Whom thou hast whetted on thy stony heart

To stab at half an hour of my life.

What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour?

Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,

And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear

That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.

Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse

Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head.

Only compound me with forgotten dust.

Give that which gave thee life unto the worms.

Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;

For now a time is come to mock at form—

Harry the Fifth is crowned. Up, vanity!

Down, royal state! All you sage counsellors, hence!

And to the English court assemble now

From every region, apes of idleness!

Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum I

Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,

Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit

The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?

Be happy; he will trouble you no more.

England shall double gild his treble guilt,

England shall give him office, honour, might;

For the fifth Harry from curbed licence plucks

The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog 260

Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.

O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!

When that my care could not withhold thy riots,

What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?

O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,

Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants.

PRINCE HARRY

O pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,

The moist impediments unto my speech,

I had forestalled this dear and deep rebuke

Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard

The course of it so far. There is your crown;

⌈He returns the crown and kneels⌉

And He that wears the crown immortally

Long guard it yours! If I affect it more

Than as your honour and as your renown,

Let me no more from this obedience rise,

Which my most true and inward duteous spirit

Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending.

God witness with me, when I here came in

And found no course of breath within your majesty,

How cold it struck my heart. If I do feign,

O, let me in my present wildness die,

And never live to show th‘incredulous world

The noble change that I have purposed.

Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,

And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,

I spake unto this crown as having sense,

And thus upbraided it: ‘The care on thee depending

Hath fed upon the body of my father;

Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold.

Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,

Preserving life in medicine potable;

But thou, most fine, most honoured, most renowned,

Hast eat thy bearer up.’ Thus, my royal liege,

Accusing it, I put it on my head,

To try with it, as with an enemy

That had before my face murdered my father,

The quarrel of a true inheritor.

But if it did infect my blood with joy

Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride,

If any rebel or vain spirit of mine

Did with the least affection of a welcome

Give entertainment to the might of it,

Let God for ever keep it from my head,

And make me as the poorest vassal is,

That doth with awe and terror kneel to it.

KING HENRY O my son,

God put it in thy mind to take it hence,

That thou mightst win the more thy father’s love,

Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!

Come hither, Harry; sit thou by my bed,

And hear, I think, the very latest counsel

That ever I shall breathe.

Prince Harry ⌈rises from kneeling and⌉ sits by the bed

God knows, my son,

By what bypaths and indirect crook’d ways

I met this crown; and I myself know well

How troublesome it sat upon my head.

To thee it shall descend with better quiet,

Better opinion, better confirmation;

For all the soil of the achievement goes

With me into the earth. It seemed in me

But as an honour snatched with boist‘rous hand;

And I had many living to upbraid

My gain of it by their assistances,

Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,

Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears

Thou seest with peril I have answerèd;

For all my reign hath been but as a scene

Acting that argument. And now my death

Changes the mood, for what in me was purchased

Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort,

So thou the garland wear’st successively.

Yet though thou stand‘st more sure than I could do,

Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green,