique is in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe;
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,
There left behind and settled certain French;
Who, holding in disdain the German women
For some dishonest manners of their life,
Establish’d then this law; to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land:
Which Salique, as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Sala,
Is at this day in Germany call’d Meisen.
Then doth it well appear that Salique law
Was not devised for the realm of France:
Nor did the French possess the Salique land
Until four hundred one and twenty years
After defunction of King Pharamond,
Idly supposed the founder of this law;
; Who died within the year of our redemption
Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great
Subdued the Saxons, and did seat the French
Beyond the river Sala, in the year
Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,
King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,
Did, as heir general, being descended
Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,
Make claim and title to the crown of France.
Hugh Capet also, who usurped the crown
Of Charles the duke of Lorraine, sole heir male
Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,
To find his title with some shows of truth,
Though, in pure truth, it was corrupt and naught,
Convey’d himself as heir to the Lady Lingare,
Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son
To Lewis the emperor, and Lewis the son
Of Charles the Great. Also King Lewis the Tenth,
Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,
Could not keep quiet in his conscience,
Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied
That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother,
Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare,
Daughter to Charles the foresaid duke of Lorraine:
By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great
Was re-united to the crown of France.
So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun.
King Pepin’s title and Hugh Capet’s claim,
King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear
To hold in right and title of the female:
So do the kings of France unto this day;
Howbeit they would hold up this Salique law
To bar your highness claiming from the female,
And rather choose to hide them in a net
Than amply to imbar their crooked titles
Usurp’d from you and your progenitors.
King Henry V
May I with right and conscience make this claim?
Canterbury
The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!
For in the book of Numbers is it writ,
When the man dies, let the inheritance
Descend unto the daughter. Gracious lord,
Stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag;
Look back into your mighty ancestors:
Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb,
From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,
And your great-uncle’s, Edward the Black Prince,
Who on the French ground play’d a tragedy,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
Whiles his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp
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