Duke of Exeter, Uncle to the King.

Duke of York, Cousin to the King.

Earls of Salisbury, Westmoreland, and Warwick.
Archbishop of Canterbury.

Bishop of Ely.

Earl of Cambridge,

LORD SCROOP,

SIR THOMAS GREY,

·Conspirators against the King.

SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, GOWER, FLUELLEN, MACMORRIS, JAMY, Officers in King Henry's Army.

BATES, COURT, WILLIAMS, Soldiers in the same.

NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, formerly Servants to Falstaff, now Soldiers in the same.

Boy, Servant to them. A Herald. Chorus.

CHARLES THE SIXTH, King of France.

LEWIS, the Dauphin.

Dukes of Burgundy, Orleans, and Bourbon.

The Constable of France.

RAMBURES and GRANDPREE, French Lords.

Governor of Harfleur.

MONTJOY, a French Herald.

Ambassadors to the King of England.

ISABEL, Queen of France.

KATHARINE, Daughter of Charles and Isabel.
ALICE, a Lady attending on the Princess Katharine.

QUICKLY, Pistol's Wife, an Hostess.

Lords, Ladies, Officers, French and English Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants.

The SCENE, at the beginning of the Play, lies in England; but afterwards wholly in France.

Enter 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 spirit, 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 casques1,
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 2 work:
Suppose, within the girdle of these walls

1

• Within this wooden O, the very casques.'

O for circle, alluding to the circular form of the theatre. The very casques does not mean the identical casques, but the casques alone, or merely the casques. Thus in The Taming of the Shrew, Katharine says to Grumio :

Thou false deluding slave,

That feedest me with the very name of meat.'

i. e. the name only of meat.

2 Imaginary forces.' Imaginary for imaginative, or your powers of fancy. The active and passive are often confounded by old writers.

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.

KING HENRY V.

ACT I.

SCENE I. London1. An Antechamber in the
King's Palace.

Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop of
Ely 2.
Canterbury.

My lord, I'll tell you, that self bill is urg'd,
Which in the eleventh year o'the last king's reign
Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,
But that the scambling3 and unquiet time
Did push it out of further 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,

1 This first scene was added in the folio, together with the choruses, and other amplifications. It appears from Hall and Holinshed that the events passed at Leicester, where King Henry V. held a parliament in the second year of his reign. But the chorus at the beginning of the second act shows that the poet intended to make London the place of his first scene.

་

2 Canterbury and Ely.' Henry Chicheley, a Carthusian monk, recently promoted to the see of Canterbury. John Fordham, bishop of Ely, consecrated 1388, died 1426.

3 i. e. scrambling. Vide note on Much Ado About Nothing, Act v. Sc. 1, p. 198.

+ Question is debate.

VOL. V.

M M

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,
A hundred alms-houses, 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. 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 promis'd it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too5: 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 envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made:
Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady current, scouring faults;
Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness

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

We are blessed in the change.

Ely.
Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity,

5 'The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,

Seem'd to die too.'

The same thought occurs in the preceding play, where King