Henry V – Act Two Scene Four
The French King – Charles VI – is worried about England’s threat of war but his son the Dauphin is not worried by Henry V.
Dauphin
For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d,
Her sceptre so fantastically borne
By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
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 noble 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.
Note the use of “Roman Brutus” as Shakespeare was probably thinking or even writing Julius Caesar at the time although this is not a reference to Marcus Brutus
From the Arden Edition of Henry V
Lucius Junius Brutus feigned mental incapacity as a safeguard when plotting to expel the tyrant Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome
The Dauphin urges the King not to worry and not give in to Henry
Dauphin
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
As self-neglecting.
A nice phrase, but misplaced confidence of the Dauphin. Enter Exeter with a Message for the French King and gives his version of Henry’s right to the French throne
EXETER
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 OF FRANCE
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;
Exeter has a message from Henry to the Dauphin.
DAUPHIN
For the Dauphin,
I stand here for him: what to him from England?EXETER
Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt,
And any thing 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 of it,
That caves and womby vaultages of France
Shall chide your trespass and return your mock
In second accent of his ordnance.DAUPHIN
Say, if my father render fair return,
It is against my will; for I desire
Nothing but odds with England: to that end,
As matching to his youth and vanity,
I did present him with the Paris balls.EXETER
He’ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe:
And, be assured, you’ll find a difference,
As we his subjects have in wonder found,
Between the promise of his greener days
And these he masters now: now he weighs time
Even to the utmost grain: that you shall read
In your own losses, if he stay in France.
The King, and probably the Dauphin is worried now and the next act will see War stamp his hooves in French soil.
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