The Hollow Crown

The heavens themselves, the planets and this earth,

observe degree, priority and place,

office and custom, in all line of order.

Take but degree away,

untune that string,

and hark,

what discord follows!

Ripped By mstoll

King Henry V,

too famous to live long.

England ne'er lost a king of so much worth.

England ne'er had a king until his time.

His sparkling eyes,

replete with wrathful fire.

More dazzled and drove back his enemies than midday sun

fierce bent against their faces.

Henry V, thy ghost I invocate.

Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils.

Combat with adverse planets in the heavens.

A far more glorious star thy soul will make,

than Julius Caesar, or bright...

My honorable lords.

Sad tidings bring I to you out of France,

of loss, of slaughter and discomfiture.

Paris, Gisors, Poitiers are all quite lost.

What sayest thou, man, before dead Henry's corpse? Speak softly.

The loss of those great towns will make him burst his lead and rise from death.

Is Paris lost?

Is Gisors yielded up?

If Henry were recalled to life again,

these news would cause him once more yield the ghost.

How were they lost? What treachery was used?

No treachery, but want of men and money.

Of England's coat one half is cut away.

Were our tears wanting to this funeral,

these tidings would call forth their flowing tides.

Give me my steeled coat. I'll fight for France.

Wounds will I lend the French instead of eyes,

to weep their intermissive miseries.

O whither shall we fly from this reproach?

We will not fly, but to our enemies' throats.

Exeter, if thou be slack, I'll fight it out.

Gloucester, why doubt'st thou of my forwardness?

An army have I mustered in my thoughts wherewith already France is overrun.

My gracious Lord,

to add to your laments, wherewith you now bedew King Henry's hearse,

I must inform you of the fight for Orleans

betwixt the stout lords, Talbot and Salisbury,

and the French.

Salisbury!

The camp by night was overrun.

Talbot slain?

No.

Talbot lives, but forced to flee Orleans.

Farewell, my masters. Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make,

to warm our great Saint George's feast.

I'll either quell the Dauphin utterly,

or bring him in obedience to our yoke. Come.

I'll to the Tower with all the haste I can,

and there I will proclaim young Henry King.

Your Majesty.

Brakenbury?

My Lord, your loving nephew.

Richard Plantagenet, is he come?

Ay, noble uncle,

your nephew, Richard, comes.

Direct mine arms, I may embrace his neck.

Poor gentleman, your wrong doth equal mine.

Deprived of honor and inheritance.

But now, the arbitrator of despairs,

just death,

kind umpire of men's miseries,

with sweet enlargements doth dismiss me hence.

I would his troubles were expired,

that you might recover what is lost.

Good uncle, for my father's sake,

in honor of a true Plantagenet

and for alliance sake, declare the cause.

Henry IV, grandfather to the young king,

deposed his true King Richard.

I should have been the rightful next by birth

when my friends opposed this usurpment,

and worked to instate me the rightful heir.

I lost my liberty and they their lives.

Are you the rightful king?

And I thy heir?

Silence, nephew, be thou politic.

Strong fixed is the house of Lancaster,

and, like a mountain, not to be removed.

And so, farewell,

and fair be all thy hopes,

and prosperous be thy life

in peace and war.

Here dies the dusky torch of Mortimer.

And now, for all those wrongs,

those bitter injuries,

which too long fate hath offered to my house,

I silently swear with honor to redress.

My great uncle was Edmund Mortimer, who married Philippa,

sole daughter unto Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

Therefore, so if the issue of the elder son succeed the younger,

I am King.

The truth appears so naked on my side,

that any purblind eye could seek it out.

Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,

let him that is a true-born gentleman,

if he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

from off this brier pluck

a white rose with me.

Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer

pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

I love no colors.

And without all color of base insinuating flattery,

I pluck this white rose with My Lord.

I pluck this red rose with brave Somerset,

and say withal I think he held the right.

Stay, lords and gentlemen, and pluck no more,

till you conclude that he upon whose side

the fewest roses are cropped from the tree,

shall yield the other in the right opinion.

Good Lord of Warwick, it is well objected.

If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.

And I.

Then, for the truth

and plainness of the case,

I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,

giving my verdict on the white rose side.

Well, well. Come on, who else?

Now, Somerset, where is your argument?

Here in my scabbard,

meditating that shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.

Meantime...

Your cheeks do counterfeit our roses, for pale they look with fear.

Not for fear, but anger, that yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.

Proud fool, be gone!

I scorn both him and thee.

Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet.

I'll turn my dagger here into thy throat.

Let us away, good Suffolk.

We grace this yeoman by conversing with him.

Now, by God's will, thou wrong'st him, Somerset!

Was not thy father for treason executed?

His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood,

and till thou be restored, thou art a yeoman.

My father was no traitor,

and that I'll prove on better men than Somerset,

and scourge you for this apprehension.

Look to it well, say you are well warned.

Thou shalt find us ready for thee still,

and know us by these colors for thy foes.

For these my friends, in spite of thee, shall wear.

And, by my soul,

this pale and angry rose,

as symbol white of my blood-drinking hate,

shall I, forever,

and my faction, wear.

Go forward, and be choked with thy ambition.

Oh!

Gloucester.

Com'st thou with deep premeditated lines?

With written pamphlets, studiously devised?

Humphrey of Gloucester, if thou canst accuse,

do it without invention, suddenly.

As I with sudden and extemporal speech

purpose to answer what thou canst object.

Your Majesty?

Presumptuous priest, this place commands my patience,

or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonored me.

Thou art a most pernicious usurer,

forward by nature, enemy to peace.

Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems a man of thy profession and degree.

Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts were sifted,

the King, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt

from envious malice of thy swelling heart.

Gloucester, I do defy thee.

If I were covetous,

ambitious, or perverse, as he would have me,

how am I so poor?

It is not that that hath incensed the Duke.

It is because no one should sway but he.

No one but he should be about the King,

and that engenders thunder in his breast

and makes him roar these accusations forth.

Am I not Protector, saucy priest?

Unreverent Gloucester!

Thou art reverent touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.

Rome shall remedy this.

Roam thither, then.

Uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester,

I would prevail, if prayers might prevail,

to join your hearts in love

and amity.

O, what a scandal is it to our crown,

that two such noble peers as ye should jar?

Believe me, lords,

my tender years can tell,

civil dissension is a viperous worm,

that gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.

O, how this discord doth afflict my soul.

Can you, My Lord of Winchester, behold my sighs and tears,