Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;

Behold the ordnance on their carriages,

With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.

  

Chorus

King Henry the Fifth       Act III, Prologue, Line 27

 

This is the chorus setting the scene and asking the audience to imagine what the siege of Harfleur would look like. This is the same siege that we were in yesterday with the boy who didn’t want to be there, as we have managed to randomly pick one page previous in my book from yesterday.

Particularly in the plays that have battles, Will uses the chorus to tell the audience what the setting is. Remember, there were significant limitations as to what they could present on a stage back then.

So we’re asked to picture the canon, with fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. Get the picture?

It’s a nice little passage, thirty-five lines long. It describes the ships leaving England and arriving at Harfleur and then the siege beginning. It includes the stage direction [Alarum and chambers go off, within]. So perhaps they did fire a cannon off stage.

Remember, that’s how they burned down the Globe Theater some years later: firing off a cannon during a production of King Henry the Eighth. But that’s a story for another day.