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Henry V: Act II, Scene 2

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Henry V
Act II, Scene 2

Southampton. A council-chamber.

King Henry V as acted at the Lyceum Theatre

King Henry V as acted at the Lyceum Theatre

Bernard Partridge, circa 1901

  1. Enter Exeter, Bedford, and Westmorland.

Duke of Bedford

1
  1. ’Fore God, his Grace is bold to trust these traitors.

Duke of Exeter

2
  1. They shall be apprehended by and by.

Earl of Westmorland

3 - 5
  1. How smooth and even they do bear themselves!
  2. As if allegiance in their bosoms sate
  3. Crowned with faith and constant loyalty.

Duke of Bedford

6 - 7
  1. The King hath note of all that they intend,
  2. By interception which they dream not of.

Duke of Exeter

8 - 11
  1. Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow,
  2. Whom he hath dull’d and cloy’d with gracious favors—
  3. That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell
  4. His sovereign’s life to death and treachery.
  1. Sound trumpets. Enter the King, Scroop, Cambridge, and Grey,
  2. with Attendants.

King Henry the Fifth

12 - 18
  1. Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard.
  2. My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham,
  3. And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts.
  4. Think you not that the pow’rs we bear with us
  5. Will cut their passage through the force of France,
  6. Doing the execution and the act
  7. For which we have in head assembled them?

Lord Scroop

19
  1. No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.

King Henry the Fifth

20 - 24
  1. I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded
  2. We carry not a heart with us from hence
  3. That grows not in a fair consent with ours;
  4. Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish
  5. Success and conquest to attend on us.

Earl of Cambridge

25 - 28
  1. Never was monarch better fear’d and lov’d
  2. Than is your Majesty. There’s not, I think, a subject
  3. That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness
  4. Under the sweet shade of your government.

Sir Thomas Grey

29 - 31
  1. True; those that were your father’s enemies
  2. Have steep’d their galls in honey, and do serve you
  3. With hearts create of duty and of zeal.

King Henry the Fifth

32 - 35
  1. We therefore have great cause of thankfulness,
  2. And shall forget the office of our hand
  3. Sooner than quittance of desert and merit,
  4. According to the weight and worthiness.

Lord Scroop

36 - 38
  1. So service shall with steeled sinews toil,
  2. And labor shall refresh itself with hope
  3. To do your Grace incessant services.

King Henry the Fifth

39 - 43
  1. We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter,
  2. Enlarge the man committed yesterday,
  3. That rail’d against our person. We consider
  4. It was excess of wine that set him on,
  5. And on his more advice we pardon him.

Lord Scroop

44 - 46
  1. That’s mercy, but too much security.
  2. Let him be punish’d, sovereign, lest example
  3. Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.

King Henry the Fifth

47
  1. O, let us yet be merciful.

Earl of Cambridge

48
  1. So may your Highness, and yet punish too.

Sir Thomas Grey

49 - 51
  1. Sir,
  2. You show great mercy if you give him life
  3. After the taste of much correction.

King Henry the Fifth

52 - 61
  1. Alas, your too much love and care of me
  2. Are heavy orisons ’gainst this poor wretch!
  3. If little faults, proceeding on distemper,
  4. Shall not be wink’d at, how shall we stretch our eye
  5. When capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d, and digested,
  6. Appear before us? We’ll yet enlarge that man,
  7. Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care
  8. And tender preservation of our person,
  9. Would have him punish’d. And now to our French causes.
  10. Who are the late commissioners?

Earl of Cambridge

62 - 63
  1. I one, my lord.
  2. Your Highness bade me ask for it today.

Lord Scroop

64
  1. So did you me, my liege.

Sir Thomas Grey

65
  1. And I, my royal sovereign.

King Henry the Fifth

66 - 76
  1. Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours;
  2. There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight,
  3. Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours:
  4. Read them, and know I know your worthiness.
  5. My Lord of Westmorland, and uncle Exeter,
  6. We will aboard tonight.—Why, how now, gentlemen?
  7. What see you in those papers that you lose
  8. So much complexion?—Look ye how they change!
  9. Their cheeks are paper.—Why, what read you there
  10. That have so cowarded and chas’d your blood
  11. Out of appearance?

Earl of Cambridge

77 - 78
  1.                    I do confess my fault,
  2. And do submit me to your Highness’ mercy.

Grey and Scroop

79
  1. To which we all appeal.

King Henry the Fifth

80 - 145
  1. The mercy that was quick in us but late,
  2. By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d.
  3. You must not dare (for shame) to talk of mercy,
  4. For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
  5. As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.
  6. See you, my princes and my noble peers,
  7. These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here,
  8. You know how apt our love was to accord
  9. To furnish him with all appertinents
  10. Belonging to his honor; and this man
  11. Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir’d
  12. And sworn unto the practices of France
  13. To kill us here in Hampton. To the which
  14. This knight, no less for bounty bound to us
  15. Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But O,
  16. What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,
  17. Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?
  18. Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
  19. That knew’st the very bottom of my soul,
  20. That (almost) mightst have coin’d me into gold,
  21. Wouldst thou have practic’d on me, for thy use?
  22. May it be possible that foreign hire
  23. Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
  24. That might annoy my finger? ’Tis so strange,
  25. That, though the truth of it stands off as gross
  26. As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.
  27. Treason and murder ever kept together,
  28. As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose,
  29. Working so grossly in a natural cause
  30. That admiration did not hoop at them;
  31. But thou (’gainst all proportion) didst bring in
  32. Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;
  33. And whatsoever cunning fiend it was
  34. That wrought upon thee so preposterously
  35. Hath got the voice in hell for excellence;
  36. And other devils that suggest by treasons
  37. Do botch and bungle up damnation
  38. With patches, colors, and with forms being fetch’d
  39. From glist’ring semblances of piety;
  40. But he that temper’d thee, bade thee stand up,
  41. Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,
  42. Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.
  43. If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus
  44. Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
  45. He might return to vasty Tartar back,
  46. And tell the legions, “I can never win
  47. A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.”
  48. O, how hast thou with jealousy infected
  49. The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?
  50. Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?
  51. Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?
  52. Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?
  53. Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,
  54. Free from gross passion, or of mirth or anger,
  55. Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
  56. Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement,
  57. Not working with the eye without the ear,
  58. And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
  59. Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem.
  60. And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot
  61. To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
  62. With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
  63. For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
  64. Another fall of man. Their faults are open,
  65. Arrest them to the answer of the law,
  66. And God acquit them of their practices!
Lewis Waller as Henry V

Lewis Waller as Henry V

Francis Ernest Jackson, circa 1904

Duke of Exeter

146 - 148
  1. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard Earl of Cambridge.
  2. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord Scroop of Masham.
  3. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland.

Lord Scroop

149 - 152
  1. Our purposes God justly hath discover’d,
  2. And I repent my fault more than my death,
  3. Which I beseech your Highness to forgive,
  4. Although my body pay the price of it.

Earl of Cambridge

153 - 158
  1. For me, the gold of France did not seduce,
  2. Although I did admit it as a motive
  3. The sooner to effect what I intended.
  4. But God be thanked for prevention,
  5. Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,
  6. Beseeching God, and you, to pardon me.

Sir Thomas Grey

159 - 163
  1. Never did faithful subject more rejoice
  2. At the discovery of most dangerous treason
  3. Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself,
  4. Prevented from a damned enterprise.
  5. My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

King Henry the Fifth

164 - 191
  1. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
  2. You have conspir’d against our royal person,
  3. Join’d with an enemy proclaim’d, and from his coffers
  4. Receiv’d the golden earnest of our death;
  5. Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
  6. His princes and his peers to servitude,
  7. His subjects to oppression and contempt,
  8. And his whole kingdom into desolation.
  9. Touching our person seek we no revenge,
  10. But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender,
  11. Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
  12. We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
  13. Poor miserable wretches, to your death;
  14. The taste whereof God of his mercy give
  15. You patience to endure, and true repentance
  16. Of all your dear offenses! Bear them hence.
  17. Exeunt Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, guarded.
  18. Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof
  19. Shall be to you as us, like glorious.
  20. We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,
  21. Since God so graciously hath brought to light
  22. This dangerous treason lurking in our way
  23. To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now
  24. But every rub is smoothed on our way.
  25. Then forth, dear countrymen! Let us deliver
  26. Our puissance into the hand of God,
  27. Putting it straight in expedition.
  28. Cheerly to sea! The signs of war advance!
  29. No king of England, if not king of France!
  1. Flourish. Exeunt.

Why, how now, gentlemen?

John Boydell; John & Josiah Boydell, printmakers; 1803

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