Henry V - William Shakespeare (booksvooks txt) 📗

place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear’d
Than they in fearing.
What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison’d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose;
I am a king that find thee, and I know
’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running ’fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the forehand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country’s peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages. Enter Erpingham. Erpingham

My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,
Seek through your camp to find you.

King Henry

Good old knight,
Collect them all together at my tent:
I’ll be before thee.

Erpingham I shall do’t, my lord. Exit. King Henry

O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not today, O Lord,
O, not today, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!
I Richard’s body have interred new;
And on it have bestow’d more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood:
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do;
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.

Enter Gloucester. Gloucester My liege! King Henry

My brother Gloucester’s voice? Ay;
I know thy errand, I will go with thee:
The day, my friends and all things stay for me. Exeunt.

Scene II

The French camp.

Enter the Dauphin, Orleans, Rambures, and others. Orleans The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords! Dauphin Monte à cheval! My horse! varlet! laquais! ha! Orleans O brave spirit! Dauphin Via! les eaux et la terre. Orleans Rien puis? l’air et le feu. Dauphin Ciel, cousin Orleans. Enter Constable. Now, my lord constable! Constable Hark, how our steeds for present service neigh! Dauphin

Mount them, and make incision in their hides,
That their hot blood may spin in English eyes,
And dout them with superfluous courage, ha!

Rambures

What, will you have them weep our horses’ blood?
How shall we, then, behold their natural tears?

Enter a Messenger. Messenger The English are embattled, you French peers. Constable

To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse!
Do but behold yon poor and starved band,
And your fair show shall suck away their souls,
Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.
There is not work enough for all our hands;
Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins
To give each naked curtle-axe a stain,
That our French gallants shall today draw out,
And sheathe for lack of sport: let us but blow on them,
The vapour of our valour will o’erturn them.
’Tis positive ’gainst all exceptions, lords,
That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants,
Who in unnecessary action swarm
About our squares of battle, were enough
To purge this field of such a hilding foe,
Though we upon this mountain’s basis by
Took stand for idle speculation:
But that our honours must not. What’s to say?
A very little little let us do,
And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound
The tucket sonance and the note to mount;
For our approach shall so much dare the field
That England shall crouch down in fear and yield.

Enter Grandpré. Grandpré

Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?
Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones,
Ill-favouredly become the morning field:
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
And our air shakes them passing scornfully:
Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar’d host
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps:
The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,
With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades
Lob down their heads, drooping the hides and hips,
The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes,
And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit
Lies foul with chew’d grass, still and motionless;
And their executors, the knavish crows,
Fly o’er them, all impatient for their hour.
Description cannot suit itself in words
To demonstrate the life of such a battle
In life so lifeless as it shows itself.

Constable They have said their prayers, and they stay for death. Dauphin

Shall we go send them dinners and fresh suits
And give their fasting horses provender,
And after fight with them?

Constable

I stay but for my guidon: to the field!
I will the banner from a trumpet take,
And use it for my haste. Come, come, away!
The sun is high, and we outwear the day. Exeunt.

Scene III

The English camp.

Enter Gloucester, Bedford, Exeter, Erpingham, with all his host: Salisbury and Westmoreland. Gloucester Where is the king? Bedford The king himself is rode to view their battle. Westmoreland Of fighting men they have full threescore thousand. Exeter There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh. Salisbury

God’s arm strike with us! ’tis a fearful odds.
God be wi’ you, princes all; I’ll to my charge:
If we no more meet till