ACT I SCENE I

Henry V

	*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!	5
	Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
	Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
	Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
	Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
	The flat unraised spirits that have dared	10
	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?	15
	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	20
	Are now confined 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 on man,	25
	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,	30
	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.	35
	Exit
ACT I 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 urged,
	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	40
	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	45
	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;	50
	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 the year: thus runs the bill.	55
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.	60
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,
	Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment
	Consideration, like an angel, came	65
	And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him,
	Leaving his body as a paradise,
	To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
	Never was such a sudden scholar made;
	Never came reformation in a flood,	70
	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.	75
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:	80
	List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
	A fearful battle render’d 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,	85
	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:	90
	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,	95
	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:	100
	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;	105
	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	110
	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,	115
	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	120
	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,	125
	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 the impediment that broke this off?	130
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.
CANTERBURY	Then go we in, to know his embassy;	135
	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

Henry V, Act 1, Scene 2