Henry V
Act III, Scene 3
France. Before the Harfleur Gates.
Sketch from Charles Kean's production of Henry V at Princess's Theatre, London
Siege of Harfleur
John K. Chapman and Co., 1859
- Enter some Citizens on the walls. Enter the King and all his
- Train before the gates.
King Henry the Fifth
1 - 43- How yet resolves the governor of the town?
- This is the latest parle we will admit;
- Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves,
- Or like to men proud of destruction,
- Defy us to our worst; for as I am a soldier,
- A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
- If I begin the batt’ry once again,
- I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
- Till in her ashes she lies buried.
- The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
- And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart,
- In liberty of bloody hand, shall range,
- With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
- Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants.
- What is it then to me, if impious War,
- Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,
- Do with his smirch’d complexion all fell feats
- Enlink’d to waste and desolation?
- What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,
- If your pure maidens fall into the hand
- Of hot and forcing violation?
- 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’ enraged soldiers in their spoil,
- As send precepts to the leviathan
- To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
- Take pity of your town and of your people,
- Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,
- Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
- O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
- Of headly murder, spoil, and villainy.
- If not—why, in a moment look to see
- The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
- Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
- Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
- And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls;
- Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
- Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus’d
- Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
- At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughter-men.
- What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid?
- Or guilty in defense, be thus destroy’d?
- Enter Governor to the Citizens.
Governor of Harfleur
44 - 50- Our expectation hath this day an end.
- The Dauphin, whom of succors we entreated,
- Returns us that his powers are yet not ready
- To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great King,
- We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.
- Enter our gates, dispose of us and ours,
- For we no longer are defensible.
King Henry the Fifth
51 - 58- Open your gates. Come, uncle Exeter,
- Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain,
- And fortify it strongly ’gainst the French.
- Use mercy to them all for us, dear uncle.
- The winter coming on, and sickness growing
- Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Callice.
- Tonight in Harfleur will we be your guest;
- Tomorrow for the march are we address’d.
- Flourish, and enter the town.
Charles Grignion, printmaker; Bellamy & Robarts; Henry Richter; 1790