Of what a monarchy you are the head:
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
As self-neglecting.

Re-enter Lords, with EXETER and train.

Fr. King.

From our brother England?

Exe. From him; and thus he greets your majesty.

He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
That you divest yourself, and lay apart
The borrow'd glories that by gift of heaven,
By law of nature and of nations, 'long
To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown
And all wide-stretched honours that pertain
By custom and the ordinance of times
Unto the crown of France.

That you may know 'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,

Pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd days,
Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,
He sends you this most memorable line,
In every branch truly demonstrative;
Willing you overlook this pedigree:
And when you find him evenly derived
From his most famed of famous ancestors,
Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
From him the native and true challenger.
Fr. King. Or else what follows?

Exe. Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown
Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it :
Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That, if requiring fail, he will compel;

85. sinister, unfair.

ib. awkward, perverse.
94. indirectly, wrongfully.

80

100

95. challenger, claimant.
99. fierce (two syllables).
IOI. requiring, demanding.

And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,
The dead men's blood, the pining maidens' groans,
For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers,
That shall be swallow'd in this controversy.
This is his claim, his threatening and my message; 110
Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,

To whom expressly I bring greeting too.

Fr. King. For us, we will consider of this
further:

To-morrow shall you bear our full intent
Back to our brother England.

Dau.

For the Dauphin,

I stand here for him: what to him from England?
Exe. Scorn and defiance; slight regard, con-

tempt,

And any thing that may not misbecome
The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.
Thus says my king; an if your father's highness
Do not, in grant of all demands at large,
Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty,
He'll call you to so hot an answer of it,
That caves and womby vaultages of France
Shall chide your trespass and return your mock
In second accent of his ordinance.

Dau. Say, if my father render fair return,
It is against my will; for I desire

Nothing but odds with England: to that end,
As matching to his youth and vanity,

I did present him with the Paris balls.

102. in the bowels of the Lord, in the name of the divine mercy (Holinshed's phrase).

120

130

124. womby vaultages, hollow

caverns.

Exe. He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe:
And, be assured, you'll find a difference,
As we his subjects have in wonder found,
Between the promise of his greener days

And these he masters now: now he weighs time
Even to the utmost grain: that you shall read
In your own losses, if he stay in France.

Fr. King. To-morrow shall you know our mind at full.

Exe. Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king

Come here himself to question our delay;

For he is footed in this land already.

Fr. King. You shall be soon dispatch'd with fair conditions:

A night is but small breath and little pause
To answer matters of this consequence.

140

[Flourish. Exeunt.

ACT III.

PROLOGUE.

Enter Chorus.

Chor. Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies

In motion of no less celerity

Than that of thought. Suppose that you have

seen

137. masters, possesses, dis

poses of.

145. breath, breathing-space.

1. imagined wing, on wings of imagination.

The well-appointed king at Hampton pier
Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning:
Play with your fancies, and in them behold
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,

Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow:
Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,
And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women,
Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance;
For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd
With one appearing hair, that will not follow
These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France ?
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a

siege;

Behold the ordnance on their carriages,

With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
Suppose the ambassador from the French comes

back;

Tells Harry that the king doth offer him
Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry,
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.

4. Hampton. Theobald's correction. Ff (through an oversight) read Dover.'

5. brave, gaily decked. 6. the young Phœbus fanning, fluttering in the morning sun. 14. rivage, shore.

ΤΟ

20

30

17. Harfleur. Qq Ff give the popular form of the name Harflew' (Holinshed, 'Harflue').

18. to sternage of, astern of. 28. Suppose, etc. This embassy actually met Henry at Winchester.

The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
[Alarum, and chambers go off.
And down goes all before them. Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with your mind.

[Exit.

SCENE I. France. Before Harfleur.

Alarum. Enter KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, and Soldiers, with scalingladders.

K. Hen. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more ;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspéct ;
Let it pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

33. linstock, the stick to which the gunner's match was attached.

33. chambers, small cannon, loaded by a movable 'chamber' at the breech.

8. hard-favour'd, grim-looking.

10. portage, 'port-holes,' i. e. eye-sockets.

13. jutty, jet or project over. ib. confounded, destroyed, swallowed up.

16. bend up as in stringing a bow.