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