PRINCE OF WALES

Herald of Philippe, greet thy lord from me.

All good that he can send I can receive.

But think’st thou not the unadvised boy

Hath wronged himself in thus far tendering me?

Haply he cannot pray without the book;

I think him no divine extemporal.

Then render back this commonplace of prayer

To do himself good in adversity.

Besides, he knows not my sins’ quality,

And therefore knows no prayers for my avail.

Ere night his prayer may be to pray to God

To put it in my heart to hear his prayer.

So tell the courtly wanton, and be gone.

THIRD HERALD I go. Exit

PRINCE OF WALES

How confident their strength and number makes them!

Now, Audley, sound those silver wings of thine,

And let those milk-white messengers of time

Show thy time’s learning in this dangerous time.

Thyself art bruised and bit with many broils,

And stratagems fore-past with iron pens

Are texted in thine honourable face.

Thou art a married man in this distress,

But danger woos me as a blushing maid.

Teach me an answer to this perilous time.

AUDLEY

To die is all as common as to live.

The one enchased the other holds in chase.

For from the instant we begin to live,

We do pursue and hunt the time to die.

First bud we, then we blow, and after seed,

Then presently we fall, and as a shade

Follows the body, so we follow death.

If then we hunt for death why do we fear it?

If we fear it, why do we follow it?

If we do follow it, how can we shun it?

If we do fear, with fear we do but aid

The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner.

If we fear not, then no resolved proffer

Can overthrow the limit of our fate.

For whether ripe or rotten, drop we shall,

As we do draw the lottery of our doom.

PRINCE OF WALES

Ah, good old man! A thousand thousand armours

These words of thine have buckled on my back.

Ah, what an idiot hast thou made of life

To seek the thing it fears, and how disgraced

Th‘imperial victory of murd’ring death,

Since all the lives his conquering arrows strike

Seek him, and he not them, to shame his glory.

I will not give a penny for a life,

Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death,

Since for to live is but to seek to die,

And dying but beginning of new life.

Let come the hour when he that rules it will.

To live or die I hold indifferent still.

Exeunt

Sc. 13 Enter Jean King of France and the Dauphin

KING OF FRANCE

A sudden darkness hath defaced the sky,

The winds are crept into their caves for fear,

The leaves move not, the world is hushed and still,

The birds cease singing and the wand’ring brooks

Murmur no wonted greeting to their shores.

Silence attends some wonder and expecteth

That heaven should pronounce some prophecy.

Where or from whom proceeds this silence, Charles?

DAUPHIN

Our men with open mouths and staring eyes

Look on each other as they did attend

Each other’s words, and yet no creature speaks.

A tongue-tied fear hath made a midnight hour,

And speeches sleep through all the waking regions.

KING OF FRANCE

But now the pompous sun in all his pride

Looked through his golden coach upon the world,

And, on a sudden, hath he hid himself,

That now the under earth is as a grave,

Dark, deadly, silent and uncomfortable.

A clamour of ravens

Hark, what a deadly outcry do I hear!

Enter Prince Philippe

DAUPHIN

Here comes my brother Philippe—

KING OF FRANCE All dismayed.

(To Philippe) What fearful words are those thy looks presage?

PRINCE PHILIPPE A flight, a flight—

KING OF FRANCE

Coward, what flight? Thou liest. There needs no flight.

PRINCE PHILIPPE A flight—

KING OF FRANCE

Awake thy craven powers, and tell on

The substance of that very fear in deed

Which is so ghastly printed in thy face.

What is the matter?

PRINCE PHILIPPE

A flight of ugly ravens

Do croak and hover o’er our soldiers’ heads,

And keep in triangles and cornered squares,

Right as our forces are embattelèd.

With their approach there came this sudden fog

Which now hath hid the airy floor of heaven,

And made at noon a night unnatural

Upon the quaking and dismayed world.

In brief, our soldiers have let fall their arms,

And stand like metamorphosed images,

Bloodless and pale, one gazing on another.

KING OF FRANCE ⌈aside⌉

Ay, now I call to mind the prophecy—

But I must give no utterance to a fear.

(To Philippe) Return, and hearten up these yielding souls!

Tell them the ravens, seeing them in arms—

So many fair against a famished few—

Come but to dine upon their handiwork,

And prey upon the carrion that they kill.