Harfleur

Imagine Biden as Henry V at Harfleur: “I also think we’re going to have to move to the point where we go once more unto the breach, dear friends.”

Records show that Henry V took 12,000 men with him when he set out from Southampton and left many of them behind to man the garrison after an earlier victory at the port of Harfleur.

Mr. O’Hara’s brisk production gets the story told, from Harfleur to Agincourt to an uneasy peace.

And it is because of Henry’s speeches at the siege of Harfleur and before Agincourt that the battle has become such a transcendent moment in the English national story.

After the debilitating siege of Harfleur, immortalised in “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …”, this was an engagement Henry V did not really want.