FIRST AMBASSADOR: He therefore sends you,
meeter for your spirit,
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: What treasure, uncle?
EXETER: Tennis-balls, my liege.
Henry V, I, ii
KING HENRY V: When we have match'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 hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chases.
Henry V, I, ii
KING HENRY V: For many a thousand widows
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands;
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;
And some are yet ungotten and unborn
That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn.
Henry V, I, ii
KING HENRY V: So get you hence in peace; and
tell the Dauphin
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.
Henry V, I, ii
CHORUS: Now all the youth of England are on
fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
Henry V, II, Prologue
CHORUS: O England: model to thy inward
greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural?
Henry V, II, Prologue
BEDFORD: The king hath note of all that they
intend,
By interception which they dream not of.
Henry V, II, ii
KING HENRY V: If little faults, proceeding on
distemper,
Shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye
When capital crimes, chew'd, swallow'd and digested,
Appear before us?
Henry V, II, ii
BARDOLPH: Would I were with him, wheresome're he is, either in heaven or in hell.
HOSTESS: Nay, sure, he's not in hell. He's in Arthur's bosom if ever man went to Arthur's bosom.
Henry V, II, iii
HOSTESS: A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a' parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide, for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields.
Henry V, II, iii
DAUPHIN: Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a
sin
As self-neglecting.
Henry V, II, iv
EXETER: 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,
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,
For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers,
That shall be swallow'd in this controversy.
Henry V, II, iv
CHORUS: Thus with imagined wing our swift
scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought.
Henry V, III, Prologue
KING HENRY V: Once more unto the breach, dear
friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
Henry V, III, i
KING HENRY V: 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, conjure up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage.
Henry V, III, i
KING HENRY V: 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 lustre in your eyes.
Henry V, III, i
KING HENRY V: I see you stand like greyhounds
in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot.
Henry V, III, i
KING HENRY V: Take pity of your town and of
your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villainy.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds...
Henry V, III, iv
FLUELLEN: By your patience, Aunchient Pistol. Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation: and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls: in good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it. Fortune is an excellent moral.
Henry V, III, vii
KING HENRY V: For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.
Henry V, III, vii
DAUPHIN: I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ca, ha! he bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, chez les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
Henry V, III, viii
CONSTABLE: Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.
ORLEANS: He never did harm, that I heard of.
CONSTABLE: Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name still.
Henry V, III, viii
CHORUS: Now entertain conjecture of a
time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
Henry V, IV, Prologue
GOWER: Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.
FLUELLEN: 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?
Henry V, IV, i
WILLIAMS: 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 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.
Henry V, IV, i
KING HENRY V: What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
Henry V, IV, i
KING HENRY V: No, not all these,
thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
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,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
Henry V, IV, i
KING HENRY V: O God of battles! steel my
soldiers' hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them.
Henry V, IV, i
KING HENRY V: Rather proclaim it,
Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
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.
Henry V, IV, i
KING HENRY V: 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 neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow 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 remember'd.
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 remember'd.
Henry V, IV, iii
KING HENRY V: We few, we happy few, we band of
brothers;
For he to-day 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.
Henry V, IV, iii