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France. An Apartment in the FRENCH KING’S Palace. | |
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Flourish. Enter the FRENCH KING, attended; the DAUPHIN, the DUKES OF BERRI AND BRITAINE, the CONSTABLE, and Others. | |
| Fr. King. Thus come the English with full power upon us; | |
| And more than carefully it us concerns | |
| To answer royally in our defences. | 5 |
| Therefore the Dukes of Berri and Britaine, | |
| Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth, | |
| And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch, | |
| To line and new repair our towns of war | |
| With men of courage and with means defendant: | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| Upon our fields. | |
| Dau. 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 ’tis meet we all go forth | |
| To view the sick and feeble parts of France: | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, | |
| That fear attends her not. | |
| Con. O peace, Prince Dauphin! | |
| You are too much mistaken in this king. | |
| Question your Grace the late ambassadors, | 35 |
| With what great state he heard their embassy, | |
| How well supplied with noble counsellors, | |
| How modest in exception, and, withal | |
| How terrible in constant resolution, | |
| And you shall find his vanities forespent | 40 |
| 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, ’tis not so, my lord high constable; | 45 |
| But though we think it so, it is no matter: | |
| In cases of defence ’tis best to weigh | |
| The enemy more mighty than he seems: | |
| So the proportions of defence are fill’d; | |
| Which of a weak and niggardly projection | 50 |
| Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scanting | |
| A little cloth. | |
| Fr. King. Think we King Harry strong; | |
| And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him. | |
| The kindred of him hath been flesh’d upon us, | 55 |
| And he is bred out of that bloody strain | |
| That haunted us in our familiar paths: | |
| Witness our too much memorable shame | |
| When Cressy battle fatally was struck | |
| And all our princes captiv’d by the hand | 60 |
| Of that black name, Edward Black Prince of Wales; | |
| Whiles that his mounting sire, on mountain standing, | |
| Up in the air, crown’d with the golden sun, | |
| Saw his heroical seed, and smil’d to see him | |
| Mangle the work of nature, and deface | 65 |
| The patterns that by God and by French fathers | |
| Had twenty years been made. This is a stem | |
| Of that victorious stock; and let us fear | |
| The native mightiness and fate of him. | |
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Enter a Messenger. | 70 |
| Mess. Ambassadors from Harry King of England | |
| Do crave admittance to your majesty. | |
| Fr. King. We’ll give them present audience. Go, and bring them. [Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords. | |
| You see this chase is hotly follow’d, friends. | |
| Dau. Turn head, and stop pursuit; for coward dogs | 75 |
| Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten | |
| Runs far before them. Good my sovereign, | |
| Take up the English short, and let them know | |
| Of what a monarchy you are the head: | |
| Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin | 80 |
| As self-neglecting. | |
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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, | 85 |
| 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 | 90 |
| By custom and the ordinance of times | |
| Unto the crown of France. That you may know | |
| ’Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim, | |
| Pick’d from the worm-holes of long-vanish’d days, | |
| Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak’d, | 95 |
| He sends you this most memorable line, [Gives a pedigree. | |
| In every branch truly demonstrative; | |
| Willing you overlook this pedigree; | |
| And when you find him evenly deriv’d | |
| From his most fam’d of famous ancestors, | 100 |
| 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? | |
| Exe. Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown | 105 |
| Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it: | |
| Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, | |
| In thunder and in earthquake like a Jove, | |
| That, if requiring fail, he will compel; | |
| And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord, | 110 |
| Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy | |
| On the poor souls for whom this hungry war | |
| Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head | |
| Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries, | |
| The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans, | 115 |
| For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers, | |
| That shall be swallow’d in this controversy. | |
| This is his claim, his threat’ning, and my message; | |
| Unless the Dauphin be in presence here, | |
| To whom expressly I bring greeting too. | 120 |
| Fr. King. For us, we will consider of this further: | |
| To-morrow shall you bear our full intent | |
| Back to our brother England. | |
| Dau. For the Dauphin, | |
| I stand here for him: what to him from England? | 125 |
| Exe. Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt, | |
| And anything that may not misbecome | |
| The mighty sender, doth he prize you at. | |
| Thus says my king: an if your father’s highness | |
| Do not, in grant of all demands at large, | 130 |
| Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty, | |
| He’ll call you to so hot an answer of it, | |
| That caves and womby vaultages of France | |
| Shall chide your trespass and return your mock | |
| In second accent of his ordinance. | 135 |
| 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. | 140 |
| 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 | 145 |
| 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. | |
| Exe. Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king | 150 |
| 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. | 155 |
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