Prevented from a damned enterprise: 163 ly fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign. King. God quit you in his mercy! Hear

your sentence.

You have conspir'd against our royal person, Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd and from his coffers

Receiv'd the golden earnest1 of our death; Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,

170

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,2
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 179
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear3 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.5
Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance:
No king of England, if not king of France.

190

Host. Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom,9 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 hop'd 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.] 28 Nym. They say he cried out of sack. Host. Ay, that a' did.

Flourish. Enter the FRENCH KING attended; the DAUPHIN, the DUKE OF BURGUNDY, the CONSTABLE, and others.

Fr. 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 Bretagne,
Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,3
And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dis-
patch,

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 fear may teach us out of late examples
Left by the fatal and neglected English
Upon our fields. ]

Dau.

10

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,

20

But that defences, musters, preparations,
Should be maintain'd, assembled and collected,
As were a war in expectation.
Therefore, I say 't is 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.

30

Con. 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 embassy, How well supplied with noble counsellors, How modest in exception, and withal How terrible in constant 10 resolution, And you shall find his vanities forespent11 Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus, Covering discretion with a coat of folly; [As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots That shall first spring and be most delicate.]

Dau. Well, 't is not so, my lord high constable;

41

5 England, the king of England.

10 Constant, firm.

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.

know

80

That you may

Tis no sinister1 nor no awkward claim,
[Pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd
days,

Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak'd, ]
He sends you this most memorable line,2
In every branch truly demonstrative;
Willing you overlook3 this pedigree: ]
And when you find him evenly deriv'd
From his most fam'd 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?

90

130

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. Exe. He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it, Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe: And, be assur'd, 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.

140

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. [Flourish. Exeunt.

Embark his royalty,1 and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus fan-
ning:

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 confus'd; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th' invisible and creeping wind,
Draw thehuge bottoms throughthe furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think 13
You stand upon the rivage2 and behold
A city on th' inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow:
Grapple your minds to sternage3 of this navy,
And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
[Guarded with grandsires, babies and old