Henry V
ACT II SCENE II | Southampton. A council-chamber. | |
Enter EXETER, BEDFORD, and WESTMORELAND | ||
BEDFORD | ‘Fore God, his grace is bold, to trust these traitors. | |
EXETER | They shall be apprehended by and by. | |
WESTMORELAND | How smooth and even they do bear themselves! | |
As if allegiance in their bosoms sat, | 5 | |
Crowned with faith and constant loyalty. | ||
BEDFORD | The king hath note of all that they intend, | |
By interception which they dream not of. | ||
EXETER | Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow, | |
Whom he hath dull’d and cloy’d with gracious favours, | 10 | |
That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell | ||
His sovereign’s life to death and treachery. | ||
Trumpets sound. Enter KING HENRY V, SCROOP, CAMBRIDGE, GREY, and Attendants | ||
KING HENRY V | Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard. | |
My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham, | ||
And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts: | 15 | |
Think you not that the powers we bear with us | ||
Will cut their passage through the force of France, | ||
Doing the execution and the act | ||
For which we have in head assembled them? | ||
SCROOP | No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best. | 20 |
KING HENRY V | I doubt not that; since we are well persuaded | |
We carry not a heart with us from hence | ||
That grows not in a fair consent with ours, | ||
Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish | ||
Success and conquest to attend on us. | 25 | |
CAMBRIDGE | Never was monarch better fear’d and loved | |
Than is your majesty: there’s not, I think, a subject | ||
That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness | ||
Under the sweet shade of your government. | ||
GREY | True: those that were your father’s enemies | 30 |
Have steep’d their galls in honey and do serve you | ||
With hearts create of duty and of zeal. | ||
KING HENRY V | We therefore have great cause of thankfulness; | |
And shall forget the office of our hand, | ||
Sooner than quittance of desert and merit | 35 | |
According to the weight and worthiness. | ||
SCROOP | So service shall with steeled sinews toil, | |
And labour shall refresh itself with hope, | ||
To do your grace incessant services. | ||
KING HENRY V | We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter, | 40 |
Enlarge the man committed yesterday, | ||
That rail’d against our person: we consider | ||
it was excess of wine that set him on; | ||
And on his more advice we pardon him. | ||
SCROOP | That’s mercy, but too much security: | 45 |
Let him be punish’d, sovereign, lest example | ||
Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind. | ||
KING HENRY V | O, let us yet be merciful. | |
CAMBRIDGE | So may your highness, and yet punish too. | |
GREY | Sir, | 50 |
You show great mercy, if you give him life, | ||
After the taste of much correction. | ||
KING HENRY V | Alas, your too much love and care of me | |
Are heavy orisons ‘gainst this poor wretch! | ||
If little faults, proceeding on distemper, | 55 | |
Shall not be wink’d at, how shall we stretch our eye | ||
When capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d and digested, | ||
Appear before us? We’ll yet enlarge that man, | ||
Though Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, in their dear care | ||
And tender preservation of our person, | 60 | |
Would have him punished. And now to our French causes: | ||
Who are the late commissioners? | ||
CAMBRIDGE | I one, my lord: | |
Your highness bade me ask for it to-day. | ||
SCROOP | So did you me, my liege. | 65 |
GREY | And I, my royal sovereign. | |
KING HENRY V | Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours; | |
There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight, | ||
Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours: | ||
Read them; and know, I know your worthiness. | 70 | |
My Lord of Westmoreland, and uncle Exeter, | ||
We will aboard to night. Why, how now, gentlemen! | ||
What see you in those papers that you lose | ||
So much complexion? Look ye, how they change! | ||
Their cheeks are paper. Why, what read you there | 75 | |
That hath so cowarded and chased your blood | ||
Out of appearance? | ||
CAMBRIDGE | I do confess my fault; | |
And do submit me to your highness’ mercy. | ||
GREY | | | 80 |
| To which we all appeal. | ||
SCROOP | | | |
KING HENRY V | The mercy that was quick in us but late, | |
By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d: | ||
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy; | 85 | |
For your own reasons turn into your bosoms, | ||
As dogs upon their masters, worrying you. | ||
See you, my princes, and my noble peers, | ||
These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here, | ||
You know how apt our love was to accord | 90 | |
To furnish him with all appertinents | ||
Belonging to his honour; and this man | ||
Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired, | ||
And sworn unto the practises of France, | ||
To kill us here in Hampton: to the which | 95 | |
This knight, no less for bounty bound to us | ||
Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O, | ||
What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop? thou cruel, | ||
Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature! | ||
Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, | 100 | |
That knew’st the very bottom of my soul, | ||
That almost mightst have coin’d me into gold, | ||
Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use, | ||
May it be possible, that foreign hire | ||
Could out of thee extract one spark of evil | 105 | |
That might annoy my finger? ’tis so strange, | ||
That, though the truth of it stands off as gross | ||
As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it. | ||
Treason and murder ever kept together, | ||
As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose, | 110 | |
Working so grossly in a natural cause, | ||
That admiration did not whoop at them: | ||
But thou, ‘gainst all proportion, didst bring in | ||
Wonder to wait on treason and on murder: | ||
And whatsoever cunning fiend it was | 115 | |
That wrought upon thee so preposterously | ||
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence: | ||
All other devils that suggest by treasons | ||
Do botch and bungle up damnation | ||
With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch’d | 120 | |
From glistering semblances of piety; | ||
But he that temper’d thee bade thee stand up, | ||
Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason, | ||
Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor. | ||
If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus | 125 | |
Should with his lion gait walk the whole world, | ||
He might return to vasty Tartar back, | ||
And tell the legions ‘I can never win | ||
A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.’ | ||
O, how hast thou with ‘jealousy infected | 130 | |
The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful? | ||
Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned? | ||
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family? | ||
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious? | ||
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet, | 135 | |
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger, | ||
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood, | ||
Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement, | ||
Not working with the eye without the ear, | ||
And but in purged judgment trusting neither? | 140 | |
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem: | ||
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot, | ||
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued | ||
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee; | ||
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like | 145 | |
Another fall of man. Their faults are open: | ||
Arrest them to the answer of the law; | ||
And God acquit them of their practises! | ||
EXETER | I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of | |
Richard Earl of Cambridge. | 150 | |
I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of | ||
Henry Lord Scroop of Masham. | ||
I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of | ||
Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland. | ||
SCROOP | Our purposes God justly hath discover’d; | 155 |
And I repent my fault more than my death; | ||
Which I beseech your highness to forgive, | ||
Although my body pay the price of it. | ||
CAMBRIDGE | For me, the gold of France did not seduce; | |
Although I did admit it as a motive | 160 | |
The sooner to effect what I intended: | ||
But God be thanked for prevention; | ||
Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice, | ||
Beseeching God and you to pardon me. | ||
GREY | Never did faithful subject more rejoice | 165 |
At the discovery of most dangerous treason | ||
Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself. | ||
Prevented from a damned enterprise: | ||
My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign. | ||
KING HENRY V | God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence. | 170 |
You have conspired against our royal person, | ||
Join’d with an enemy proclaim’d and from his coffers | ||
Received the golden earnest of our death; | ||
Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter, | ||
His princes and his peers to servitude, | 175 | |
His subjects to oppression and contempt | ||
And his whole kingdom into desolation. | ||
Touching our person seek we no revenge; | ||
But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender, | ||
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws | 180 | |
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence, | ||
Poor miserable wretches, to your death: | ||
The taste whereof, God of his mercy give | ||
You patience to endure, and true repentance | ||
Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence. | 185 | |
Exeunt CAMBRIDGE, SCROOP and GREY, guarded | ||
Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof | ||
Shall be to you, as us, like glorious. | ||
We doubt not of a fair and lucky war, | ||
Since God so graciously hath brought to light | ||
This dangerous treason lurking in our way | 190 | |
To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now | ||
But every rub is smoothed on our way. | ||
Then forth, dear countrymen: let us deliver | ||
Our puissance into the hand of God, | ||
Putting it straight in expedition. | 195 | |
Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance: | ||
No king of England, if not king of France. | ||
Exeunt |
Henry V, Act 2, Scene 3