182

SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.

[EPILOGUE.]

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me: if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already 'a be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneel down before you; - but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

KING HENRY V.

DRAMATIS PERSONE

KING HENRY the Fifth.
DUKE OF GLOSTER, brothers to
DUKE OF BEDFORD, the King.
DUKE OF EXETER, uncle to the
King.

DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the
King.

EARL OF SALISBURY.

EARL OF WESTMORELAND.
EARL OF WARWICK.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
BISHOP OF ELY.

EARL OF CAMBRIDGE.
LORD SCROOP.

SIR THOMAS GREY.
SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM,
GOWER, FLUELLEN, MAC-
MORRIS, JAMY, officers in King
Henry's army.

JOHN BATES,

ALEXANDER COURT, MICHAEL WILLIAMS, soldiers in the same.

PISTOL.

NYM.

BARDOLPH.

Boy.
A Herald.

CHARLES the Sixth, king of
France.

LOUIS, the Dauphin.
DUKE OF BURGUNDY.
DUKE OF ORLEANS.
DUKE OF BOURBON.
The Constable of France.
RAMBURES, GRANDPRE, French
lords.

Governor of Harfleur.

MONTJOY, a French herald. Ambassadors to the King of Eng. land.

ISABEL, queen of France. KATHARINE, daughter to Charles and Isabel.

ALICE, a lady attending on her. Hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap (formerly Mistress Quickly, and now married to Pistol).

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, and

Attendants.

Chorus.

During the earlier part of the play in England, after

wards in France.

Enter Chorus.

Chor. 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 have dar'd
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 ✪ the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crookèd 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 confin'd 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 th' 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.

ACT I.

SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the King's palace.

Enter the Archbishop of CANTERBURY and the Bishop of ELY. Cant. My lord, I'll tell you,

that self bill is urg'd,

Which in th' 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 further question.

Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possessions;
For all the temporal lands, which men devout
By testament have given to the church,
Would they strip from us; being valu'd 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 th' year: thus runs the bill.
Ely. This would drink deep.

Cant.

Ely. But what prevention?

"Twould drink the cup and all.

Cant. The king is full of grace and fair regard.
Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.
Cant. The courses of his youth promis'd 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 whipp'd th' offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,

T'envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made;

Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady current, 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.
Cant. 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'd 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 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:

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,
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:

And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd;