Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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5.4 Enter Leonato, Antonio, Benedick, Beatrice, Margaret, Ursula, Friar Francis, and Hero

FRIAR

Did I not tell you she was innocent?

LEONATO

So are the Prince and Claudio who accused her

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

PrologueEnter 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?

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. 95

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

1.2 Enter King Harry, the Dukes of Gloucester, ⌈Clarence⌉, and Exeter, and the Earls of Warwick and Westmorland

KING HARRY

Where is my gracious lord of Canterbury?

EXETER

Not here in presence.

KING HARRY Send for him, good uncle.

WESTMORLAND

Shall we call in th’ambassador, my liege?

KING HARRY

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 HARRY Sure we thank you.

My learnèd lord, we pray you to proceed,

And justly and religiously unfold

Why the law Salic 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 wrongs gives edge unto the swords

That makes 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 washed

As pure as sin with baptism.

CANTERBURY

Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers

That owe your selves, 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 Salic land’—

Which ‘Salic land’ the French unjustly gloss

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 Salic is in Germany,

Between the floods of Saale 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,

Established there this law: to wit, no female

Should be inheritrix in Salic land—

Which Salic, as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Saale,

Is at this day in Germany called Meissen.

Then doth it well appear the Salic Law

Was not devised for the realm of France.

Nor did the French possess the Salic 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 Saale, in the year

Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,

King Pépin, which deposed Childéric,

Did, as heir general—being descended

Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clotaire—

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 fine his title with some shows of truth,

Though in pure truth it was corrupt and naught,

Conveyed himself as heir to th’ Lady Lingard,

Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son

To Louis the Emperor, and Louis the son

Of Charles the Great. Also, King Louis the Ninth,

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 Ermengarde,

Daughter to Charles, the foresaid Duke of Lorraine;

By the which marriage, the line of Charles the Great

Was reunited to the crown of France.

So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun,

King Pépin’s title and Hugh Capet’s claim,

King Louis 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 Salic Law

To bar your highness claiming from the female,

And rather choose to hide them in a net

Than amply to embar their crooked titles,

Usurped from you and your progenitors.

KING HARRY

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 son 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 played 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

Forage in blood of French nobility. no

O noble English, that could entertain

With half their forces the full pride of France,

And let another half stand laughing by,

All out of work, and cold for action.

ELY

Awake remembrance of those valiant dead,

And with your puissant arm renew their feats.

You are their heir, you sit upon their throne,

The blood and courage that renowned them

Runs in your veins—and my thrice-puissant liege

Is in the very May-morn of his youth,

Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.

EXETER

Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth

Do all expect that you should rouse yourself

As did the former lions of your blood.

WESTMORLAND

They know your grace hath cause; and means and

might,

So hath your highness. Never king of England

Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,

Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England

And lie pavilioned in the fields of France.

CANTERBURY

O let their bodies follow, my dear liege,

With blood and sword and fire, to win your right.

In aid whereof, we of the spiritualty

Will raise your highness such a mighty sum

As never did the clergy at one time

Bring in to any of your ancestors.

KING HARRY

We must not only arm t’invade the French,

But lay down our proportions to defend

Against the Scot, who will make raid upon us

With all advantages.

CANTERBURY

They of those marches, gracious sovereign,

Shall be a wall sufficient to defend

Our inland from the pilfering borderers.

KING HARRY

We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,

But fear the main intendment of the Scot,

Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us.

For you shall read that my great-grandfather

Never unmasked his power unto France

But that the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom

Came pouring like the tide into a breach

With ample and brim fullness of his force

Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,

Girding with grievous siege castles and towns,

That England, being empty of defence,

Hath shook and trembled at the bruit thereof.

CANTERBURY

She hath been then more feared than harmed, my

liege. 155

For hear her but exampled by herself:

When all her chivalry hath been in France

And she a mourning widow of her nobles,

She hath herself not only well defended

But taken and impounded as a stray

The King of Scots, whom she did send to France

To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings

And make your chronicle as rich with praise

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea

With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.

⌈A LORD⌉

But there’s a saying very old and true:

‘If that you will France win, Then with Scotland first begin.’

For once the eagle England being in prey,

To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot

Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,

Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,

To ’tame and havoc more than she can eat.

EXETER

It follows then the cat must stay at home.

Yet that is but a crushed necessity,

Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries

And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.

While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,

Th’advisèd head defends itself at home.

For government, though high and low and lower,

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,

Congreeing in a full and natural close,

Like music.

CANTERBURY True. Therefore doth heaven divide

The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavour in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience. For so work the honey-bees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king, and officers of sorts,

Where some like magistrates correct at home;

Others like merchants venture trade abroad;

Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,

Which pillage they with merry march bring home

To the tent royal of their emperor,

Who busied in his majesty surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,

The civil citizens lading up the honey,

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,

The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum

Delivering o’er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone. I this infer:

That many things, having full reference

To one consent, may work contrariously.

As many arrows, loosed several ways,

Fly to one mark, as many ways meet in one town,

As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea,

As many lines close in the dial’s centre,

So may a thousand actions once afoot

End in one purpose, and be all well borne

Without defect. Therefore to France, my liege.

Divide your happy England into four,

Whereof take you one quarter into France,

And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.

If we with thrice such powers left at home

Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,

Let us be worried, and our nation lose

The name of hardiness and policy.

KING HARRY

Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.

Exit one or more

Now are we well resolved, and by God’s help

And yours, the noble sinews of our power,

France being ours we’ll bend it to our awe,

Or break it all to pieces. Or there we’ll sit,

Ruling in large and ample empery

O’er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms,

Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,

Tombless, with no remembrance over them.

Either our history shall with full mouth

Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,

Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,

Not worshipped with a waxen epitaph.

Enter Ambassadors of France, with a tun

Now are we well prepared to know the pleasure

Of our fair cousin Dauphin, for we hear

Your greeting is from him, not from the King.

AMBASSADOR

May’t please your majesty to give us leave

Freely to render what we have in charge,

Or shall we sparingly show you far off

The Dauphin’s meaning and our embassy?

KING HARRY

We are no tyrant, but a Christian king,

Unto whose grace our passion is as subject

As is our wretches fettered in our prisons.

Therefore with frank and with uncurbèd plainness

Tell us the Dauphin’s mind.

AMBASSADOR Thus then in few:

Your highness lately sending into France

Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right

Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third.

In answer of which claim, the Prince our master

Says that you savour too much of your youth,

And bids you be advised, there’s naught in France

That can be with a nimble galliard won:

You cannot revel into dukedoms there.

He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,

This tun of treasure, and in lieu of this

Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim

Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.

KING HARRY

What treasure, uncle?

EXETER (opening the tun) Tennis balls, my liege.

KING HARRY

We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us.

His present and your pains we thank you for.

When we have matched our rackets to these balls,

We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set

Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.

Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler

That all the courts of France will be disturbed

With chases. And we understand him well,

How he comes o‘er us with our wilder days,

Not measuring what use we made of them.

We never valued this poor seat of England,

And therefore, living hence, did give ourself

To barbarous licence—as ’tis ever common

That men are merriest when they are from home.

But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,

Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness

When I do rouse me in my throne of France.

For that have I laid by my majesty

And plodded like a man for working days,

But I will rise there with so full a glory

That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,

Yea strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.

And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his

Hath turned his balls to gunstones, and his soul

Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance

That shall fly from them—for many a thousand

widows

Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands,

Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;

Ay, some are yet ungotten and unborn

That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.

But this lies all within the will of God,

To whom I do appeal, and in whose name

Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on

To venge me as I may, and to put forth

My rightful hand in a well-hallowed cause.

So get you hence in peace. And tell the Dauphin

His jest will savour but of shallow wit

When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.—

Convey them with safe conduct.—Fare you well.

Exeunt Ambassadors

EXETER This was a merry message.

KING HARRY

We hope to make the sender blush at it.

Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour

That may give furth’rance to our expedition;

For we have now no thought in us but France,

Save those to God, that run before our business.

Therefore let our proportions for these wars

Be soon collected, and all things thought upon

That may with reasonable swiftness add

More feathers to our wings; for, God before,

We’ll chide this Dauphin at his father’s door.

Therefore let every man now task his thought,

That this fair action may on foot be brought.

⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt

2.0 Enter Chorus

CHORUS

Now all the youth of England are on fire,

And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;

Now thrive the armourers, and honour’s thought

Reigns solely in the breast of every man.

They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,

Following the mirror of all Christian kings

With winged heels, as English Mercuries.

For now sits expectation in the air

And hides a sword from hilts unto the point

With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets,

Promised to Harry and his followers.

The French, advised by good intelligence

Of this most dreadful preparation,

Shake in their fear, and with pale policy

Seek to divert the English purposes.

O England!—model to thy inward greatness,

Like little body with a mighty heart,

What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do,