KING HENRY.
It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say?
ALICE.
Oui, vraiment.
KING HENRY.
O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults, as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss; therefore, patiently and yielding. [Kissing her.] You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate; there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council; and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.
Enter the French Power and the English Lords.
BURGUNDY.
God save your Majesty! My royal cousin, teach you our princess English?
KING HENRY.
I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly I love her; and that is good English.
BURGUNDY.
Is she not apt?
KING HENRY.
Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of flattery about me, I cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in her, that he will appear in his true likeness.
BURGUNDY.
Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you for that. If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle; if conjure up Love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked and blind. Can you blame her then, being a maid yet ros’d over with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were, my lord, a hard condition for a maid to consign to.
KING HENRY.
Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces.