Henry V - William Shakespeare (booksvooks txt) 📗

a motive
The sooner to effect what I intended:
But God be thanked for prevention;
Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,
Beseeching God and you to pardon me. Grey

Never did faithful subject more rejoice
At the discovery of most dangerous treason
Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself,
Prevented from a damned enterprise:
My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

King Henry

God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
You have conspired against our royal person,
Join’d with an enemy proclaim’d and from his coffers
Received the golden earnest of our death;
Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,
His subjects to oppression and contempt
And his whole kingdom into desolation.
Touching our person seek we no revenge;
But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death:
The taste whereof, God of his mercy give
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence. Exeunt Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, guarded.
Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof
Shall be to you, as us, like glorious.
We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,
Since God so graciously hath brought to light
This dangerous treason lurking in our way
To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now
But every rub is smoothed on our way.
Then forth, dear countrymen: let us deliver
Our puissance into the hand of God,
Putting it straight in expedition.
Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance:
No king of England, if not king of France. Exeunt.

Scene III

London. Before a tavern.

Enter Pistol, Hostess, Nym, Bardolph and Boy. Hostess Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines. Pistol

No; for my manly heart doth yearn.
Bardolph, be blithe: Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins:
Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead,
And we must yearn therefore.

Bardolph Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is, either in heaven or in hell! Hostess Nay, sure, he’s not in hell: he’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom. A’ made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a’ parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o’ the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a’ babbled of green fields. “How now, Sir John!” quoth I: “what, man! be o’ good cheer.” So a’ cried out, “God, God, God!” three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a’ should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a’ bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone. Nym They say he cried out of sack. Hostess Ay, that a’ did. Bardolph And of women. Hostess Nay, that a’ did not. Boy Yes, that a’ did; and said they were devils incarnate. Hostess A’ could never abide carnation; ’twas a colour he never liked. Boy A’ said once, the devil would have him about women. Hostess A’ did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic, and talk’d of the whore of Babylon. Boy Do you not remember, a’ saw a flea stick upon Bardolph’s nose, and a’ said it was a black soul burning in hellfire? Bardolph Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that fire: that’s all the riches I got in his service. Nym Shall we shog? the king will be gone from Southampton. Pistol

Come, let’s away. My love, give me thy lips.
Look to my chattels and my movables:
Let senses rule; the word is “Pitch and Pay:”
Trust none;
For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes,
And holdfast is the only dog, my duck:
Therefore, Caveto be thy counsellor.
Go, clear thy crystals. Yoke-fellows in arms,
Let us to France; like horse-leeches, my boys,
To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!

Boy And that’s but unwholesome food, they say. Pistol Touch her soft mouth, and march. Bardolph Farewell, hostess. Kissing her. Nym I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but, adieu. Pistol Let housewifery appear: keep close, I thee command. Hostess Farewell; adieu. Exeunt. Scene IV

France. The King’s palace.

Flourish. Enter the French King, the Dauphin, the Dukes of Berri and Brittagne, the Constable, and others. French King

Thus comes the English with full power upon us;
And more than carefully it us concerns
To answer royally in our defences.
Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Brittagne,
Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,
And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,
To line and new repair our towns of war
With men of courage and with means defendant;
For England his approaches makes as fierce
As waters to the sucking of a gulf.
It fits us then to be as provident
As fears may teach us out of late examples
Left by the fatal and neglected English
Upon our fields.

Dauphin

My most redoubted father,
It is most meet we arm us ’gainst the foe;
For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
But that defences, musters, preparations,
Should be maintain’d, assembled and collected,
As were a war in expectation.
Therefore, I say, ’tis meet we all go forth
To view the sick and feeble parts of France:
And let us do it with no show of fear;
No, with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance:
For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d,
Her sceptre so fantastically borne
By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
That fear attends her not.

Constable

O peace, Prince Dauphin!
You are too much mistaken in this king:
Question your grace the late ambassadors,
With what great state he heard their