Once More Unto the Breach
David Thompson, 09 Dec 2008
The siege of Harfleur was supposed to be quick and easy. A port city on the western coast of France, its capture was an essential component of Henry V’s strategy to conquer France in his invasion in 1415. The plan was to take the city quickly and to use it as a platform for taking the country.
In practice, the battle for Harfleur was anything but easy, and it certainly wasn’t quick. The city was better defended than Henry had anticipated. The people of the town and the military force guarding it proved far stronger and more committed than expected. A siege that was supposed to take several days at most wound up taking more than six weeks. Henry’s men faced fiercer opposition than they ever thought they would. And fighting on the marshy ground of Harfleur left the English army decimated by dysentery.
In his dramatisation of the siege of Harfleur in Henry V, Shakespeare reveals the dangerous states we access when we pursue a goal too doggedly – and when we are willing to chase victory at any cost.
Henry exhorts his troops to make one last assault on the town in a speech that many consider a model of motivational speech:
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, conjure up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled 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.
Go ahead and read those words aloud – and as you do so, follow Henry’s instructions as closely as you can. Notice what happens as you “stiffen the sinews” and think about conjuring up the blood. Let yourself be aware of how your state changes as you disguise the better part of yourself with hard favoured rage, and lend your eye a terrible aspect. Feel whatever you feel as you imagine your eye turning into a cannon – and as you hold your brow forward so that it’s like a cliff over the ocean. Set your teeth, stretch your nostrils and notice what you notice as you hold hard your breath and bend your spirit to its full height.
Pretty intense, isn’t it? As I take on this physical posture, I feel anger, rage, determination and violence within. Shakespeare’s Henry is certainly aware of the link between how we hold ourselves physically and the state we access as a result.
Henry goes on to intensify this state in himself and in his men – not by giving them an image of victory, but by hinting that they might not be quite men their fathers were:
On, on you noblest English,
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 sheath’d their swords for lack of argument.
In other words, Henry is saying, “come on boys – your fathers would fight hard here. Hell, they would have fought like Alexander the Great, from dawn to dusk, without stopping until there was nothing left to fight about.” Henry’s adding just a hint of shame to the already physically geared up army.
Henry doesn’t stop there. Instead he even suggests that his men might actually be bastards:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call 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
That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base
That hath not noble lustre in his eyes.
Not only is he hinting at the idea that whoever doesn’t fight is a bastard, he’s even insulting them when he’s trying to praise them. “For none of you is so mean and base / That hat not noble lustre in his eyes,” implies that every one of them is actually quite mean and base.
Then he’s back to the animal imagery – dogs this time instead of tigers:
I see you straining 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!”
Heady stuff that never fails to rouse an audience. By the time the actor playing Henry has finished, the audience is ready to charge Harfleur themselves. And yet, at the same time, the attentive listener is vaguely repulsed too. Is this animal part of themselves really going to help them achieve what they want. Isn’t there some sense of trying too hard or wanting it too much?
I think there is – and that Shakespeare deliberately seeks this mixed response. Interestingly, the very next scene shows Pistol and Nym retreating from the battle rather than going forward. The most visible affect of Henry’s rhetoric is to make some of his men run away.
What’s also interesting is that the speech and the state it summons up aren’t enough to win the battle. Instead, Henry has to sink even lower – to an even darker part of himself – in his threat to the Governor of Harfleur. Here, he insults his men even more, suggesting that only his command is preventing them from committing the worst sort of atrocities:
Take pity of your town and of your people
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,
Whiles yet the cool and temerpate wind of grace
O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villainy.
If not - why in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
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,
While the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughter-men.
Henry’s reached within himself and found what? The threat of rape, murder of old men and even infanticide. He even manages to hint at some anti-Semitic feeling.
I think this is the moment in the play when Henry is at his absolute lowest. His threat finally works – but the cost is massive. He has had to make use of his darkest aspects – and he’s had to encourage the same behaviour from his followers. The result? He takes the town, but his larger plan of conquering France is in tatters. Despite taking Harfleur, Henry and his men are forced to retreat. Ravaged by sickness of both body and spirit, they seek a path to Calais, and then back to England.
The scene is a powerful metaphor for what happens to us when we are willing to forsake our better selves in order to realise a goal that we want so desperately. What happens to us when we pursue a goal so doggedly, so desperately, that we are willing to do anything to get it. I think Shakespeare’s suggesting that it can kill us – and that it can, instead of taking us toward a path to victory, lead us toward an even greater defeat.
Henry’s journey doesn’t end at Harfleur, however. Nor do the lessons of the play. In my next article, I’ll examine how Henry adopts a different strategy – of detachment - even in the face of disaster, and how his letting go allows him to access his own best resources and the inner strength of the people around him, upon St. Crispin’s Day.
