Ch. Just. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet: Take all his company along with him.

Fal. My lord, my lord,

Ch. Just. I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon. 100 Take them away.

Pist. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero contenta.

[Exeunt all but Prince John and the Chief-Justice. Lan. I like this fair proceeding of the king's: He hath intent his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for;

But all are banish'd till their conversations

Appear more wise and modest to the world.
Ch. Just. And so they are.

Lan. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord.

Ch. Just. He hath.

Lan. I will lay odds that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords and native fire

As far as France: I heard a bird so sing,

Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.
Come, will you hence?

EPILOGUE.

Spoken by a Dancer.

110

[Exeunt.

First my fear; then my courtesy, last my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my courtesy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove my own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some and I will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me if the gen tlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much

cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

THE LIFE OF

KING HENRY THE FIFTH.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

KING HENRY the Fifth.

DUKE OF GLOUCESTER,
DUKE OF BEDford,
DUKE OF EXETER, uncle
King.

brothers
to the
King.
to the

DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the King.
EARLS OF SALISBURY, WESTMORE-
LAND, and WARWICK.
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
BISHOP OF ELY.
EARL OF CAMBRIDGE.
LORD SCROOP.

SIR THOMAS GREY.

SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, GOWER,
FLUELLEN, MACMORRIS, JAMY,
officers in King Henry's army.
BATES, COURT, WILLIAMS, Soldiers
in the same.

PISTOL, NYM, BARDOLPH.
Boy.

A Herald.

CHARLES the Sixth, King of
France.

LEWIS, the Dauphin.

DUKES OF BURGUNDY, ORLEANS,
and BOURBON.

The Constable of France.
RAMBURES and GRANDPRÉ, French
Lords.

Governor of Harfleur.
MONTJOY, a French Herald.
Ambassadors to the King of Eng-
land.

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
Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers,
Citizens, Messengers, and At-
tendants. Chorus,

SCENE: England; afterwards France.

PROLOGUE.

Enter Chorus.

Chor. 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 have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

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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 confined 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

Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,

Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;

Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play."

ACT I.

20

30

[Exit.

SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the KING's palace.

Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, and the BISHOP OF

ELY.

Cant. My lord, I'll tell you; that self bill is urged,

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?

Cant. 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 valued 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,

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A hundred almshouses right well supplied;

And to the coffers of the king beside,.

A thousand pounds by the year: thus runs the bill.
Ely. This would drink deep.

Cant.

"Twould drink the cup and all. 20 Ely. But what prevention?

Cant. The king is full of grace and fair regard.
Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.

Cant. The courses of his youth promised it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too; yea, at that very moment
Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,

30

To envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady currance, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness

So soon did lose his seat and all at once
As in this king.

Ely.

We are blessed in the change. Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity, And all-admiring with an inward wish

You would say it hath been all in all his study:

You would desire the king were made a prelate:
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

40

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,

To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences;

50

So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric:

Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain,

His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow,

His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports,
And never noted in him any study,

Any retirement, any sequestration

From open haunts and popularity.

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best

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