Henry V

claiming from the female,

And rather choose to hide them in a net

Than amply to imbar their crooked titles

Usurp’d from you and your progenitors.

King Henry
May I with right and conscience make this claim?


Canterbury

The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!

For in the Book of Numbers is it writ,

When the man dies, let the inheritance

Descend unto the daughter. Gracious lord,

Stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag;

Look back into your mighty ancestors:

Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb,

From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,

And your great-uncle’s, Edward the Black Prince,

Who on the French ground play’d a tragedy,

Making defeat on the full power of France,

Whiles his most mighty father on a hill

Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp

Forage in blood of French nobility.

O noble English, that could entertain

With half their forces the full pride of France

And let another half stand laughing by,

All out of work and cold for action!



Ely

Awake remembrance of these valiant dead

And with your puissant arm renew their feats:

You are their heir; you sit upon their throne;

The blood and courage that renowned them

Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege

Is in the very May-morn of his youth,

Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.



Exeter

Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth

Do all expect that you should rouse yourself,

As did the former lions of your blood.



Westmoreland

They know your grace hath cause and means and might;

So hath your highness; never king of England

Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,

Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England

And lie pavilion’d in the fields of France.



Canterbury

O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege,

With blood and sword and fire to win your right;

In aid whereof we of the spiritualty

Will raise your highness such a mighty sum

As never did the clergy at one time

Bring in to any of your ancestors.



King Henry

We must not only arm to invade the French,

But lay down our proportions to defend

Against the Scot, who will make road upon us

With all advantages.



Canterbury

They of those marches, gracious sovereign,

Shall be a wall sufficient to defend

Our inland from the pilfering borderers.



King Henry

We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,

But fear the main intendment of the Scot,

Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us;

For you shall read that my great-grandfather

Never went with his forces into France

But that the Scot on his unfurnish’d kingdom

Came pouring, like the tide into a breach,

With ample and brim fullness of his force,

Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,

Girdling with grievous siege castles and towns;

That England, being empty of defence,

Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighbourhood.



Canterbury

She hath been then more fear’d than harm’d, my liege;

For hear her but exampled by herself:

When all her chivalry hath been in France

And she a mourning widow of her nobles,

She hath herself not only well defended

But taken and impounded as a stray

The King of Scots; whom she did send to France,

To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings

And make her chronicle as rich with praise

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea

With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.



Westmoreland

But there’s a saying very old and true,

“If that you will France win,

Then with Scotland first begin:”

For once the eagle England being in prey,

To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot

Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs,

Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,

To tear and havoc more than she can eat.



Exeter

It follows then the cat must stay at home:

Yet that is but a crush’d necessity,

Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries,

And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.

While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,

The advised head defends itself at home;

For government, though high and low and lower,

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,

Congreeing in a full and natural close,

Like music.



Canterbury

Therefore doth heaven divide

The state of man in diverse functions,

Setting endeavour in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience: for so work the honeybees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king and officers of sorts;

Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,

Which pillage they with merry march bring home

To the tent-royal of their emperor;

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,

The civil citizens kneading up the honey,

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,

The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,

Delivering o’er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,

That many things, having full reference

To one consent, may work contrariously:

As many arrows, loosed several ways,

Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;

As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;

As many lines close in the dial’s centre;

So many a thousand actions, once afoot,

End in one purpose, and be all well borne

Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege.

Divide your happy England into four;

Whereof take you one quarter into France,

And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.

If we, with thrice such powers left at home,

Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,

Let us be worried and our nation lose

The name of hardiness and policy.



King Henry

Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin. Exeunt some Attendants.

Now are we well resolved; and, by God’s help,

And yours, the noble sinews of our power,

France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe,

Or break it all to pieces: or there we’ll sit,

Ruling in large and ample empery

O’er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms,

Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,

Tombless, with no remembrance over them:

Either our history shall with full mouth

Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,

Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,

Not worshipp’d with a waxen epitaph.




Enter Ambassadors of France.




Now are we well prepared to know the pleasure

Of our fair cousin Dauphin; for we hear

Your greeting is from him, not from the king.



First Ambassador

May’t please your majesty to give us leave

Freely to render what we have in charge;

Or