ACT THIRD

PROLOGUE

Enter Chorus.

Chor. Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies

In motion of no less celerity

Than that of thought. Suppose that you have

seen

The well-appointed king at Hampton pier
Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phœbus fan-
ning:

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 the invisible and creeping wind, 11
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd

sea,

4. "Well-appointed" is well furnished with all necessaries of war. -The old copies read "Dover pier"; but the Poet himself, and all accounts, and even the chronicles which he followed, say that the king embarked at Southampton.-H. N. H.

"Hampton," Theobald's correction of Ff. "Dover."-I. G.

6. "fanning"; Rowe's emendation of Ff. 1, 2, "fayning," Ff. 3, 4, “faining”; Gould conj. “playing.”—I. G.

"the young Phœbus fanning"; fluttering in the morning sun.C. H. H.

Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, fol-
low:

Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,
And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babies and old wo-

men,

20

Either past or not arrived to pith and puis

sance;

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 the ambassador from the French comes
back;

Tells Harry that the king doth offer him
Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry,
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.
The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner

31

28. "Suppose," etc. This embassy actually met Henry at Winchester.-C. H. H.

32-34. "and the them"; 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 Theater was burned by a discharge of them in 1613.-Of course Shakespeare was a reader of Spenser, and this passage yielės a

With linstock now the devilish cannon touches, [Alarum, and chambers go off. And down goes all before them. Still be kind, And eke out our performance with your mind. [Exit.

SCENE I

France. Before Harfleur.

Alarum. Enter King Henry, Exeter, Bedford, Gloucester, and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders.

K. Hen. 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-favor'd rage;

slight trace of his reading. Thus in The Faerie Queene, Book i. can. 7, stan. 13:

"As when that divelish yron engin, wrought

In deepest hell, and fram'd by Furies skill,
With windy nitre and quick sulphur fraught,
And ramd with bollet rownd, ordained to kill,
Conceiveth fyre; the heavens it doth fill
With thundring noyse, and all the ayre doth choke,
That none can breath, nor see, nor heare at will."

-H. N. H.

35. "Eke"; the first folio, "eech"; the others, "ech"; probably representing the pronunciation of the word.-I. G.

7. "summon up," Rowe's emendation of Ff. "commune up.”— L G.

་

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head 10
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.
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 noblest Eng-
lish,

Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,

Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheathed their swords for lack of argu-
ment:

Dishonor not your mothers; now attest

21

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

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

15. "nostril"; Rowe's emendation of Ff. "nosthrill."-I. G.

17. "noblest English”; so in the folio of 1632. The first folio has "noblish English," which is evidently a mistake, the printer or transcriber having repeated the ending ish. Malone reads "noble English," which is better in itself, but has not quite so good authority. The whole speech is wanting in the quartos.-H. N. H.

21. "argument"; matter. The parallel to Alexander makes it probable that lack of enemies to conquer rather than of “cause to fight for" is meant; none being left to oppose them.-C. H. H.

24. "be copy"; of course copy is here used for the thing copied, that is, the pattern or model.—H. N. H.

That you are worth your breeding; which I

doubt not;

30

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

[Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off.

SCENE II

The same.

Enter Nym, Bardolph, Pistol, and Boy.

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

Nym. Pray thee, corporal, stay: the knocks are

too hot; and, for mine own part, I have not
a case of lives: the humor of it is too hot,
that is the very plain-song of it.

Pist. The plain-song is most just; for humors
do abound:

32. "straining"; Rowe's emendation of Ff. "Straying.”—I. G. 3. "corporal"; it appears in a former scene of this play that Bardolph has been lifted up from a corporal into a lieutenant since our acquaintance with him in Henry IV, and that Nym has succeeded him in the former rank. It is not quite certain whether the Poet forgot the fact here, or whether Nym, being used to call him corporal, in his fright loses his new title.-H. N. H.

b. "case"; that is, a pair of lives; as "a case of pistols," "a case of poniards," "a case of masks." So in Ram Alley we have “a case of justices."-H. N. H.