Henry V by William Shakespeare (i want to read a book txt) 📕
- Author: William Shakespeare
Book online «Henry V by William Shakespeare (i want to read a book txt) 📕». Author William Shakespeare
By William Shakespeare.
Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Dramatis Personae Henry V Prologue Act I Scene I Scene II Act II Prologue Scene I Scene II Scene III Scene IV Act III Prologue Scene I Scene II Scene III Scene IV Scene V Scene VI Scene VII Act IV Prologue Scene I Scene II Scene III Scene IV Scene V Scene VI Scene VII Scene VIII Act V Prologue Scene I Scene II Epilogue Colophon Uncopyright ImprintThis ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
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Dramatis PersonaeKing Henry V
Duke of Gloucester, brother to the King
Duke of Bedford, brother to the King
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
Sir Thomas Erpingham, Gower, Fluellen, Macmorris, Jamy, officers in King Henry’s army
John Bates, Alexander Court, Michael Williams, soldiers in the same
Pistol, Nym, Bardolph
Boy
A herald
Charles VI, King of France
Lewis, the Dauphin
Dukes of Burgundy, Orleans, Bourbon
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 Nell Quickly, and now married to Pistol
Lords, ladies, officers, soldiers, citizens, messengers, and attendants
Chorus
Scene: England; afterwards France.
Henry V Prologue Enter Chorus. ChorusO 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 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 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 accompt,
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;
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 hourglass: 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. Exit.
London. An antechamber in the King’s palace.
Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Ely. CanterburyMy 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.
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; 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 almshouses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the King beside,
A thousand pounds by the year: thus runs the bill.
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 whipped 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.
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
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