Act 2, Scene 4

France. The King's palace.

[Flourish. Enter the French King, the Dauphin, the Dukes of Berri and Bretagne [the Constable, and others.]
King Charles VI
852 Thus comes the English with full power upon us,
853 And more than carefully it us concerns
854 To answer royally in our defences.
855 Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Bretagne,
856 Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,
857 And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,
858 To line and new repair our towns of war
859 With men of courage and with means defendant;
860 For England his approaches makes as fierce
861 As waters to the sucking of a gulf.
862 It fits us then to be as provident
863 As fears may teach us out of late examples
864 Left by the fatal and neglected English
865 Upon our fields.
The Dauphin
866 My most redoubted father,
867 It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe;
868 For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
869 Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
870 But that defences, musters, preparations,
871 Should be maintain'd, assembled, and collected,
872 As were a war in expectation.
873 Therefore, I say, 'tis meet we all go forth
874 To view the sick and feeble parts of France.
875 And let us do it with no show of fear;
876 No, with no more than if we heard that England
877 Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance;
878 For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd,
879 Her sceptre so fantastically borne
880 By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
881 That fear attends her not.
Constable of France
882 O peace, Prince Dauphin!
883 You are too much mistaken in this king.
884 Question your Grace the late ambassadors
885 With what great state he heard their embassy,
886 How well supplied with noble counsellors,
887 How modest in exception, and withal
888 How terrible in constant resolution,
889 And you shall find his vanities forespent
890 Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
891 Covering discretion with a coat of folly;
892 As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
893 That shall first spring and be most delicate.
The Dauphin
894 Well, 'tis not so, my Lord High Constable;
895 But though we think it so, it is no matter.
896 In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh
897 The enemy more mighty than he seems,
898 So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
899 Which, of a weak and niggardly projection,
900 Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
901 A little cloth.
King Charles VI
902 Think we King Harry strong;
903 And, Princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
904 The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;
905 And he is bred out of that bloody strain
906 That haunted us in our familiar paths.
907 Witness our too much memorable shame
908 When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
909 And all our princes captiv'd by the hand
910 Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;
911 Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing,
912 Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun,
913 Saw his heroical seed, and smil'd to see him,
914 Mangle the work of nature and deface
915 The patterns that by God and by French fathers
916 Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
917 Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
918 The native mightiness and fate of him.
[Enter a Messenger.]
Messenger
919 Ambassadors from Harry King of England
920 Do crave admittance to your Majesty.
King Charles VI
921 We'll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.
[Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords.]
King Charles VI
922 You see this chase is hotly follow'd, friends.
The Dauphin
923 Turn head and stop pursuit; for coward dogs
924 Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten
925 Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,
926 Take up the English short, and let them know
927 Of what a monarchy you are the head.
928 Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
929 As self-neglecting.
[Enter EXETER.]
King Charles VI
930 From our brother of England?
Duke of Exeter
931 From him; and thus he greets your Majesty:
932 He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
933 That you divest yourself, and lay apart
934 The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven,
935 By law of nature and of nations, longs
936 To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown
937 And all wide-stretched honours that pertain
938 By custom and the ordinance of times
939 Unto the crown of France. That you may know
940 'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim
941 Pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd days,
942 Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak'd,
943 He sends you this most memorable line,
944 In every branch truly demonstrative;
945 Willing you overlook this pedigree;
946 And when you find him evenly deriv'd
Duke of Exeter
947 From his most fam'd of famous ancestors,
948 Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
949 Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
950 From him, the native and true challenger.
King Charles VI
951 Or else what follows?
Duke of Exeter
952 Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown
953 Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it.
954 Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
955 In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
956 That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
957 And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
958 Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
959 On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
960 Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
961 Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,
962 The dead men's blood, the pining maidens' groans,
963 For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers,
964 That shall be swallowed in this controversy.
965 This is his claim, his threat'ning, and my message;
966 Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,
967 To whom expressly I bring greeting too.
King Charles VI
968 For us, we will consider of this further.
969 To-morrow shall you bear our full intent
970 Back to our brother of England.
The Dauphin
971 For the Dauphin,
972 I stand here for him. What to him from England?
Duke of Exeter
973 Scorn and defiance. Slight regard, contempt,
974 And anything that may not misbecome
975 The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.
976 Thus says my king: an if your father's Highness
977 Do not, in grant of all demands at large,
978 Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his Majesty,
979 He'll call you to so hot an answer of it
980 That caves and womby vaultages of France
981 Shall chide your trespass and return your mock
982 In second accent of his ordinance.
The Dauphin
983 Say, if my father render fair return,
984 It is against my will; for I desire
985 Nothing but odds with England. To that end,
986 As matching to his youth and vanity,
987 I did present him with the Paris balls.
Duke of Exeter
988 He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
989 Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe;
990 And, be assur'd, you'll find a difference,
991 As we his subjects have in wonder found,
992 Between the promise of his greener days
993 And these he masters now. Now he weighs time
994 Even to the utmost grain. That you shall read
995 In your own losses, if he stay in France.
King Charles VI
996 To-morrow shall you know our mind at full.
[Flourish.]
Duke of Exeter
997 Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
998 Come here himself to question our delay;
999 For he is footed in this land already.
King Charles VI
1000 You shall be soon dispatch'd with fair conditions.
1001 A night is but small breath and little pause
1002 To answer matters of this consequence.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 877cultural context
“Whitsun morris-dance”
Whitsun (Whit Sunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter) was one of the great English holiday seasons, marked by processions, feasts, and outdoor entertainments. A morris-dance was a boisterous folk performance by dancers in costume, with bells on their legs, typically reserved for these festive occasions. The Dauphin is sneering that Henry's military preparations are about as threatening as a village dance-party.
TLN 878archaic vocab
“she is so idly king'd, Her sceptre so fantastically borne By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth”
'Idly king'd' means ruled over by an idle, frivolous king — 'idly' carries the older sense of 'foolishly' or 'worthlessly,' not just 'doing nothing.' 'Humorous' does not mean 'funny': it means swayed by passing moods, unsteady in temperament. The word comes from the theory that the body contains four humours (blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile) whose imbalance makes a person erratic. The Dauphin is cataloguing Henry as a lightweight: vain, scatter-brained, and ruled by whim.
TLN 890classical allusion
“the outside of the Roman Brutus, Covering discretion with a coat of folly”
The Constable invokes Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic (509 BCE), who famously pretended to be an idiot — 'brutus' means 'dull' or 'stupid' in Latin — to survive in the court of the tyrant Tarquin. Underneath that mask he was plotting Tarquin's overthrow. The Constable is warning the Dauphin: what looks like Henry's foolishness may be exactly the same disguise, concealing a formidable strategist.
historical Tarquin and the First Brutus
TLN 892archaic vocab
“gardeners do with ordure hide those roots”
'Ordure' is dung, manure, or filth used as fertilizer. The Constable compares Henry's foolish exterior to the manure gardeners heap over plant-roots in winter: the covering is ugly, but what lies beneath will shoot up strong and beautiful in spring. The image predicts Henry's transformation from apparent wastrel to formidable king.
TLN 904archaic vocab
“The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us, And he is bred out of that bloody strain”
'Flesh'd' is a hunting and falconry term: to 'flesh' a hawk or hound meant to give it its first taste of blood from a kill, exciting its appetite and training it to hunt eagerly. Here Charles VI is saying the English line has already had its first bloody taste of French defeat — it was blooded and trained on France. The phrase signals that Henry inherits an appetite whetted by his ancestors' victories at Crécy and Poitiers.
TLN 908historical topical
“Cressy battle fatally was struck, And all our princes captiv'd by the hand Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales”
The Battle of Crécy (1346) was a catastrophic French defeat at the hands of Edward III and his son Edward the Black Prince, in the early phase of the Hundred Years' War. The French nobility was shattered: thousands of knights died, and the flower of French chivalry was captured or routed by English longbowmen fighting on foot. The Black Prince earned his title and his fearsome reputation here. Charles VI is reminding his court that Henry comes from this exact lineage.
historical Crécy, Poitiers, and the Black Princehistorical Edward III and his seven sons
TLN 911historical topical
“his mountain sire, on mountain standing, Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun, Saw his heroical seed, and smil'd to see him”
This describes a famous moment from the Battle of Crécy: Edward III, watching from a hilltop, refused to send reinforcements to his son the Black Prince when the prince's division was pressed hard, saying the boy must win his spurs himself. The image of a king elevated above the battle, crowned by sunlight, watching his son prove himself became a celebrated emblem of deliberate, proud confidence. Henry V is the 'heroical seed' of that line.
historical Crécy, Poitiers, and the Black Prince
TLN 923rhetorical device
“Turn head and stop pursuit; for coward dogs Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten”
The Dauphin uses an extended hunting metaphor: 'Turn head' is a technical term for a hunted animal turning to face its pursuer rather than continuing to flee. 'Spend their mouths' means to bark loudly — said of hounds that bark more than they bite, giving their position away without catching anything. His argument is that England is all noise and no threat; France should stand its ground and the English will dissolve. The irony is that the audience knows Henry is no coward dog.
TLN 940archaic vocab
“'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim”
Both 'sinister' and 'awkward' carry legal meanings here that their modern senses have almost entirely displaced. 'Sinister' in heraldry and law meant 'on the left side' and hence 'indirect, by a secondary or illegitimate line' — a 'bar sinister' was a mark of illegitimacy on a coat of arms. 'Awkward' meant 'in the wrong direction, perverse, backhanded' — a claim pressed from the wrong angle. Exeter is insisting Henry's title is straight, legitimate, and derived by direct descent, not a crooked or roundabout legal argument.
TLN 946historical topical
“evenly deriv'd From his most fam'd of famous ancestors, Edward the Third, he bids you then resign Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held”
Exeter presents Henry's genealogical pedigree proving descent from Edward III (reigned 1327-1377), who himself claimed the French crown through his mother Isabella of France. France had used the Salic law (barring inheritance through the female line) to reject this claim, but Canterbury argued in Act 1 that the Salic law did not apply to France at all. The French crown is 'indirectly held' by Charles because Henry, as Edward III's rightful heir, is the true owner — in England's legal argument.
historical Edward III and his seven sonshistorical The Salic law and Henry's claim to France
TLN 955classical allusion
“in thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove, That, if requiring fail, he will compel”
Jove (Jupiter), king of the Roman gods, wielded the thunderbolt as his weapon of absolute power. He alone commanded thunder and earthquake, and his decrees could not be appealed. Exeter compares Henry to Jove to signal that the coming invasion will not be a negotiation: it will be an act of sovereign force, as irresistible and punitive as divine wrath.
TLN 957archaic vocab
“in the bowels of the Lord”
'Bowels' in this period meant the seat of deep feeling — what we would call the heart or the gut, the place of compassion and mercy. 'In the bowels of the Lord' is an urgent appeal to Christian mercy and pity, roughly 'for the love of God' or 'by God's own compassion.' The phrase echoes a formula common in Elizabethan official and religious rhetoric. Exeter is urging Charles to surrender not out of fear but out of mercy for those who will die in a war he can prevent.
TLN 980archaic vocab
“caves and womby vaultages of France Shall chide your trespass and return your mock In second accent of his ordinance”
'Womby' means womb-like: hollow, enclosed, deep-cavitied. 'Vaultages' are vaulted spaces — underground chambers, cellars, the arched roofs of castles. 'Ordinance' here means artillery (cannon), not a law; 'second accent' is the echo. Exeter is warning that when Henry's cannon fire, even the caves and hollow vaults of France will ring with the sound — the whole country will be made to hear and repeat Henry's wrath.
TLN 986historical topical
“matching to his youth and vanity, I did present him with the Paris balls”
The Dauphin confirms he is the one who sent Henry the famous gift of tennis balls — seen in Act 1 — as a calculated insult implying Henry was too young and frivolous to make war, fit only for games. 'Paris balls' means the tennis balls (also a play on 'balls' as cannonballs, which Henry has already promised to fire at Paris). The Dauphin's bravado here — he still thinks the gift was a good idea — shows how completely he has misjudged Henry.
TLN 993rhetorical device
“Now he weighs time Even to the utmost grain”
Exeter shifts the metaphor from time as something squandered to time as something measured with a jeweler's or apothecary's scale, down to the smallest possible unit — a grain (the tiniest weight in common use, roughly 65 milligrams). The phrase means Henry now uses every moment with absolute precision and economy, wasting nothing. It contrasts pointedly with the Dauphin's picture of a 'giddy, shallow, humorous youth': Exeter is saying that youth is over and the man left behind is formidably disciplined.