That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you. Shakespeare takes the idea about fathers even further, by telling the men they have to fight to show that they really are the children of their courageous fathers: He compares them to “many Alexanders, ” portraying them all as soldiers as brave as Alexander the Great, who never rested until he won. He calls them men “whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof” – men whose fathers were fighters, and who must now take their turn. Once the men look ready to fight, Henry praises where they come from. He encourages them not only to feel angry with a “hard favour’d rage,” but to look the part as well, by looking with a “terrible aspect” and setting the “teeth” and stretching out their nostrils to appear as fearsome as possible. Henry then taps into the tired soldiers’ dreams of peace and home and the men they are outside war, with “stillness and humility.” But, there is no room for qualities like this in the middle of battle, when “the blast of war blows in our ears.” When that happens, a different kind of man is needed, that can “stiffen the sinews” and “summon up the blood” to become a strong and ruthless fighter. If they do not fight, the progress they have made by breaking through Harfleur’s defences will be for nothing and the gap may as well be filled with the “English dead.” Henry immediately seeks to build up trust and rapport between him and his men by calling them “dear friends.” He knows he will need their confidence in him, as he has to ask them “once more” to fight for him when he knows they have already given everything they have. In the second part of the ‘ Once more unto the breach‘ speech, Henry flatters his men, the “noblest English” and urges them to “Dishonour not your mothers” and make their families proud of them by being “men of grosser blood” who are ready for war.īy the time the speech ends, the soldiers are ready to storm Harfleur and charge through its walls on Henry’s famous rallying cry, “God for Harry, for England and St George!”
He advises them to make their eyes look like a “brass cannon” peaking out from a warship and to hold their foreheads high and “fearfully” so they appear like an angry cliff or “galled rock” over the ocean.
U.K. FRANCE ONCE MORE BREACH FULL
Instead, they must “imitate the action of the tiger” and make themselves think and look physically terrifying, by using their full height, baring their teeth, and flaring their nostrils. Henry gives his men a stark choice: either summon the energy to push through the breach or give up, die and leave it to be filled with the corpses of the “English dead.” He reminds them that there is no room for the “modest stillness and humility” that might be useful in peacetime. The game's afoot:Ĭry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!' I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, That you are worth your breeding which I doubt not įor there is none of you so mean and base, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
U.K. FRANCE ONCE MORE BREACH HOW TO
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.Īnd teach them how to war. Have in these parts from morn till even foughtĪnd sheathed their swords for lack of argument: Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof! Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. Like the brass cannon let the brow o'erwhelm it In peace there's nothing so becomes a manīut when the blast of war blows in our ears,ĭisguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage Or close the wall up with our English dead. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once moreįrom Henry V, spoken by King Henry - by William Shakespeare It is up to Henry to rouse them into gathering up their strength for a decisive charge to take the city and bring the English closer to victory.
They have succeeded in weakening the walls of the city and creating a “breach” they can use to access it, but are outnumbered and exhausted. King Henry’s army is in the middle of a siege of the French city, Harfleur. The ‘ Once more unto the breach‘ speech appears at the peak of the action in Act 3, Scene 1. Based on the events of the Hundred Years War, Henry V of England is convinced that he is the rightful heir to the French throne and has come to claim his rightful place as king of France.
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