PROLOGUE The Life of King Henry the Fifth  Shakespeare homepage  |  Henry V  | Act 3, Prologue 

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 Enter Chorus  Chorus  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 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 the 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 ravage and behold 

 A city on the inconstant billows dancing; 

 For so appears this fleet majestical, 

 Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow: 

 Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, 

 And leave your England, as dead midnight still, 

 Guarded with grandsires, 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 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 

 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. 



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