HENRY V Essay Example For Students

HENRY V Essay A monologue from the play by William ShakespeareKING: The mercy that was quick in us but late,By your own counsel is suppressed and killed. You must not dare for shame to talk of mercy;For your own reasons turn into your bosomsAs dogs upon their masters, worrying you.See you, my princes and my noble peers,These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge hereYou know how apt our love was to accordTo furnish him with all appertinentsBelonging to his honor; and this manHath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspiredAnd sworn unto the practices of FranceTo kill us here in Hampton; to the whichThis knight, no less for bounty bound to usThan Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But O,What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,That knewst the very bottom of my soul,That almost mightst have coined me into gold,Wouldst thou have practiced on me for thy use?May it be possible that foreign hireCould out of thee extract one spark of evilThat might annoy my finger? Tis so strangeThat, though the truth of it stands off as grossAs black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.Treason and murder ever kept together,As two yoke-devils sworn to eithers purpose,Working so grossly in a natural causeThat admiration did not whoop at them;But thou, gainst all proportion, didst bring inWonder to wait on treason and on murder;And whatsoever cunning fiend it wasThat wrought upon thee so preposterouslyHath got the voice in hell for excellence. All other devils that suggest by treasonsDo botch and bungle up damnationWith patches, colors, and with forms being fetchedFrom glistring semblances of piety;But he that tempered thee bade thee stand up,Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.If that same demon that hath gulled thee thusShould with his lion gait walk the whole world,He might return to vasty Tartar backAnd tell the legions, I can never winA soul so easy as that Englishmans.O, how hast thou with jealousy infectedThe sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,Garnished and decked in modest complement,Not working with the eye without the ear,And but in purged judgment trusting neither?Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blotTo mark the full-fraught man and best induedWith some suspicion. I will weep for thee;For this revolt of thine, methinks, is likeAnother fall of man. Their faults are open.Arrest them to the answer of the law;And God acquit them of their practices!