ACT II
SCENE IV France. The KING'S palace.


 [Flourish. Enter the FRENCH KING, the DAUPHIN, the
 DUKES of BERRI and BRETAGNE, the Constable, and others]

KING OF FRANCE Thus comes the English with full power upon us;
 And more than carefully it us concerns
 To answer royally in our defences.
 Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Bretagne,
 Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,
 And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,
 To line and new repair our towns of war
 With men of courage and with means defendant;
 For England his approaches makes as fierce
 As waters to the sucking of a gulf.
 It fits us then to be as provident
 As fear may teach us out of late examples
 Left by the fatal and neglected English
 Upon our fields.

DAUPHIN                   My most redoubted father,
 It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe;
 For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
 Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
 But that defences, musters, preparations,
 Should be maintain'd, assembled and collected,
 As were a war in expectation.
 Therefore, I say 'tis meet we all go forth
 To view the sick and feeble parts of France:
 And let us do it with no show of fear;
 No, with no more than if we heard that England
 Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance:
 For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd,
 Her sceptre so fantastically borne
 By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
 That fear attends her not.

Constable O peace, Prince Dauphin!
 You are too much mistaken in this king:
 Question your grace the late ambassadors,
 With what great state he heard their embassy,
 How well supplied with noble counsellors,
 How modest in exception, and withal
 How terrible in constant resolution,
 And you shall find his vanities forespent
 Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
 Covering discretion with a coat of folly;
 As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
 That shall first spring and be most delicate.

DAUPHIN Well, 'tis not so, my lord high constable;
 But though we think it so, it is no matter:
 In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh
 The enemy more mighty than he seems:
 So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
 Which of a weak or niggardly projection
 Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
 A little cloth.

KING OF FRANCE                   Think we King Harry strong;
 And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
 The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;
 And he is bred out of that bloody strain
 That haunted us in our familiar paths:
 Witness our too much memorable shame
 When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
 And all our princes captiv'd by the hand
 Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;
 Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing,
 Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun,
 Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him,
 Mangle the work of nature and deface
 The patterns that by God and by French fathers
 Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
 Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
 The native mightiness and fate of him.

 [Enter a Messenger]

Messenger Ambassadors from Harry King of England
 Do crave admittance to your majesty.

KING OF FRANCE We'll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.

 [Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords]

 You see this chase is hotly follow'd, friends.

DAUPHIN Turn head, and stop pursuit; for coward dogs
 Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten
 Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,
 Take up the English short, and let them know
 Of what a monarchy you are the head:
 Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
 As self-neglecting.

 [Re-enter Lords, with EXETER and train]

KING OF FRANCE From our brother England?

EXETER From him; and thus he greets your majesty.
 He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
 That you divest yourself, and lay apart
 The borrow'd glories that by gift of heaven,
 By law of nature and of nations, 'long
 To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown
 And all wide-stretched honours that pertain
 By custom and the ordinance of times
 Unto the crown of France. That you may know
 'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,
 Pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd days,
 Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,
 He sends you this most memorable line,
 In every branch truly demonstrative;
 Willing to overlook this pedigree:
 And when you find him evenly derived
 From his most famed of famous ancestors,
 Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
 Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
 From him the native and true challenger.

KING OF FRANCE Or else what follows?

EXETER Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown
 Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it:
 Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
 In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
 That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
 And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
 Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
 On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
 Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
 Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries
 The dead men's blood, the pining maidens groans,
 For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers,
 That shall be swallow'd in this controversy.
 This is his claim, his threatening and my message;
 Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,
 To whom expressly I bring greeting too.

KING OF FRANCE For us, we will consider of this further:
 To-morrow shall you bear our full intent
 Back to our brother England.

DAUPHIN For the Dauphin,
 I stand here for him: what to him from England?

EXETER Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt,
 And any thing that may not misbecome
 The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.
 Thus says my king; an' if your father's highness
 Do not, in grant of all demands at large,
 Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty,
 He'll call you to so hot an answer of it,
 That caves and womby vaultages of France
 Shall chide your trespass and return your mock
 In second accent of his ordnance.

DAUPHIN Say, if my father render fair return,
 It is against my will; for I desire
 Nothing but odds with England: to that end,
 As matching to his youth and vanity,
 I did present him with the Paris balls.

EXETER He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
 Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe:
 And, be assured, you'll find a difference,
 As we his subjects have in wonder found,
 Between the promise of his greener days
 And these he masters now: now he weighs time
 Even to the utmost grain: that you shall read
 In your own losses, if he stay in France.

KING OF FRANCE To-morrow shall you know our mind at full.

EXETER Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
 Come here himself to question our delay;
 For he is footed in this land already.

KING OF FRANCE You shall be soon dispatch's with fair conditions:
 A night is but small breath and little pause
 To answer matters of this consequence.

 [Flourish. Exeunt]




 KING HENRY V


ACT III


 PROLOGUE.


 [Enter Chorus]

Chorus Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
 In motion of no less celerity
 Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
 The well-appointed king at Hampton pier
 Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet
 With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning:
 Play with your fancies, and in them behold
 Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
 Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
 To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,
 Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
 Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
 Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think
 You stand upon the ravage and behold
 A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
 For so appears this fleet majestical,
 Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow:
 Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,
 And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
 Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women,
 Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance;
 For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd
 With one appearing hair, that will not follow
 These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
 Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
 Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
 With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
 Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back;
 Tells Harry that the king doth offer him
 Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry,
 Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.
 The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner
 With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,

 [Alarum, and chambers go off]

 And down goes all before them. Still be kind,
 And eke out our performance with your mind.

 [Exit]




 KING HENRY V


ACT III