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[first lines]
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 war-like Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, leashed in like hounds, would famine, word, and fire crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that hath dared 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
[gesturing around at the stage]
Chorus: the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt? 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: Think when we talk of horses that you see them printing their proud hoofs in 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.
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King Henry V of England: We charge you in the name of God, take heed how you awake our sleeping sword of war.
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King Henry V of England: We are no tyrant, but a Christian king.
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King Henry V of England: Tell us the Dauphin's mind.
Duke of Berri French Ambassador: Thus, then, in few. Your highness, lately sending into France, did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third. In answer of which claim, the prince our master says that you savour too much of your youth. He therefore sends you, fitter for your study, this tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this, desires you let the dukedoms that you claim hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
King Henry V of England: What treasure, Uncle.
Duke of Exeter: Tennis balls, my liege.
King Henry V of England: We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us; his present and your pains we thank you for: when we have march'd our rackets to these balls, We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set shall strike his father's crown into the hazards. Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler that all the courts of France will be disturbed with chaces. And we understand him well, how he comes o'er us with our wilder days, not measuring what use we made of them. But tell the Dauphin I will keep our state, be like a king and show my sail of greatness when I do rouse me in my throne of France. And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his hath turn'd his balls to gun-stones; and his soul shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance that shall fly with them: for many a thousand widows shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands; mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down!
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King Henry V of England: Tell the Dauphin his jest will savor but of shallow wit, when thousands weep more than did laugh at it.
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Mistress Quickly: We cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of their needles, but it will be thought we keep a bawdy house.
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Ancient Pistol: Pish for thee, Iceland dog! Thou prick-ear'd cur of Iceland!
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Ancient Pistol: I can take, and Pistol's cock is up, and flashing fire will follow.
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King Henry V of England: Then forth, dear countrymen: let us deliver our puissance into the hand of God, putting it straight in expedition. Cheerly to sea! The signs of war advance: No king of England, if not King of France.
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Mistress Quickly: Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines.
Ancient Pistol: No; for my manly heart doth yearn. Bardolph, be blithe: Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins: Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we must yearn therefore.
Boy: Well, Sir John is gone. God be with him.
Lieutenant Bardolph: Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell!
Mistress Quickly: Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom.
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The Dauphin: Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
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King Henry V of England: Once more unto the breach! Dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead!
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King Henry V of England: In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility. But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage; then lend the eye a terrible aspect; let pry through the portage of the head like the brass cannon; let the brow overwhelm it as fearfully as doth a galled rock Overhang and jutty his confounded base, swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit to his full height. On, on, you noblest English. Whose blood is fet from fathers of war proof! Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, have in these parts from morn till even fought and sheathed their swords for lack of argument. Dishonor not your mothers; now attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you. Be copy now to men of grosser blood and teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman, whose limbs were made in England, show us here the mettle of your pasture; let us swear that you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not; for there is none of you so mean and base, that hath not noble luster in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start.
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King Henry V of England: The game's afoot: Follow your spirit and upon this charge cry, 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'
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Boy: Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.
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Fluellen - Captain in the English Army: Up to the breach, you dogs! Avaunt, you cullions!
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Fluellen - Captain in the English Army: He has no more directions in the true disciplines of the wars, look you, of the Roman disciplines, than is a puppy dog.
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Duke of Bourbon: Normans, but bastard Normans! Norman bastards! Mort de ma vie! If they march along unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom, to buy a slobbery and a dirty farm in that nook-shotten isle of Albion.
Duke of Orleans: Dieu de batailles! Where have they this mettle? Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull, on whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale, killing their fruit with frowns? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, seem frosty?
Duke of Bourbon: By faith and honor, our madams mock at us, and plainly say our mettle is bred out and they will give their bodies to the lust of English youth to new-store France with bastard warriors.
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The Dauphin: I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: 'Wonder of nature -'
Duke of Bourbon: I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress.
The Dauphin: Then did they imitate that which I composed to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.
The Constable of France: Methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back.
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Gower - Captain in the English Army: Captain Fluellen? - - Captain Fluellen!
Fluellen - Captain in the English Army: Shh! Shh! In the name of Beelzebub, speak lower. If you would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great, you shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle toddle nor pibble pabble in Pompey's camp. I warrant you, you shall find the ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it, to be otherwise.
Gower - Captain in the English Army: Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.
Fluellen - Captain in the English Army: If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? In your own conscience, now?
Gower - Captain in the English Army: I will speak lower.
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Bates - Soldier in the English Army: If we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.
Williams - Soldier in the English Army: But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afraid there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.
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King Henry V of England: Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.
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Bates - Soldier in the English Army: Be friends, you English fools, be friends! We have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to reckon.
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King Henry V of England: What infinite heart's-ease must kings forgo, that private men enjoy? And what have kings, that privates have not too, save ceremony? And what art thou, thou idle ceremony, that suffer'st more of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, but poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, and bid thy ceremony give thee cure! Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, that play'st so subtly with a king's repose; I am a king that find thee, and I know 'tis not the orb and sceptre, crown imperial, the throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp that beats upon the high shore of this world. Not all these, laid in bed majestical, can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, who with a body fill'd and vacant mind gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread; never sees horrid night, the child of hell.
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King Henry V of England: O, God of battles! Steel my soldiers' hearts; possess them not with fear; take from them now the sense of reckoning, lest the opposed numbers pluck their hearts from them.
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The Constable of France: Hark, how our steeds for present service neigh!
The Dauphin: Mount them and make incision in their hides, That their hot blood may spin in English eyes and quench them with superfluous courage, ha!
The French Messenger: The English are embattled, you French peers.
The Constable of France: A very little little let us do. And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound! The tucket sonance and the note to mount. Come, come, away! The sun is high and we outwear the day.
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Earl of Westmoreland: O, that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!
King Henry V of England: What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin: If we are mark'd to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live. The fewer men, the greater share of honor. God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this feast, let him depart. His passport shall be drawn and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us.
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King Henry V of England: This day is called the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when the day is named and rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, and say 'Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.' Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember with advantages what feats he did that day. Then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words: Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son; and Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile. This day shall gentle his condition and gentlemen in England now a-bed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
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King Henry V of England: A many of our bodies shall no doubt find native graves; upon the which, I trust, shall witness live in brass of this day's work. And those that leave their valiant bones in France, dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, they shall be famed; for there the sun shall greet them, and draw their honors reeking up to heaven; leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, the smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.
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King Henry V of England: Let me speak proudly: tell the constable we are but warriors for the working-day. Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd with rainy marching in the painful field.
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Duke of Exeter: Here comes the Herald of the French, my liege.
Duke of Gloucester: His eyes are humbler than they used to be.
King Henry V of England: What means this, Herald? Comest thou again for ransom?
Mountjoy, The French Herald: No, great King: I come to thee for charitable license, that we may wander o'er this bloody field to look our dead and then to bury them. The day is yours.
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King Henry V of England: What is this castle called that stands hard by?
Mountjoy, The French Herald: They call it - Agincourt.
King Henry V of England: Then call we this the field of Agincourt, fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.
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King Henry V of England: Go we in procession to the village. Let there be sung 'Non nobis' and 'Te Deum;' The dead with charity enclosed in clay. And then - to Paris and to England then: Where ne'er from France arrived - more happier men.
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Gower - Captain in the English Army: Here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock!
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Fluellen - Captain in the English Army: Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at 'em; that is all.
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Ancient Pistol: Doth Fortune play the strumpet with me now?
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Queen Isabel of France: This day shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.
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King Henry V of England: Fair Katharine, and most fair, will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms such as will enter at a lady's ear and plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?
Princess Katherine: Your majesty shall mock at me; I cannot speak your England.
King Henry V of England: O fair Katharine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you - like me, Kate?
Princess Katherine: Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is 'like me.'
King Henry V of England: An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.
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King Henry V of England: A speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow; but, a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king.
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Princess Katherine: Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?
King Henry V of England: No, Kate; but, in loving me, you would love the friend of France; for I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it. And Kate, when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine.
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King Henry V of England: You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate.
Henry V Quotes
Extended Reading
