- [Addressing the troops]
- King Henry V: And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by from this day until the ending of the world but we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, For he today who 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 abed shall think themselves acursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks, that fought with us upon St. Crispin's day!
- King Henry V: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead!
- King Henry V: Canst thou love me?
- Princess Katherine: I cannot tell.
- King Henry V: Well, can any of your neighbors tell, Kate? I'll ask them.
- Montjoy: Great King! I come to thee for charitable license that we may wander o'er this bloody field to book our dead and then to bury them. To sort our nobles from our common men. For many of our princes, woe the while, lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood. Oh, give us leave, great King, to view the field in safety and to dispose of their dead bodies.
- King Henry V: I tell thee truly, herald, I know not if the day be ours or no.
- Montjoy: The day - is yours.
- King Henry V: Praised be God and not our strength for it! What is this castle called that stands hard by?
- Montjoy: They call it Agincourt.
- King Henry V: Then call we this the field of Agincourt, fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.
- King Henry V: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close up the wall with our English dead!
- King Henry V: If little faults proceeding on distemper shall not be winked at, how shall we stretch our eye, when capital crimes, chewed, swallowed and digested appear before us?
- [charging his troops to attack the gates of Harfluer]
- King Henry V: Dishonor not your mothers. Now attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you. And you, good yeoman, whose limbs were made in England, show us here the mettle of your pasture. 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 luster in your eyes! I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. The game's afoot! Follow your spirit and upon this charge cry, "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!"
- King Henry V: It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say?
- Alice: Oui! Vraiment.
- King Henry V: Oh, Kate. Nice customs curtsy to great kings. You and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion. We - are the makers of manners, Kate. Therefore, patiently and yielding.
- [kisses Kate]
- King Henry V: You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate. There is more eloquence in a sugar-touch of them, than in the tongues of the French Council. Here comes your father.
- King Henry V: [to Montjoy] I pray thee take my former answer back. Bid them achieve me than sell my bones!"
- Princess Katherine: Your Majesty shall mock at me. I cannot speak your England.
- King Henry V: Oh. Fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?
- Princess Katherine: [unable to understand his English] Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell what is 'like me'.
- King Henry V: An angel is like you, Kate. You're like an angel.
- Falstaff: [stroking his vast gut] Aye, to a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage. But do I not dwindle? My skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown.
- Exeter: [Delivering a message from King Henry to the French King] He bids you then resign your crown and kingdom, indirectly held from him, the native and true challenger.
- French King: Or else what follows?
- Exeter: Bloody constraint. For if you hide the crown, even in your hearts, there will he rake for it. Therefore, in fierce tempest is he coming, in thunder and in earthquake like a Jove that if requiring fail, he will compel. This is his claim, his threatening, and my message. Unless the *Dolphin*
- [intentionally mispronounced]
- Exeter: be in presence here, to whom expressly I bring greeting, too.
- Dauphin: For the *Dauphin*
- [emphasizes the correct pronunciation]
- Dauphin: , I stand here for him. What to him from England?
- Exeter: Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt and any thing that may not misbecome the mighty sender, doth he prize you at. Thus says my king.
- King Henry V: When I come to woo ladies, I fright them. But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear. My comfort is that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst. And thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better. And, therefore, tell me, most fair Katherine. Will you have me? Come, your answer in broken music, for thy voice is music, and thy English broken. Therefore, queen of all, Katherine, wilt thou have me?
- [first lines]
- Chorus: [lights a match] O, for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention...
- [switches on the lights to a soundstage, and walks across it]
- Chorus: A kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Then should the war-like Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars, and at his heels, leashed 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 vast fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden O, the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon. And let us, cyphers to this great accompt, on your imaginary forces work. For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our Kings, carry them here and there, jumping over 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!
- [opens the doors to the English court]
- Chorus: Oh, now, who will behold the royal captain of this ruined band, walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent? Let him cry, "Praise and glory on his head," for forth he goes and visits *all* his host. Bids them good morrow with a modest smile and calls them: brothers, friends, and countrymen. A largesse universal, like the sun, his liberal eye doth give to everyone. Thawing cold fear that mean and gentle all - behold, as may unworthiness define, a little touch of Harry in the night.
- King Henry V: How yet resolves the governor of the town? This is the latest parle we will admit! Therefore, to our best mercy give yourselves, or like to men proud of destruction, defy us to our worst. For as I am soldier, if I begin the battery once again, I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur till in her ashes she lie buried. Therefore, you men of Harfleur, 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'er blows 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 their silver beards and their most reverend heads dashed to the walls, your naked infants spitted upon *pikes* whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused do break the *clouds*! *What say you*? Will you yield and this avoid? Or, guilty in defense, be thus destroyed?
- [last lines]
- Chorus: Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen, our bending author hath pursued the story, in little room confining mighty men, angling by starts the full course of their glory. Small time, but in that small most greatly lived this star of England: Fortune made his sword, by which the world's best garden he achieved. And of it left his son imperial lord, Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned king. Of France and England, did this king succeed, whose state so many had the managing, that they lost France and made his England bleed. Which oft our stage hath shown, and for their sake, in your fair minds, let this acceptance take.
- [closes the doors to the English court]
- King Henry V: Upon the king. Let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our careful wives, our children, and our sins lay on the king. We must bear all. Oh, hard condition. Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath of every fool. What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy? And what have kings that privates have not too save ceremony? And what art thou, thou idle ceremony? What drink'st thou oft instead of homage sweet but poison'd flattery? Oh, be sick, great greatness, and bid thy ceremony give thee cure. Canst thou, when thou commandest the beggar's knee, command the health of it? No, thou proud dream that playest so subtly with a king's repose. I am a king that find thee, and I know... 'tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, the sword, the mace, the crown imperial, the intertissued robe of gold and pearl, the farced title running 'fore the king, the throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp that beats upon the high shore of this world. 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 filled and vacant mind, gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread, never sees horrid night, the child of hell, but like a lackey from the rise to the 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. And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, winding up days with toil and nights with sleep had the forehand and vantage... of a king.
- Mistress Nell Quickly: We can't lodge or board a dozen or 14 gentlewomen who live honestly by the prick of their needles, but it shall be thought we keep a bawdy house straight.
- Falstaff: Company, villainous company have been the spoil of me. I was as virtuous as a gentlemen need to be. Virtuous enough. Swore a little. Ahem, diced not - above seven days a week. Went to a bawdy house not above once in the quarter. Paid money that I borrowed - three or four times. Lived well and in good compass.
- King Henry V: The mercy that was quick in us of late by your own counsel is suppressed and killed. You must not dare for *shame* to talk of mercy. For your own reasons turn into your bosoms as dogs upon their masters worrying you.
- Falstaff: My good lord, when thou art king, banish Pistol, banish Bardolph, banish Nym. But sweet Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is, old Jack Falstaff. Banish not him thy Harry's company, banish plump Jack and banish all the world.
- Mistress Nell Quickly: He's not in hell. He's in Arthur's bosom, if ever a man went to Arthur's bosom. He made a finer end and went away than it had been any Christian child.
- 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, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage. Then lend the eye a terrible aspect. Let it pry through the portage of the head like the brass cannon. Let the brow o'erwhelm it as fearfully as doth a galled rock o'erhang and jutty his confounded base swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit to his full height! On, on, you noblest England!
- King Henry V: Go you and enter Harfleur. There remain and fortify it strongly against the French. - Use mercy to them all.
- Captain Fluellen: He is an ass in the world. He has no more directions in the true disciplines of the wars than is a puppy dog.
- Dauphin: By faith and honor, our madams mock at us and plainly say our mettle is bred out! And they will give their *bodies* to the *lust* of English youth, to new-store France with *bastard* warriors!
- Constable: This becomes the great! Sorry, am I, his numbers are so few, his soldiers sick and famished in their march. For, I am sure, when he shall see our army, he'll drop his heart into the sink of fear - and for achievement offer us his ransom.
- French King: Now forth, Lord Constable and princes all, and *quickly* bring us word of England's fall.
- French King: Up, Princes, and with spirit of honor edged more sharper than your swords, hie to the field.
- King Henry V: We give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages. Nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language. For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.
- Duke Humphrey of Gloucester: I hope they will not come upon us now.
- King Henry V: We are in God's hand, brother, not in theirs.
- Duke Charles of Orleans: The Dauphin longs for morning. He longs to *eat* the English.
- Constable: I think he will eat all he kills.
- Duke Charles of Orleans: He never did harm that I heard of.
- Constable: Nor will do none tomorrow.