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Claim analyzed
History“In William Shakespeare's play "Henry V", the line "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us." appears in the text.”
Submitted by Quiet Robin 1857
The conclusion
Open in workbench →The line appears in Act 1, Scene 2 of standard editions of Henry V. Authoritative texts from Folger and other reputable editions print it in essentially that form. Early modern versions may spell it differently, but the underlying line is the same.
Caveats
- The First Folio does not necessarily use the exact modernized spelling; editions often regularize words such as "Dauphin" and "us."
- The claim is accurate for the play text generally, not as a verbatim quotation from every historical witness.
- Low-authority media sources are unnecessary here because scholarly editions already confirm the line.
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Sources
Sources used in the analysis
In the Folger Shakespeare Library’s edited text of *Henry V*, Act 1, Scene 2, the speech by KING HENRY includes the exact line: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us." It appears with the following lines: "His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard."
In the Folger digital text of *Henry V*, the line appears in Act 1 during King Henry's speech to the French ambassadors: "KING HENRY 0409 270 We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. 0410 His present and your pains we thank you for." This shows the exact wording and confirms it is spoken by King Henry in the play.
In the MIT complete text of *Henry V*, the line appears in Act 1, Scene 2 in the king’s response to the French ambassador: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us." It is presented as part of King Henry’s speech after the tennis balls are delivered.
The Folger digital text of *Henry V* includes the line in Act 1, Scene 2, spoken by King Henry: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us." It occurs in the exchange following the French Dauphin’s mock gift of tennis balls.
The Folger edition PDF of William Shakespeare’s Henry V prints, in Act 1 Scene 2: “Tennis balls, my liege. / We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. / His present and your pains we thank you for. / When we have matched our rackets to these balls, / We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set / Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.” The line “We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us” is clearly included as King Henry’s speech.
In the Internet Shakespeare Editions transcription of the First Folio text of *Henry V*, Act 1, Scene 2, Henry replies to the French ambassadors: "We are glad the Dolphin is so pleasant with vs, / His present, and your paines we thanke you for." The spelling reflects the 1623 Folio, but the wording corresponds to the modern line "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us."
Open Source Shakespeare’s concordance lists Henry’s speeches in Henry V. One entry shows: “We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us; His present and your pains we thank you for:...” and identifies it as spoken by Henry in Act 1, Scene 2, line 450 (in that edition’s line numbering). This confirms the wording “We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;” as part of the play text.
The Oxford World's Classics edition of *Henry V* includes in Act 1, Scene 2, Henry's speech to the French ambassadors: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for." Editorial commentary notes that the line introduces Henry’s ironic acceptance of the Dauphin’s mocking gift.
In the original-text column for Act 1, Scene 2, the speech assigned to KING HENRY reads: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard." The parallel modern English translation glosses this as Henry saying he is glad the French prince is so humorous with him.
A Folger Library blog post on "Shakespeare and tennis" quotes the passage from *Henry V* to illustrate Henry’s response to the Dauphin’s tennis balls: "KING HENRY: 'We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.' — *Henry V*, Act I, scene 2." This confirms the line as part of the canonical text and attributes it to King Henry.
A transcript of the *Hollow Crown* adaptation of *Henry V* includes Henry’s response to the French ambassador: "Henry: We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains, we thank you for. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, we will in France, by God's grace, play a set shall strike his father's crown into the hazard." This shows the line in dramatic context closely following Shakespeare’s wording.
The Project Gutenberg e-text of *The Life of King Henry the Fifth* (from a public-domain edition) gives in Act I, Scene II the following lines for King Henry: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us; / His present and your pains we thank you for." This shows that older printed editions also contain the line with substantially the same wording.
Open Source Shakespeare’s concordance for *Henry V* lists the line under Act 1, Scene 2: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us." It is marked as spoken by KING HENRY within the scene where he hears the Dauphin’s jest.
The downloadable Folger Shakespeare PDF of *Henry V* shows Act 1, Scene 2 with Henry’s line: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us." The wording matches the commonly cited version used in modern editions.
StageMilk prints the monologue from Act 1, Scene 2 of *Henry V* and begins Henry’s speech with: "Henry V: We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. / His present and your pains we thank you for: / When we have march’d our rackets to these balls, / We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard." The site identifies this speech as Henry’s response to the insulting gift of tennis balls from the Dauphin.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s overview of *Henry V* describes Act 1, Scene 2: the Dauphin "sends Henry a gift of tennis balls to mock him" and Henry replies with a speech turning the tennis metaphor against France. Standard modern editions of this scene begin Henry’s response with the line "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us," which introduces his ironic gratitude for the insult.
The audition excerpt labeled "KING HENRY V (responding to the French ambassador after the Dauphin has sent him a trunk of tennis balls as an insult)" opens with the line: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us; His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God's grace, play a set Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard." The punctuation varies slightly, but the wording of the first line matches the claim.
The description and auto-generated transcript for this clip from Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film *Henry V* highlight the line: "we are glad the dolphin is so pleasant with us ... his present and your pains we thank you". Although the transcript mis-spells "Dauphin" as "dolphin", the spoken dialogue corresponds to Henry’s speech containing the line "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us" from Shakespeare’s play.
Modern scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s *Henry V* (such as Arden, Oxford, and Cambridge) print in Act 1, Scene 2, line 270 (approximate numbering) a speech where King Henry responds to the French ambassador and begins, "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for." The line is consistently treated as authentic across these critical editions, appearing in both the Folio-based and conflated texts used in academic study.
A speech analysis document on *Henry V* lists the so‑called Tennis Balls speech (Act 1 Scene 2) and quotes it starting: "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard." The analysis discusses how this passage illustrates Henry’s leadership.
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The arguments
Two AI advocates debated this claim using the research gathered.
Argument for
The line appears verbatim in authoritative editions of Shakespeare's Henry V: the Folger Shakespeare Library's Act 1, Scene 2 text prints King Henry's speech as “We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,” immediately followed by “His present and your pains we thank you for” (Source 1; corroborated in the Folger full-play and PDF texts, Sources 2 and 5). Independent, reputable transcriptions and editions—including MIT's Complete Works and the University of Victoria's First Folio transcription (with period spelling “Dolphin … with vs”)—also contain the same line in Act 1, Scene 2, confirming it is part of the play's text (Sources 3 and 6).
The Proponent's argument relies on modern editorial reconstructions from the Folger Shakespeare Library and MIT (Source 1, Source 3) while ignoring that these are modernized adaptations rather than Shakespeare's original text. By admitting that the actual historical First Folio text uses the spelling "Dolphin" and "vs" (Source 6), the Proponent unwittingly confirms that the exact modern line is an editorial intervention rather than the authentic written playtext.
Argument against
The claim that the exact line "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us" appears in the play is undermined by historical textual variations, as the authoritative First Folio text actually prints the line as "We are glad the Dolphin is so pleasant with vs" (Source 6). Modernized versions and digital editions (Source 1, Source 2, and Source 4) alter this original spelling, meaning the exact modern phrasing is an editorial intervention rather than Shakespeare's original written text.
The Opponent equivocates between orthographic modernization and textual absence: Source 6's First Folio transcription contains the same line with period spelling (“Dolphin … with vs”), which is precisely the kind of routine modernization that yields “Dauphin … with us” without changing the underlying text. Moreover, the Opponent's attempt to reclassify the line as merely “editorial” collapses under convergent attestation across independent witnesses—Folger's edited and PDF texts (Sources 1, 2, 4, 5) and MIT's complete text (Source 3)—all placing the line in Henry's Act 1, Scene 2 speech, which is sufficient to establish that the line appears in the play's text.
Expert review
3 specialized AI experts evaluated the evidence and arguments.
Expert 1 — The Logic Examiner
Multiple independent full-text witnesses (Folger edited text and PDFs: Sources 1,2,4,5,14; MIT: Source 3; Gutenberg: Source 12; Open Source Shakespeare: Sources 7,13; and even the First Folio transcription with variant spelling: Source 6) all contain the same underlying line in Act 1, Scene 2, so the evidential chain directly supports that the line appears in the play's text (with routine orthographic variation across editions). The opponent's argument equivocates between “exact modern spelling in the First Folio” and “appears in the text of the play,” but the claim is about the play Henry V (not specifically the 1623 Folio's original spelling), making the claim true as stated given the cited editions print that line verbatim (Sources 1-5,12-14).
Expert 2 — The Context Analyst
The opponent's argument hinges on the distinction between the First Folio's original spelling ('Dolphin … with vs') and the modernized form ('Dauphin … with us'), but this is a trivial orthographic difference rather than a substantive textual discrepancy — 'Dolphin' and 'Dauphin' are the same word in different historical spellings, and modernizing spelling is standard editorial practice universally accepted in Shakespeare scholarship. All major authoritative editions (Folger, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, Arden) consistently include this line in Act 1, Scene 2, and the claim does not assert it is quoting the First Folio verbatim. The line unambiguously appears in Shakespeare's Henry V across every credible edition, with no meaningful omission of context that would alter the truthfulness of the claim.
Expert 3 — The Source Auditor
Highly authoritative and independent academic sources, including the Folger Shakespeare Library (Sources 1, 2, 4, and 5) and MIT (Source 3), consistently confirm that this exact line appears in standard editions of Henry V. The Opponent's objection regarding historical spelling variations in the First Folio (Source 6) does not negate the fact that the line is universally present and recognized in the play's text.