Short-Answer Quizzes: Act IV, Scene 5
Study Questions
1. What three authorities are invoked at the start of this scene?
2. What does the French “ranks are broke” mean?
3. What do these Frenchmen intend to do?
4. What motivates them to do so?
5. If they decide to live, what is their probable future?
6. How does their state of mind here compare with the way we last saw them?
7. What suggestion does the Dauphin make?
8. Do the English now outnumber the French?
9. How does this fact make their behavior all the more shameful?
10. Why is the Dauphin’s reaction more shameful than that of the others?
Answers
1. The French call on the Devil, the Lord, and the goddess Fortune.
2. It means discipline has broken down and the army is in flight.
3. They go to commit suicide by reentering the battle.
4. They are ashamed of this humiliating defeat.
5. They face disgrace, as shown earlier in the play after the Harfleur loss.
6. Their state of mind is the exact opposite of the smug overconfidence we last saw.
7. He proposes suicide by saying, “Let’s stab ourselves.”
8. No. Orleans says, “We are enough yet living in the field/To smother up the English.”
9. Even with a vast numerical superiority they are losing.
10. They will at least go down fighting the enemy, not by their own hand.
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