Act 4, Scene 3

The English camp.

[Enter Gloucester, Bedford, Exeter, Erpingham, with all his host: Salisbury and Westmoreland.]
Duke of Gloucester
2058 Where is the King?
Duke of Bedford
2059 The King himself is rode to view their battle.
Earl of Westmoreland
2060 Of fighting men they have full three-score thousand.
Duke of Exeter
2061 There's five to one; besides, they all are fresh.
Earl of Salisbury
2062 God's arm strike with us! 'tis a fearful odds.
2063 God be wi' you, princes all; I'll to my charge.
2064 If we no more meet till we meet in heaven,
2065 Then, joyfully, my noble Lord of Bedford,
2066 My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord Exeter,
2067 And my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu!
Duke of Bedford
2068 Farewell, good Salisbury, and good luck go with thee!
Duke of Exeter
2069 Farewell, kind lord; fight valiantly to-day!
2070 And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it,
2071 For thou art fram'd of the firm truth of valour.
[Exit Salisbury.]
Duke of Bedford
2072 He is as full of valour as of kindness,
2073 Princely in both.
[Enter the King.]
Earl of Westmoreland
2074 O that we now had here
2075 But one ten thousand of those men in England
2076 That do no work to-day!
King Henry V
2077 What's he that wishes so?
2078 My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin.
2079 If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
2080 To do our country loss; and if to live,
2081 The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
2082 God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
2083 By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
2084 Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
2085 It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
2086 Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
2087 But if it be a sin to covet honour,
2088 I am the most offending soul alive.
2089 No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
2090 God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
2091 As one man more, methinks, would share from me
2092 For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
2093 Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
2094 That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
2095 Let him depart. His passport shall be made,
2096 And crowns for convoy put into his purse.
2097 We would not die in that man's company
2098 That fears his fellowship to die with us.
2099 This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
2100 He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
2101 Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
2102 And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
2103 He that shall live this day, and see old age,
2104 Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
2105 And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
2106 Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
2107 And say, "These wounds I had on Crispian's day."
2108 Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
2109 But he'll remember with advantages
2110 What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
2111 Familiar in his mouth as household words,
2112 Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
2113 Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
2114 Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
2115 This story shall the good man teach his son;
2116 And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
2117 From this day to the ending of the world,
2118 But we in it shall be remembered,
2119 We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
2120 For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
2121 Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
2122 This day shall gentle his condition;
2123 And gentlemen in England now a-bed
2124 Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
2125 And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
2126 That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
[Re-enter Salisbury.]
Earl of Salisbury
2127 My sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed.
2128 The French are bravely in their battles set,
2129 And will with all expedience charge on us.
King Henry V
2130 All things are ready, if our minds be so.
Earl of Westmoreland
2131 Perish the man whose mind is backward now!
King Henry V
2132 Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz?
Earl of Westmoreland
2133 God's will! my liege, would you and I alone,
2134 Without more help, could fight this royal battle!
King Henry V
2135 Why, now thou hast unwish'd five thousand men,
2136 Which likes me better than to wish us one.
2137 You know your places. God be with you all!
[Tucket. Enter Montjoy.]
Montjoy
2138 Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry,
2139 If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound,
2140 Before thy most assured overthrow;
2141 For certainly thou art so near the gulf,
2142 Thou needs must be englutted. Besides, in mercy,
2143 The Constable desires thee thou wilt mind
2144 Thy followers of repentance; that their souls
2145 May make a peaceful and a sweet retire
2146 From off these fields, where, wretches, their poor bodies
2147 Must lie and fester.
King Henry V
2148 Who hath sent thee now?
Montjoy
2149 The Constable of France.
King Henry V
2150 I pray thee, bear my former answer back:
2151 Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones.
2152 Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus?
2153 The man that once did sell the lion's skin
2154 While the beast liv'd, was kill'd with hunting him.
2155 A many of our bodies shall no doubt
2156 Find native graves, upon the which, I trust,
2157 Shall witness live in brass of this day's work;
2158 And those that leave their valiant bones in France,
2159 Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,
2160 They shall be fam'd; for there the sun shall greet them,
2161 And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;
2162 Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,
2163 The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.
2164 Mark then abounding valour in our English,
2165 That being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,
2166 Break out into a second course of mischief,
2167 Killing in relapse of mortality.
2168 Let me speak proudly: tell the Constable
2169 We are but warriors for the working-day.
2170 Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
2171 With rainy marching in the painful field;
2172 There's not a piece of feather in our host—
2173 Good argument, I hope, we will not fly—
2174 And time hath worn us into slovenry;
2175 But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;
2176 And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night
2177 They'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck
2178 The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads
2179 And turn them out of service. If they do this—
2180 As, if God please, they shall,—my ransom then
2181 Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour.
2182 Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald.
2183 They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints;
2184 Which if they have as I will leave 'em them,
2185 Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.
Montjoy
2186 I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well;
2187 Thou never shalt hear herald any more.
[Exit.]
King Henry V
2188 I fear thou'lt once more come again for ransom.
[Enter York.]
Duke of York
2189 My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg
2190 The leading of the vaward.
King Henry V
2191 Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away;
2192 And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2060historical topical
“full three-score thousand”
Three-score is sixty (a score = 20), so sixty thousand French against roughly six thousand English — the five-to-one odds Exeter names on the next line. Holinshed's Chronicles puts the English force at about six thousand, though modern historians estimate somewhat higher. The crushing numerical disparity is what makes Henry's refusal to wish for more men both defiant and the pivot on which the scene turns.
historical The Battle of Agincourt (1415)
TLN 2079archaic vocab
“we are enow”
'Enow' is the plural form of 'enough' in Elizabethan English. Henry is saying: if we are fated to die, we are already enough men to represent England's loss — so no additional reinforcements would change the outcome, only dilute the honor of surviving.
TLN 2085archaic vocab
“It yearns me not”
'Yearns' here means 'grieves' or 'troubles' — it has nothing to do with longing or desire. Henry is saying: it does not distress me that other men wear my expensive clothes (an allusion to the perquisite by which a lord's cast-off garments went to his servants). He is listing material things he does not covet; the one thing he does covet — honour — he names immediately after.
TLN 2094archaic vocab
“hath no stomach to this fight”
'Stomach' meant 'appetite,' 'inclination,' or 'courage' in Elizabethan English. Henry is offering any unwilling soldier free passage home, with coins for the journey ('crowns for convoy' = money for travel expenses). The word choice is deliberate: a man without stomach for the fight is literally without the appetite for it, and Henry will not have such a man at his side.
TLN 2099historical topical
“feast of Crispian”
25 October — the day of the battle — was the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, two Christian brothers martyred in the third century who became the patron saints of shoemakers. The date was fixed in every English parish calendar. Henry seizes on the coincidence: the battle's date will become its permanent name, and men who survive will forever be identified as those who 'fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.'
historical Saint Crispin's Day
TLN 2109archaic vocab
“remember with advantages”
'With advantages' means 'with exaggerations' or 'with embellishments added.' Old men, Henry predicts, will remember what they did on this day — but they will remember it bigger than it was, adding to their own exploits in the retelling. It is a wry, affectionate observation: memory flatters the rememberer.
TLN 2119rhetorical device
“we few, we happy few, we band of brothers”
The triple repetition of 'we' — 'we few, we happy few, we band of brothers' — is anaphora (repeating the same word at the start of successive phrases) used to build intensity and solidarity. Henry follows immediately with a radical claim: any soldier who sheds blood with him this day will become his brother, regardless of birth rank. A common man's blood will 'gentle his condition' — raise his social status — as surely as noble birth would.
TLN 2121historical topical
“be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition”
'Vile' here means 'low-born' (of common origin), not morally wicked. 'Gentle his condition' means 'raise him to the rank of gentleman.' In Elizabethan England, 'gentle' and 'gentlemen' referred to a legally recognized social rank above common laborers — a rank normally determined by birth, not deeds. Henry promises that shared battle-blood will function as a kind of automatic ennoblement.
TLN 2139archaic vocab
“thy ransom thou wilt now compound”
'Compound' means 'negotiate a settlement' or 'come to terms.' Montjoy is asking whether Henry will agree now, before the battle, on a ransom price for himself — the standard medieval practice by which a captured nobleman would pay a sum to his captor rather than be killed. The assumption is that Henry will lose and be taken prisoner; the French Constable is offering him a chance to fix the price in advance.
TLN 2141archaic vocab
“near the gulf, Thou needs must be englutted”
'Gulf' means an abyss or whirlpool — a swallowing void. 'Englutted' means 'swallowed up' (from French engloutir). Montjoy is telling Henry he is so close to destruction that he must inevitably be consumed by it, like a ship already drawn into a whirlpool. The imagery is of a force of nature that leaves no escape.
TLN 2153classical allusion
“The man that once did sell the lion's skin While the beast liv'd, was kill'd with hunting him”
Henry is alluding to a fable from the Aesopic tradition: a hunter sold a lion's (in some versions a bear's) skin before he had caught the animal, then was killed in the hunt. The moral is that it is foolish to count on gains before you have them. Henry turns it back on the French, who are already dividing up the English ransom money before the battle is fought — and who, he implies, will share the hunter's fate.
TLN 2169cultural context
“warriors for the working-day”
Henry contrasts his army's appearance with the French, who are arrayed in bright parade armor. 'Working-day' meant an ordinary weekday (as opposed to a holiday), and so 'working-day' warriors are soldiers in their plain, worn campaigning gear — not the polished tournament dress of the French. The lines that follow describe what the English look like after weeks of rain and marching: armor dulled ('besmirch'd'), no decorative feathers in their helmets ('not a piece of feather'), clothes threadbare. Henry uses their shabbiness as a point of honor.
TLN 2172wordplay
“not a piece of feather in our host— Good argument, I hope, we will not fly”
Henry makes a pun on 'fly': the English have no decorative feathers (plumes) in their helmets after the wet march — which, he jokes, is good evidence ('argument') that they will not fly, meaning run away in retreat. Feathers in a helmet were a mark of the aristocratic warrior in parade armor; lacking them is a mark of plain soldiers. The joke turns their ragged appearance into a boast of courage.
TLN 2190archaic vocab
“leading of the vaward”
'Vaward' is a contraction of 'van-ward,' meaning the vanguard — the front line of an army advancing into battle, the most exposed and most dangerous position. York is asking for the honor of leading the first assault. He will die there, as Exeter's report in 4.6 movingly confirms.