Page 736 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Such barren pleasures, rude society,
As thou art matched withal and grafted to, [15]
Accompany the greatness of thy blood
And hold their level with thy princely heart?

PRINCE
So please your majesty, I would I could

Quit all offenses with as clear excuse
As well as I am doubtless I can purge [20]
Myself of many I am charged withal.

Yet such extenuation let me beg
As, in reproof of many tales devised,
Which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear
By smiling pickthanks and base newsmongers, [25]
I may, for some things true wherein my youth

Hath faulty wand’red and irregular,
Find pardon on my true submission.

KING
God pardon thee! Yet let me wonder, Harry,
At thy affections, which do hold a wing [30]

Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.
Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost,
Which by thy younger brother is supplied,
And art almost an alien to the hearts

Of all the court and princes of my blood. [35]
The hope and expectation of thy time
Is ruined, and the soul of every man
Prophetically do forethink thy fall.

Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men, [40]
So stale and cheap to vulgar company,
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,

Had still kept loyal to possession
And left me in reputeless banishment,
A fellow of no mark nor likelihood. [45]
By being seldom seen, I could not stir

But, like a comet, I was wond’red at;