Henry V:
/young 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 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 dashed to the walls;
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with thier howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defense, be thus destroyed?
Nasty stuff...so nasty it prompts the Govener of Harfleur this response:
/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.
Ah, Willy the Shake....still shaking things up several hundred years later
T from Three Haligonians