Page 1642 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Ambassadors from Harry King of England [65]
Do crave admittance to your majesty.

FRENCH KING
We’ll give them present audience. Go, and bring them
You see this chase is hotly follow’d, friends.

DAUPHIN
Turn head, and stop pursuit; for coward dogs

Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten [70]
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 Exeter.

FRENCH KING
From our brother of England? [75]

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 borrow’d glories that by gift of heaven,
By law of nature and of nations, ’longs [80]
To him and to his heirs − namely, the crown,

And all wide-stretchèd 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, [85]
Pick’d from the worm-holes of long-vanish’d days,
Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak’d,
He sends you this most memorable line,
In every branch truly demonstrative;

Willing you overlook this pedigree: [90]
And when you find him evenly deriv’d