Page:Henry V (1918) Yale.djvu/142

130 refers to this custom in two other passages in this play: IV. vi. 102 ff. and V. i. 74.

 French crowns. There is a double pun here: a play upon two different meanings of 'crown' and an allusion to the crime of clipping gold coins.

 The farced title. Perhaps there is an allusion here to the herald that goes before the king and proclaims his full title in high-sounding phrases. More probably running 'fore means 'prefixed to' the name of the king.

 chantries. Originally a chantry was an endowment for the maintenance of one or more priests to sing daily mass for the souls of the founders or others specified by them. Later it came to mean a chapel, altar, or part of a church so endowed.

 Though all that I can do, etc. King Henry acknowledges that such works of piety as the founding of chantries have availed him nothing; not by such means can he cleanse his conscience of the sense of guilt. After all that he can do, he must still penitently implore pardon.

 dare the field. Another phrase borrowed from the terminology of falconry. The bird was said to be 'dared' when it was so terrified by the hawk that it kept close to the ground.

 The French 'thought themselues so sure of victorie, that diuerse of the noble men made such hast towards the battell, that they left manie of their seruants and men of warre behind them, and some of them would not once staie for their standards: as, amongst other, the duke of Brabant, when his standard was not come, caused a baner to be taken from a trumpet and fastened to a speare; the which he commanded to be borne before him in steed of his standard.' (Holinshed.)

 Crispin Crispian. Saint Crispin's day was sacred to two brothers, Crispinus and Crispianus,