1    Thus comes the English with full power upon us;
2    And more than carefully it us concerns
3    To answer royally in our defences.
4    Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Bretagne,
5    Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,
6    And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,
7    To line and new repair our towns of war
8    With men of courage and with means defendant;
9    For England his approaches makes as fierce
10   As waters to the sucking of a gulf.
11   It fits us then to be as provident
12   As fear may teach us out of late examples
13   Left by the fatal and neglected English
14   Upon our fields.

15   My most redoubted father,
16   It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe;
17   For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
18   Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
19   But that defences, musters, preparations,
20   Should be maintain'd, assembled and collected,
21   As were a war in expectation.
22   Therefore, I say 'tis meet we all go forth
23   To view the sick and feeble parts of France:
24   And let us do it with no show of fear;
25   No, with no more than if we heard that England
26   Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance:
27   For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd,
28   Her sceptre so fantastically borne
29   By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
30   That fear attends her not.

31   O peace, Prince Dauphin!
32   You are too much mistaken in this king:
33   Question your grace the late ambassadors,
34   With what great state he heard their embassy,
35   How well supplied with noble counsellors,
36   How modest in exception, and withal
37   How terrible in constant resolution,
38   And you shall find his vanities forespent
39   Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
40   Covering discretion with a coat of folly;
41   As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
42   That shall first spring and be most delicate.

43   Well, 'tis not so, my lord high constable;
44   But though we think it so, it is no matter:
45   In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh
46   The enemy more mighty than he seems:
47   So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
48   Which of a weak or niggardly projection
49   Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
50   A little cloth.

51   Think we King Harry strong;
52   And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
53   The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;
54   And he is bred out of that bloody strain
55   That haunted us in our familiar paths:
56   Witness our too much memorable shame
57   When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
58   And all our princes captiv'd by the hand
59   Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;
60   Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing,
61   Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun,
62   Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him,
63   Mangle the work of nature and deface
64   The patterns that by God and by French fathers
65   Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
66   Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
67   The native mightiness and fate of him.

68   Ambassadors from Harry King of England
69   Do crave admittance to your majesty.

70   We'll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.
Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords
71   You see this chase is hotly follow'd, friends.

72   Turn head, and stop pursuit; for coward dogs
73   Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten
74   Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,
75   Take up the English short, and let them know
76   Of what a monarchy you are the head:
77   Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
78   As self-neglecting.

79   From our brother England?

80   From him; and thus he greets your majesty.
81   He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
82   That you divest yourself, and lay apart
83   The borrow'd glories that by gift of heaven,
84   By law of nature and of nations, 'long
85   To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown
86   And all wide-stretched honours that pertain
87   By custom and the ordinance of times
88   Unto the crown of France. That you may know
89   'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,
90   Pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd days,
91   Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,
92   He sends you this most memorable line,
93   In every branch truly demonstrative;
94   Willing to overlook this pedigree:
95   And when you find him evenly derived
96   From his most famed of famous ancestors,
97   Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
98   Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
99   From him the native and true challenger.

100  Or else what follows?

101  Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown
102  Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it:
103  Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
104  In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
105  That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
106  And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
107  Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
108  On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
109  Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
110  Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries
111  The dead men's blood, the pining maidens groans,
112  For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers,
113  That shall be swallow'd in this controversy.
114  This is his claim, his threatening and my message;
115  Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,
116  To whom expressly I bring greeting too.

117  For us, we will consider of this further:
118  To-morrow shall you bear our full intent
119  Back to our brother England.

120  For the Dauphin,
121  I stand here for him: what to him from England?

122  Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt,
123  And any thing that may not misbecome
124  The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.
125  Thus says my king; an' if your father's highness
126  Do not, in grant of all demands at large,
127  Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty,
128  He'll call you to so hot an answer of it,
129  That caves and womby vaultages of France
130  Shall chide your trespass and return your mock
131  In second accent of his ordnance.

132  Say, if my father render fair return,
133  It is against my will; for I desire
134  Nothing but odds with England: to that end,
135  As matching to his youth and vanity,
136  I did present him with the Paris balls.

137  He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
138  Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe:
139  And, be assured, you'll find a difference,
140  As we his subjects have in wonder found,
141  Between the promise of his greener days
142  And these he masters now: now he weighs time
143  Even to the utmost grain: that you shall read
144  In your own losses, if he stay in France.

145  To-morrow shall you know our mind at full.

146  Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
147  Come here himself to question our delay;
148  For he is footed in this land already.

149  You shall be soon dispatch's with fair conditions:
150  A night is but small breath and little pause
151  To answer matters of this consequence.