Henry V: Act III

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought.

Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th’ invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge.

O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing,
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur.

For who is he whose chin is but enriched
With one appearing hair that will not follow
These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?

Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.

Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!

Now attest
That those whom you called fathers did beget you.

And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture.

And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture.

“The plainsong” is most just, for humors do abound.
Knocks go and come. God’s vassals drop and die,
And sword and shield,
In bloody field,
Doth win immortal fame.

For indeed three such antics do not amount to a man: for Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced, by the means whereof he faces it out but fights not...

Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire shovel.

Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will you voutsafe me, look you, a few disputations with you as partly touching or concerning the disciplines of the war, the Roman wars?

Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant, Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think you do not use me with that affability as, in discretion, you ought to use me, look you, being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of war and in the derivation of my birth, and in other particularities.

This is the latest parle we will admit.

What is it then to me if impious war,
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats
Enlinked to waste and desolation?

What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?

We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon th’ enragèd soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the Leviathan
To come ashore.

The Dauphin, whom of succors we entreated,
Returns us that his powers are yet not ready
To raise so great a siege.

The Dauphin, whom of succors we entreated,
Returns us that his powers are yet not ready
To raise so great a siege.

Ô Dieu vivant, shall a few sprays of us,
The emptying of our fathers’ luxury,
Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,
Spurt up so suddenly into the clouds
And overlook their grafters?

Where is Montjoy the herald?

Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow
Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat
The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon.

The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon, and a man that I love and honor with my soul and my heart and my duty and my life and my living and my uttermost power.

Bardolph, a soldier firm and sound of heart and of buxom valor, hath, by cruel Fate and giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel, that goddess blind, that stands upon the rolling restless stone—

By your patience, Aunchient Pistol, Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning and inconstant, and mutability and variation...

Therefore go speak; the Duke will hear thy voice, and let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut with edge of penny cord and vile reproach.

Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.

Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal.

We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.

For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for th’ effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person kneeling at our feet but a weak and worthless satisfaction.

For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for th’ effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person kneeling at our feet but a weak and worthless satisfaction.

Go bid thy master well advise himself:
If we may pass, we will; if we be hindered,
We shall your tawny ground with your red blood
Discolor.

He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs, le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu.

It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.

It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.

That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honor some were away.

By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but his lackey.

If the English had any apprehension, they would run away.