The Life of King Henry the Fifth ebook

Contents

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

PROLOGUE.

ACT FIRST

SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the King's palace.

SCENE II. The same. The presence chamber.

ACT SECOND

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 THIRD

PROLOGUE.

SCENE I. France. Before Harfleur.

SCENE II. The same.

SCENE III. 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 FOURTH

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 FIFTH

PROLOGUE.

SCENE I. France. The English camp.

SCENE II. France. A royal palace.

EPILOGUE.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

KING HENRY V.

DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, brother to the King.

DUKE OF BEDFORD, brother to the King.

DUKE OF EXETER, uncle to the King.

DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the King.

EARL OF SALISBURY.

EARL OF WESTMORELAND.

EARL OF WARWICK.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

BISHOP OF ELY.

EARL OF CAMBRIDGE.

LORD SCROOP.

SIR THOMAS GREY.

SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, officer in King Henry’s army.

GOWER, officer in King Henry’s army.

FLUELLEN, officer in King Henry’s army.

MACMORRIS, officer in King Henry’s army.

JAMY, officer in King Henry’s army.

BATES, soldier in the same.

COURT, soldier in the same.

WILLIAMS, soldier in the same.

PISTOL.

NYM.

BARDOLPH.

BOY.

A Herald.

CHARLES VI, king of France.

LEWIS, the Dauphin.

DUKE OF BURGUNDY.

DUKE OF ORLEANS.

DUKE OF BOURBON.

The Constable of France.

RAMBURES, French Lord.

GRANDPRE, French Lord.

Governor of Harfleur

MONTJOY, a French herald.

Ambassadors to the King of England.

ISABEL, queen of France.

KATHARINE, daughter to Charles and Isabel.

ALICE, a lady attending on her.

HOSTESS of a tavern in Eastcheap, formerly Mistress Quickly,

and now married to Pistol.

CHORUS.

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, and Attendants.

SCENE: England; afterwards France.

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,

Mars; and at his heels,

Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirits that hath dar’d

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 confin’d 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 one 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.]

ACT FIRST

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 urg’d,

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 valu’d 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 suppli’d;

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 promis’d it not.

The breath no sooner left his father’s body,

But that his wildness, mortifi’d 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 envelope 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 rend’red 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 obscur’d 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 ceas’d,

And therefore we must needs admit the means

How things are perfected.

ELY.

But, my good lord,

How now for mitigation of this bill

Urg’d 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.

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