Act IIIScene III
Before the gates
The Governor and some citizens on the walls; the English forces below. Enter King Henry and his train.
King Henry
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 destructionDefy 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 HarfleurTill in her ashes she lie buried.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 rangeWith conscience wide as hell, mowing like grassYour fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants.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 featsEnlink’d to waste and desolation?What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,If your pure maidens fall into the handOf hot and forcing violation?What rein can hold licentious wickednessWhen down the hill he holds his fierce career?We may as bootless spend our vain commandUpon the enraged soldiers in their spoilAs send precepts to the leviathanTo come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,Take pity of your town and of your people,Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of graceO’erblows the filthy and contagious cloudsOf heady murder, spoil, and villainy.If not, why, in a moment look to seeThe blind and bloody soldier with foul handDefile 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 confus’dDo break the clouds, as did the wives of JewryAt 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.The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated,Returns us that his powers are yet not readyTo 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;
For we no longer are defensible.
King Henry
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,The winter coming on, and sickness growingUpon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais.Tonight in Harfleur will we be your guest;Tomorrow for the march are we addrest.
Flourish. The King and his train enter the town.