Henry V
| ACT III SCENE III | The same. Before the gates. | |
| The Governor and some Citizens on the walls; the English forces below. Enter KING HENRY and his train. | ||
| KING HENRY V | 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 | 5 | |
| Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier, | ||
| A name that in my thoughts becomes me best, | ||
| If I begin the battery once again, | ||
| I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur | ||
| Till in her ashes she lie buried. | 10 | |
| 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 flowering infants. | 15 | |
| What is it then to me, if impious war, | ||
| Array’d 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, | 20 | |
| 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 | 25 | |
| Upon the 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; | 30 | |
| Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace | ||
| O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds | ||
| Of heady murder, spoil and villany. | ||
| If not, why, in a moment look to see | ||
| The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand | 35 | |
| 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 confused | 40 | |
| Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry | ||
| At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. | ||
| What say you? will you yield, and this avoid, | ||
| Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d? | ||
| GOVERNOR | Our expectation hath this day an end: | 45 |
| 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; | 50 | |
| For we no longer are defensible. | ||
| KING HENRY V | 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, | 55 | |
| The winter coming on and sickness growing | ||
| Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais. | ||
| To-night in Harfleur we will be your guest; | ||
| To-morrow for the march are we addrest. | ||
| Flourish. The King and his train enter the town. |
Henry V, Act 3, Scene 4