That fear attends her not.

CONSTABLE O peace, Prince Dauphin.

You are too much mistaken in this king.

Question your grace the late ambassadors

With what great state he heard their embassy,

How well supplied with aged counsellors,

How modest in exception, and withal

How terrible in constant resolution,

And you shall find his vanities forespent

Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,

Covering discretion with a coat of folly,

As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots

That shall first spring and be most delicate.

DAUPHIN

Well, ‘tis not so, my Lord High Constable.

But though we think it so, it is no matter.

In cases of defence ’tis best to weigh

The enemy more mighty than he seems.

So the proportions of defence are filled—

Which, of a weak and niggardly projection,

Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scanting

A little cloth.

KING CHARLES Think we King Harry strong.

And princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.

The kindred of him hath been fleshed upon us,

And he is bred out of that bloody strain

That haunted us in our familiar paths.

Witness our too-much-memorable shame

When Crécy battle fatally was struck,

And all our princes captived by the hand

Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales,

Whiles that his mountant sire, on mountain standing,

Up in the air, crowned with the golden sun,

Saw his heroical seed and smiled to see him

Mangle the work of nature and deface

The patterns that by God and by French fathers

Had twenty years been made. This is a stem

Of that victorious stock, and let us fear

The native mightiness and fate of him.

Enter a Messenger

MESSENGER

Ambassadors from Harry, King of England,

Do crave admittance to your majesty.

KING CHARLES

We’ll give them present audience. Go and bring them.

Exit Messenger

You see this chase is hotly followed, friends.

DAUPHIN

Turn head and stop pursuit. For coward dogs

Most spend their mouths when what they seem to

threaten

Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,

Take up the English short, and let them know

Of what a monarchy you are the head.

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin

As self-neglecting.

Enter the Duke of Exeter, ⌈attended⌉

KING CHARLES From our brother England?

EXETER

From him, and thus he greets your majesty:

He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,

That you divest yourself and lay apart

The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven,

By law of nature and of nations, ‘longs

To him and to his heirs, namely the crown,

And all wide-stretched honours that pertain

By custom and the ordinance of times

Unto the crown of France. That you may know

’Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,

Picked from the worm-holes of long-vanished days,

Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,

He sends you this most memorable line,

In every branch truly demonstrative,

Willing you over-look this pedigree,

And when you find him evenly derived

From his most famed of famous ancestors,

Edward the Third, he bids you then resign

Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held

From him, the native and true challenger.

KING CHARLES 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;

And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,

Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy

On the poor souls for whom this hungry war

Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head

Turns he the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries,

The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans,

For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers

That shall be swallowed in this controversy.

This is his claim, his threat’ning, and my message—

Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,

To whom expressly I bring greeting too.

KING CHARLES

For us, we will consider of this further.

Tomorrow shall you bear our full intent

Back to our brother England.

DAUPHIN For the Dauphin,

I stand here for him. What to him from England?

EXETER

Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt;

And anything that may not misbecome

The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.

Thus says my king: an if your father’s highness

Do not, in grant of all demands at large,

Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty,

He’ll call you to so hot an answer for it

That caves and womby vaultages of France

Shall chide your trespass and return your mock