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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.
ActI
SceneI
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
