Henry V, William Shakespeare [romantic novels in english .txt] 📗

Henry V

By William Shakespeare.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Dramatis Personae Henry V Prologue Act I Scene I Scene II Act II Prologue Scene I Scene II Scene III Scene IV Act III Prologue Scene I Scene II Scene III Scene IV Scene V Scene VI Scene VII Act IV Prologue Scene I Scene II Scene III Scene IV Scene V Scene VI Scene VII Scene VIII Act V Prologue Scene I Scene II Epilogue Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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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

Earls of Salisbury, Westmoreland, and Warwick

Archbishop of Canterbury

Bishop of Ely

Earl of Cambridge

Lord Scroop

Sir Thomas Grey

Sir Thomas Erpingham, Gower, Fluellen, Macmorris, Jamy, officers in King Henry’s army

John Bates, Alexander Court, Michael Williams, soldiers in the same

Pistol, Nym, Bardolph

Boy

A herald

Charles VI, King of France

Lewis, the Dauphin

Dukes of Burgundy, Orleans, Bourbon

The Constable of France

Rambures and Grandpré, French lords

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 Nell Quickly, and now married to Pistol

Lords, ladies, officers, soldiers, citizens, messengers, and attendants

Chorus

Scene: England; afterwards France.

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!
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, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dared
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 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 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 hourglass: 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 I Scene I

London. An antechamber 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
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 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;
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.

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 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
And whipped 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 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,
The air, a charter’d