of KING HENRY V

The Prologue

RUMOUR appears as Chorus (1)

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 (2) of Mars; and, at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and
fire, (3)

Crouch for employment.

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.

(1) Chorus is used only four times by Shakespeare: in King Henry V., Rumour; in Romeo and Juliet; in Winter's Tale, Time; and in Timon of Athens, Gower. Though Shakespeare denominates "Rumour as Chorus " in King Henry V., Charles Kean departed from that characterization and introduced "Clio, Muse of History, as Chorus," and other productions have borrowed the idea of "Father Time, as Chorus " from Winter's Tale. (2) That is, deportment, carriage. From the French portée. (3) Holinshed says that Henry V. declared to the people of Rouen "that the goddesse of battell, called Bellona, had three handmaidens, ever of necessitie attending upon her, as blood, fire, and famine.”

The FIRST Scene

(A Corridor in the Palace at Westminster)

Enter, from Left, the ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY (1) and the BISHOP of ELY (2)

CANTERBURY (Left Centre)

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 (3) and unquiet time
Did push it out of farther question.

ELY (Right Centre)

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.

This would drink deep.

ELY

Thus runs the bill.

CANTERBURY

'Twould drink the cup and all. ELY

But what prevention?

CANTERBURY

The king is full of grace and fair regard.

ELY

And a true lover of holy church.

(1) Henry Chicheley, a Carthusian monk, recently promoted to that see. (2) John Fordham, consecrated 1388, died 1426. (3) Scrambling, according to Percy. The time when authority is unrespected, says Knight.

CANTERBURY

The courses of his youth promis'd it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,(1)
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

To envelope and contain celestial spirits.

ELY

We are blessed in the change. CANTERBURY

Hear him but reason in divinity,

And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

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

You would say it hath been all in all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered 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;
So that the art and practic (2) part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric (3):
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,

(1) There is a theory among historians that Prince Hal assumed his wildness of the Boar's Head days to dissipate the jealousy and regicidal fears of his father, King Henry IV. (2) Practical. (3) Theory.

Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.

ELY

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive (1) in his faculty.

CANTERBURY

It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd,
And therefore we must needs admit the means
How things are perfected.

Or rather swaying more upon our part
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us;
For I have made an offer to his majesty,-
Upon our spiritual convocation

And in regard of causes now in hand,
Which I have open'd to his grace at large,
As touching France,-to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

¶(1) Increasing. Only use of crescive by Shakespeare.

ELY

How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord?

CANTERBURY

With good acceptance of his majesty;
Save that there was not time enough to hear,
As I perceiv'd his grace would fain have done,
The severals and unhidden passages

Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms,
And generally to the crown and seat of France
Deriv'd from Edward, his great-grandfather.

ELY

What was th' impediment that broke this off?
CANTERBURY

The French ambassador upon that instant
Crav'd audience; and the hour, I think, is come,
To give him hearing. Is it four o'clock?

It is.

ELY

CANTERBURY (crossing to Right)

Then we go in, to know his embassy,
Which I could with a ready guess declare,
Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.

ELY

I'll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.