On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws and on your head
Turns he the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,
The dead men's blood, the pining maidens' groans,
For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers,
That shall be swallow'd in this controversy.
This is his claim, his threatening, and my message;
Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,

To whom expressly I bring greeting too.

Fr. King. For us, we will consider of this further: To-morrow shall you bear our full intent

Back to our brother England.

Dau.

For the Dauphin,

I stand here for him: what to him from England?
Exe. Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt,
And any thing that may not misbecome

The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.

Thus says my King: An if13 your father's Highness
Do not, in grant of all demands at large,

Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his Majesty,

He'll call you to so hot an answer of it,

That caves and womby vaultages of France

Shall chide your trespass,14 and return your mock
In second accent of his ordinance.15

Dau. Say, if my father render fair return,

It is against my will; for I desire

Nothing but odds with England: to that end,

18 An if has the force of if simply, the two being used indifferently, and

often both together, with the same sense.

14 Chide in the double sense of resound and of rebuke.

15 Ordinance for ordnance; the trisyllabic form being used for metre's

sake. See King John, page 59, note 32.

As matching to his youth and vanity,

I did present him with the Paris balls.

Exe. He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,
Were it the mistress-Court of mighty Europe:
And be assured you'll find a difference,

As we his subjects have in wonder found,
Between the promise of his greener days
And these he masters now: now he weighs time,
Even to the utmost grain: that you shall read
In your own losses, if he stay in France.

Fr. King. To-morrow shall you know our mind at full. Exe. Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our King Come here himself to question our delay;

For he is footed in this land already.

Fr. King. You shall be soon dispatch'd with fair conditions:

A night is but small breath and little pause

To answer matters of this consequence. [Flourish. Exeunt.

ACT III.

Enter Chorus.

Chor. Thus with imagined wing 1 our swift scene flies,

In motion of no less celerity

Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed2 King at Hampton pier

1 That is, with the wing of imagination. Imagined for imaginative; still another instance of the confusion of active and passive forms. See page 38, note 4.

2 Well-appointed, as often, for well-equipped or well-furnished. — Brave, in the next line, is splendid or superb; a frequent usage.

Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning:
Play with your fancies; and in them behold
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th' invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage,3 and behold
A city on th' inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,

Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!
Grapple your minds to sternage 4 of this navy;
And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsire, babies, and old women,
Either past, or not arrived to, pith and puissance;
For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd
With one appearing hair, that will not follow
These cull'd 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.
Suppose th' ambassador from the French comes back;
Tells Harry that the King doth offer him

Catharine his daughter; and with her, to 5 dowry,
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.

8 Rivage, the bank, or shore; rivage, Fr.

4 Sternage and steerage were formerly synonymous; so also were sternsman and steersman. And the stern being the place of the rudder, the words were used indifferently.

5 To is here equivalent to as or for. See The Tempest, page 113, note 13.

The offer likes not: 6 and the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,

[Alarum, and chambers go off, within. And down goes all before them. Still be kind, And eke out our performance with your mind.

[Exit.

Enter King HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOSTER, and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders.

King. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once

more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead!

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:

But, when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then 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 aspéct ;

Let it pry through the portage 1 of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.2

6 The offer pleases not. This use of to like is very frequent.

7 Linstock was a stick with linen at one end, used as a match for firing guns. Chambers were small pieces of ordnance. They were used on the stage, and the Globe Theatre was burnt by a discharge of them in 1613. 1 Shakespeare uses portage for loop-holes or port-holes.

2 To jutty is to project; jutties, or jetties, are projecting moles to break the force of the waves. Confounded is vexed, or troubled. - Swill'd

Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height !-On, on, you noble English,
Whose blood is fet3 from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,

Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest

That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you!

4

Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

And teach them how to war!

And you, good yeomen,

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture; let us swear

That you are worth your breeding: which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:5
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge,
Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!

[Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off, within.

Enter NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, and the Boy.

Bard. On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach!

anciently was used for "wash'd much or long, drowned, surrounded by water."

3 Fet is an old form of fetched. Shakespeare has it several times.

4 Copy is here used for the thing copied, that is, the pattern or model. "Men of grosser blood" are men of lower rank simply, the "good yeomen who are next addressed.

-

5 The Poet seems to have relished the old English sport of hunting, and he abounds in terms of the chase. In hunting foxes, for instance, the hounds were held back in slips or strings, till the game was got out of its hole, when it was said to be a-foot. See Prologue, page 38.