The Life Of King Henry The Fifth

1 Flourish. Enter the French King, the Dauphin, the Dukes of Berry and
2 Brittany, the Constable and others.
3 FRENCH KING.
4 Thus comes the English with full power upon us,
5 And more than carefully it us concerns
6 To answer royally in our defences.
7 Therefore the Dukes of Berry and of Brittany,
8 Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,
9 And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,
10 To line and new repair our towns of war
11 With men of courage and with means defendant;
12 For England his approaches makes as fierce
13 As waters to the sucking of a gulf.
14 It fits us then to be as provident
15 As fears may teach us out of late examples
16 Left by the fatal and neglected English
17 Upon our fields.
18 DAUPHIN.
19 My most redoubted father,
20 It is most meet we arm us ’gainst the foe;
21 For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
22 Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
23 But that defences, musters, preparations,
24 Should be maintain’d, assembled, and collected,
25 As were a war in expectation.
26 Therefore, I say, ’tis meet we all go forth
27 To view the sick and feeble parts of France.
28 And let us do it with no show of fear;
29 No, with no more than if we heard that England
30 Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance;
31 For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d,
32 Her sceptre so fantastically borne
33 By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
34 That fear attends her not.
35 CONSTABLE.
36 O peace, Prince Dauphin!
37 You are too much mistaken in this king.
38 Question your Grace the late ambassadors
39 With what great state he heard their embassy,
40 How well supplied with noble counsellors,
41 How modest in exception, and withal
42 How terrible in constant resolution,
43 And you shall find his vanities forespent
44 Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
45 Covering discretion with a coat of folly;
46 As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
47 That shall first spring and be most delicate.
48 DAUPHIN.
49 Well, ’tis not so, my Lord High Constable;
50 But though we think it so, it is no matter.
51 In cases of defence ’tis best to weigh
52 The enemy more mighty than he seems,
53 So the proportions of defence are fill’d;
54 Which, of a weak and niggardly projection,
55 Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
56 A little cloth.
57 FRENCH KING.
58 Think we King Harry strong;
59 And, Princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
60 The kindred of him hath been flesh’d upon us;
61 And he is bred out of that bloody strain
62 That haunted us in our familiar paths.
63 Witness our too much memorable shame
64 When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
65 And all our princes captiv’d by the hand
66 Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;
67 Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing,
68 Up in the air, crown’d with the golden sun,
69 Saw his heroical seed, and smil’d to see him,
70 Mangle the work of nature and deface
71 The patterns that by God and by French fathers
72 Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
73 Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
74 The native mightiness and fate of him.
75 Enter a Messenger.
76 MESSENGER.
77 Ambassadors from Harry King of England
78 Do crave admittance to your Majesty.
79 FRENCH KING.
80 We’ll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.
81 [_Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords._]
82 You see this chase is hotly follow’d, friends.
83 DAUPHIN.
84 Turn head and stop pursuit; for coward dogs
85 Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten
86 Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,
87 Take up the English short, and let them know
88 Of what a monarchy you are the head.
89 Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
90 As self-neglecting.
91 Enter Exeter.
92 FRENCH KING.
93 From our brother of England?
94 EXETER.
95 From him; and thus he greets your Majesty:
96 He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
97 That you divest yourself, and lay apart
98 The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven,
99 By law of nature and of nations, ’longs
100 To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown
101 And all wide-stretched honours that pertain
102 By custom and the ordinance of times
103 Unto the crown of France. That you may know
104 ’Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim
105 Pick’d from the worm-holes of long-vanish’d days,
106 Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak’d,
107 He sends you this most memorable line,
108 In every branch truly demonstrative;
109 Willing you overlook this pedigree;
110 And when you find him evenly deriv’d
111 From his most fam’d of famous ancestors,
112 Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
113 Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
114 From him, the native and true challenger.
115 FRENCH KING.
116 Or else what follows?
117 EXETER.
118 Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown
119 Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it.
120 Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
121 In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
122 That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
123 And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
124 Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
125 On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
126 Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
127 Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries,
128 The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans,
129 For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers,
130 That shall be swallowed in this controversy.
131 This is his claim, his threat’ning, and my message;
132 Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,
133 To whom expressly I bring greeting too.
134 FRENCH KING.
135 For us, we will consider of this further.
136 Tomorrow shall you bear our full intent
137 Back to our brother of England.
138 DAUPHIN.
139 For the Dauphin,
140 I stand here for him. What to him from England?
141 EXETER.
142 Scorn and defiance. Slight regard, contempt,
143 And anything that may not misbecome
144 The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.
145 Thus says my king: an if your father’s Highness
146 Do not, in grant of all demands at large,
147 Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his Majesty,
148 He’ll call you to so hot an answer of it
149 That caves and womby vaultages of France
150 Shall chide your trespass and return your mock
151 In second accent of his ordinance.
152 DAUPHIN.
153 Say, if my father render fair return,
154 It is against my will; for I desire
155 Nothing but odds with England. To that end,
156 As matching to his youth and vanity,
157 I did present him with the Paris balls.
158 EXETER.
159 He’ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
160 Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe;
161 And, be assur’d, you’ll find a difference,
162 As we his subjects have in wonder found,
163 Between the promise of his greener days
164 And these he masters now. Now he weighs time
165 Even to the utmost grain. That you shall read
166 In your own losses, if he stay in France.
167 FRENCH KING.
168 Tomorrow shall you know our mind at full.
169 [_Flourish._]
170 EXETER.
171 Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
172 Come here himself to question our delay;
173 For he is footed in this land already.
174 FRENCH KING.
175 You shall be soon dispatch’d with fair conditions.
176 A night is but small breath and little pause
177 To answer matters of this consequence.
178 [_Exeunt._]