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he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

First Bead. It it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you.

Dol. I'll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you as soundly swinged for this,-you blue-bottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not swinged, I'll

forswear half-kirtles.

First Bead. Come, come, you she knighterrant, come.

Host. O God, that right should thus overcome might! Well of sufferance comes ease. Dol. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.

Host. Ay, come, you starved blood-hound. Dol. Goodman death, goodman bones! Host. Thou atomy, thou!

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Dol. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal. First Bead. Very well. [Exeunt.

SCENE V. A public place near Westminster Abbey.

Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes. First Groom. More rushes, more rushes. Sec. Groom. The trumpets have sounded twice.

First Groom. "Twill be two o'clock ere they come from the coronation: despatch, despatch. [Exeunt.

Enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW, PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and Page.

Fal. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow; I will make the king do you grace: I will leer upon him as a' comes by; and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.

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Pist. God bless thy lungs, good knight. Fal. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me. O, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you But 'tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

Shal. It doth so.

By most mechanical and dirty hand: Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto's snake,

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For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth. Fal. I will deliver her.

[Shouts within, and the trumpets sound. Pist. There roar'd the sea, and trumpetclangor sounds.

Enter the KING and his train, the LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE among them.

Fal. God save thy grace, King Hal! my royal Hal!

Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

Fal. God save thee, my sweet boy!

King. My lord chief-justice, speak to that

vain man.

Ch. Just. Have you your wits? know you what 'tis you speak? [my heart! Fal. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, King. I know thee not, old man: fall to thy

prayers;

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How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that keep me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reformn yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and quali
ties,
[my lord.
Give you advancement. Be it your charge,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word.

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Fal. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me,

Shal. It is best, certain.

Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him; thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him. 29

Pist. 'Tis semper idem,' for 'obsque hoc nihil est:' 'tis all in every part.

Sha!. 'Tis so, indeed.

Pist. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts, Is in base durance and contagious prison; Haled thither

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[Exeunt King, &c. Fal. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.

Shal. Yea, marry, Sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

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Fal. That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world: fear not your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.

Shal. I cannot well perceive how, unless you should give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir Johr., let me have five hundred of my thousand.

Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a color.

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Re-enter PRINCE JOHN, the LORD CHIEF-JUS- | pardons. If you look for a good speech now,

TICE; Officers with them.

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 end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience

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you undo me: for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove mine 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 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 creditors 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 gentlemen 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 any thing 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.

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Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat upraised spirits that have 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 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 account,
On your imaginary forces work.

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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 30

CHARLES the Sixth, King of France.
LEWIS, the Dauphin.

DUKES OF BURGUNDY, ORLEANS, and BOUR

BON.

The Constable of France.

RAMBURES and GRANDPRÉ, French lords.
Governor of Harfleur.

MONTJOY, a French Herald.

Ambassadors to the King of England.

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 Attendants. Chorus.

afterwards France.

Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. [Exit.
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
ACT I.

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,

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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: Full fifteen carls and fifteen hundred knights, As much as would maintain, to the king's honor, Six thousand and two hundred good esquires; Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil, And, to relief of lazars and weak age, 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,

To envelope 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.

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Ely We are blessed in the change. Cant. 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 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; So that the art and practic part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric:

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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
Neighbor'd by fruit of baser quality;
And so the prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

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Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceased: And therefore we must needs admit the means How things are perfected. Ely.

But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill Urged by the commons? Doth his majesty Incline to it, or no?

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Ely. How did this offer seem received, my lord?

Cant. With good acceptance of his majesty; Save that there was not time enough to hear,

As I perceived 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 Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.

Ely. What was the impediment that broke this off?

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Cant. The French ambassador upon that
instant

Craved audience; and the hour, I think, is come
To give him hearing: is it four o'clock?
Ely. It is.

Cant. Then go we 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 hearit. [Exeunt.

SCENE II. The same. The Presence chamber. Enter KING HENRY, GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and Attendants.

K. Hen. Where is my gracious Lord of Can-
terbury?

Exe. Not here in presence.
K. Hen.

Send for him, good uncle. West. Shall we call in the ambassador, my liege?

K. Hen. Not yet, my cousin: we would be resolved,

Before we hear him, of some things of weight That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.

Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, and

the BISHOP OF ELY.

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Or nicely charge your understanding soul
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
Suits not in native colors with the truth;
For God doth know how many now in health
Shall drop their blood in approbation
Of what your reverence shall incite us to.
Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war:
We charge you, in the name of God, take heed;
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
'Gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the

swords

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KING HENRY V.

To this imperial throne. There is no bar
To make against your highness' claim to France
But this, which they produce from Pharamond,
'In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant:'
'No woman shall succeed in Salique land:'
Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze 40
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
The founder of this law and female bar.
Yet their own authors faithfully affirm
That the land Salique is in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe:
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the
Saxons,

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There left behind and settled certain French; Who, holding in disdain the German women For some dishonest manners of their life. Establish'd then this law; to wit, no female Should be inheritrix in Salique land: Which Salique, as I said, 'twixt Elbe and Sala, Is at this day in Germany call'd Meisen. Then doth it well appear the Salique law Was not devised for the realm of France: Nor did the French possess the Salique land Until four hundred one and twenty years After defunction of King Pharamond, Idly supposed the founder of this law; Who died within the year of our redemption 60 Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great Subdued the Saxons, and did seat the French Beyond the river Sala, in the Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say, year King Pepin, which deposed Childeric, Did, as heir general, being descended Of Blithild, which was daughter to KingClothair, Make claim and title to the crown of France. Hugh Capet also, who usurp'd the crown Of Charles the duke of Lorraine, sole heir male Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great, To find his title with some shows of truth, Though, in pure truth, it was corrupt and nought, Convey'd himself as heir to the Lady Lingare, Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son To Lewis the Emperor, and Lewis the son Of Charles the Great. Also King Lewis the Tenth, Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet, Could not keep quiet in his conscience, Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother, Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare, Daughter to Charles the foresaid duke of Lor[raine: By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great

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Was re-united to the crown of France. So that, as clear as is the summer's sun, King Pepin's title and Hugh Capet's claim, King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear To hold in right and title of the female: So do the kings of France unto this day: Howbeit they would hold up this Salique law To bar your highness claiming from the female, And rather choose to hide them in a net Than amply to imbar their crooked titles Usurp'd from you and your progenitors. K. Hen. May I with right and conscience make this claim?

Cant. The sin upon my head, dread sovereign! For in the book of Numbers is it writ, When the man dies, let the inheritance

441.

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Stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag;
Go, my dread ford, to your great-grandsire's
Look back into your mighty ancestors; [tomb,
From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,
Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy,
And your great-uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
Whiles his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility.
With half their forces the full pride of France,
O noble English, that could entertain
And let another half stand laughing by,
All out of work and cold for action!
Ely. Awake remembrance of these valiant
[dead,
And with your puissant arm renew their feats:
You are their heir; you
Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege
sit upon
The blood and courage that renowned them
their throne;
Is in the very May-morn of his youth,
Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.
Exe. Your brother kings and monarchs of
the earth

Do all expect that you should rouse yourself,
As did the former lions of your blood.

I 20

West. They know your grace hath cause and
means and might;

So hath your highness; never king of England
Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects.
Whose hearts have left their bodies here in Eng-
land

And lie pavilion'd in the fields of France.

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With blood and sword and fire to win your right;
Cant. Olet their bodies follow, my dear liege,
In aid whereof we of the spirituality
Will raise your highness such a mighty sum
Bring in to any of your ancestors.
As never did the clergy at one time

K. Hen. We must not only arm to invade the
French,

But lay down our proportions to defend
Against the Scot, who will make road upon us
With all advantages.
Cant. They of those marches, gracious
[sovereign,
Shall be a wall sufficient to defend
Our inland from the pilfering borderers.
K. Hen. We do not mean the coursing snatch-
ers only,

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Who hath been still a giddy neighbor to us;
But fear the main intendment of the Scot,
For you shall read that my great-grandfather
Never went with his forces into France,
But that the Scot on his unfurnish'd kingdom
Came pouring, like the tide into a breach,
With ample and brim fulness of his force,
Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,
Girding with grievous siege castles and towns;
That England, being empty of defence,
Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighborhood.
Cant. She hath been then more fear'd than
harm'd, my liege;

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For hear her but exampled by herself:
And she a mourning widow of her nobles,
When all her chivalry hath been in France,
But taken and impounded as a stray
She hath herself not only well defended,
The King of Scots; whom she did send to France,
To fill King Edward's fame with prisoner kings,

Descend unto the daughter. Gracious lord, 100 | And make her chronicle as rich with praise

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