King Henry V | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by the PG Shakespeare Team,
a team of
about twenty Project Gutenberg volunteers.
THE LIFE OF KING HENRY V
by William Shakespeare
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.
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, officer in King
Henry's army.
GOWER, officer in King Henry's army.
FLUELLEN,
officer in King Henry's army.
MACMORRIS, officer in King Henry's
army.
JAMY, officer in King Henry's army.
BATES, soldier in the
same.
COURT, soldier in the same.
WILLIAMS, soldier in the
same.
PISTOL.
NYM.
BARDOLPH.
BOY.
A Herald.
CHARLES VI, king of France.
LEWIS, the Dauphin.
DUKE OF
BURGUNDY.
DUKE OF ORLEANS.
DUKE OF BOURBON.

The Constable of France.
RAMBURES, French Lord.

GRANDPRE, French Lord.
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 Quickly,
and now married to Pistol.
CHORUS.

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, and
Attendants.
SCENE: England; afterwards France.
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 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 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 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 the 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.
[Exit.]

ACT FIRST.
SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber 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 urg'd,

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 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 suppli'd;
And to