KING HARRY Then I will kiss your lips, Kate. 255

CATHERINE Les dames et demoiselles pour être baisées devant leurs noces, il n’est pas la coutume de France.

KING HARRY (to Alice) Madam my interpreter, what says she?

ALICE Dat it is not be de façon pour les ladies of France—I cannot tell vat is baiser en Anglish.

KING HARRY To kiss.

ALICE Your majesté entend bettre que moi.

KING HARRY It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say? 265 ALICE Oui, vraiment.

KING HARRY O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate, and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults, as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss. Therefore, patiently and yielding. (He kisses her) 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, and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father Enter King Charles, Queen Isabel, the Duke of Burgundy, and the French and English lords

BURGUNDY God save your majesty. My royal cousin, teach you our princess English?

KING HARRY I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly I love her, and that is good English.

BURGUNDY Is she not apt?

KING HARRY Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth, so that having neither the voice nor the heart of flattery about me I cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in her that he will appear in his true likeness.

BURGUNDY Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you for that. If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle; if conjure up love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked and blind. Can you blame her then, being a maid yet rosed over with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were, my lord, a hard condition for a maid to consign to.

KING HARRY Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces.

BURGUNDY They are then excused, my lord, when they see not what they do.

KING HARRY Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent winking.

BURGUNDY I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will teach her to know my meaning. For maids, well summered and warm kept, are like flies at Bartholomew-tide: blind, though they have their eyes. And then they will endure handling, which before would not abide looking on.

KING HARRY This moral ties me over to time and a hot summer, and so I shall catch the fly, your cousin, in the latter end, and she must be blind too.

BURGUNDY As love is, my lord, before that it loves.

KING HARRY It is so. And you may, some of you, thank love for my blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city for one fair French maid that stands in my way.

KING CHARLES Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turned into a maid—for they are all girdled with maiden walls that war hath never entered.

KING HARRY Shall Kate be my wife?

KING CHARLES So please you.

KING HARRY I am content, so the maiden cities you talk of may wait on her: so the maid that stood in the way for my wish shall show me the way to my will.

KING CHARLES We have consented to all terms of reason.

KING HARRY Is’t so, my lords of England?

⌈WARWICKI⌉

The King hath granted every article:

His daughter first, and so in sequel all,

According to their firm proposed natures.

EXETER

Only he hath not yet subscribed this:

where your majesty demands that the King of France,

having any occasion to write for matter of grant, shall

name your highness in this form and with this addition:

⌈reads⌉ in French, Notre très cher fils Henri, Roi

d’Angleterre, Heritier de France, and thus in Latin,

Praeclarissimus filius noster Henricus, Rex Angliae et

Haeres Franciae.

KING CHARLES

Nor this I have not, brother, so denied,

But your request shall make me let it pass.

KING HARRY

I pray you then, in love and dear alliance,

Let that one article rank with the rest,

And thereupon give me your daughter.

KING CHARLES

Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up

Issue to me, that the contending kingdoms

Of France and England, whose very shores look pale

With envy of each other’s happiness,

May cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction

Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord

In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance

His bleeding sword ’twixt England and fair France.

⌈ALL⌉ Amen.

KING HARRY

Now welcome, Kate, and bear me witness all

That here I kiss her as my sovereign Queen.

Flourish

QUEEN ISABEL

God, the best maker of all marriages,

Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one.

As man and wife, being two, are one in love,

So be there ‘twixt your kingdoms such a spousal

That never may ill office or fell jealousy,

Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage,

Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms

To make divorce of their incorporate league;

That English may as French, French Englishmen,

Receive each other, God speak this ‘Amen’.

ALL Amen.

KING HARRY

Prepare we for our marriage. On which day,

My lord of Burgundy, we’ll take your oath,

And all the peers‘, for surety of our leagues.

Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me,

And may our oaths well kept and prosp’rous be.

Sennet. Exeunt

Epilogue Enter Chorus

CHORUS

Thus far with rough and all-unable pen

Our bending author hath pursued the story,

In little room confining mighty men,

Mangling 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. Exit