Henry V

Henry V
By William Shakespeare.




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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