Act 3, Scene 1

France. Before Harfleur.

[Flourish. Enter Chorus.]
Chorus
1003 Thus with imagin'd wing our swift scene flies,
1004 In motion of no less celerity
1005 Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
1006 The well-appointed king at
[Hampton]
Chorus
1007 pier
1008 Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet
1009 With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning.
1010 Play with your fancies; and in them behold
1011 Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
1012 Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
1013 To sounds confus'd; behold the threaden sails,
1014 Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
1015 Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
1016 Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think
1017 You stand upon the rivage and behold
1018 A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
1019 For so appears this fleet majestical,
1020 Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!
1021 Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,
1022 And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
1023 Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,
1024 Either past or not arriv'd to pith and puissance.
1025 For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd
1026 With one appearing hair, that will not follow
1027 These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
1028 Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
1029 Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
1030 With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
1031 Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back,
1032 Tells Harry that the King doth offer him
1033 Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry,
1034 Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.
1035 The offer likes not; and the nimble gunner
1036 With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
[Alarum, and chambers go off.]
Chorus
1037 And down goes all before them. Still be kind,
1038 And eke out our performance with your mind.
[Exit.]
[Alarum. Enter King Henry, Exeter, Bedford, Gloucester, [and Soldiers, with]
King Henry V
1039 Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
1040 Or close the wall up with our English dead.
1041 In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
1042 As modest stillness and humility;
1043 But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
1044 Then imitate the action of the tiger;
1045 Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
1046 Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
1047 Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
1048 Let it pry through the portage of the head
1049 Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
1050 As fearfully as does a galled rock
1051 O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
1052 Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
1053 Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
1054 Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
1055 To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,
1056 Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
1057 Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
1058 Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
1059 And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.
1060 Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
1061 That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
1062 Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
1063 And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,
1064 Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
1065 The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
1066 That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not;
1067 For there is none of you so mean and base,
1068 That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
1069 I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
1070 Straining upon the start. The game's afoot!
1071 Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
1072 Cry, "God for Harry! England and Saint George!"
[Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off.]

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Notes

TLN 1003archaic vocab
“imagin'd wing our swift scene flies, In motion of no less celerity”
The Chorus boasts that the action moves with 'celerity' — speed, swiftness. The play leaps from Southampton to the walls of Harfleur without the audience ever leaving their seats, and this opening line advertises that imaginative velocity.
TLN 1009classical allusion
“the young Phoebus fanning”
Phoebus is the Greek and Roman name for Apollo as the sun-god, imagined driving his chariot of fire across the sky each day. The 'young Phoebus' is the morning sun; the fleet's silken streamers are pictured rippling in the breeze he creates as the sun rises. The image flatters Henry's fleet as something brilliant and divinely powered.
classical Hyperion
TLN 1017archaic vocab
“stand upon the rivage and behold”
'Rivage' means a riverbank or coastal shore — from the French 'rivage.' The Chorus is asking the audience to imagine they are standing on the English coast, watching the fleet sail away toward Harfleur.
TLN 1024archaic vocab
“Either past or not arriv'd to pith and puissance”
'Pith' means vigour, strength, the full power of a person (from the pith or core of a plant — the part that gives it life). 'Puissance' (pronounced 'PEW-iss-ance') means military power or might — from Old French. Together the phrase means the prime of fighting strength. England is left behind guarded only by those who are either too old or too young to have yet reached that prime.
TLN 1039historical topical
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead”
A 'breach' in siege warfare is the hole made in a town or castle wall by cannon-fire or undermining. Once the wall is broken, the attackers charge through the gap to take the city. Henry is rallying his men to storm Harfleur's walls — with the grimly honest alternative that if they fail, their corpses will fill the gap instead. Harfleur is a fortified port at the mouth of the Seine; capturing it would give England a permanent base in Normandy.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1044rhetorical device
“imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect”
Henry builds a sustained command-metaphor: in peace, gentleness and humility suit a man, but war requires a deliberate physical transformation — stiffening the muscles, tightening the blood, masking one's true (peaceful) nature under a fierce expression. 'Hard-favour'd' means harsh-featured or ugly in appearance; 'aspect' means look or expression. The verbs are imperatives: 'imitate,' 'stiffen,' 'summon,' 'disguise,' 'lend.' Henry is coaching the body as if it were an actor who must play the role of a warrior.
TLN 1047archaic vocab
“lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon”
'Portage' here means the portholes or openings in a ship's side — the gaps through which cannon protrude and fire. Henry is telling his men to let their eyes narrow and glare through their brow-shaded eye-sockets the way a cannon's muzzle peers through its embrasure. The eyes should look like weapons trained on a target.
TLN 1055archaic vocab
“you noblest English, Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof”
'Fet' is an archaic past tense of 'fetch' — meaning drawn, derived, or inherited. 'War-proof' means tested and proven in war, battle-hardened. Henry tells his soldiers that their blood (their lineage) is inherited from ancestors who were proved in battle — that courage is literally in their veins.
TLN 1057classical allusion
“Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought, And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument”
Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) was the supreme conqueror of the ancient world, who led his army from Macedonia through Persia, Egypt, and as far as India without suffering a single major defeat. To compare someone to 'so many Alexanders' is to say they were invincible soldiers. Henry is claiming that the English soldiers' own ancestors fought in France with the same overwhelming force — and sheathed their swords only when there was nobody left to fight ('for lack of argument' = no opponents remaining).
classical Alexander and Caesar returned to dusthistorical Crécy, Poitiers, and the Black Prince
TLN 1069rhetorical device
“I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start”
'Slips' are the quick-release leashes used to hold greyhounds at the start of a coursing race; the dog strains forward, held by a collar that can be slipped in an instant. Henry ends his speech by comparing his men to racing dogs on the leash — taut, eager, barely held back before the signal. 'The game's afoot!' then releases them. The image catches both the soldiers' readiness and the wild animal energy just unleashed.