#Shakespearean call to arms series

a member of the ‘great unwashed’, as well as denoting someone mean or evil), will become a ‘gentleman’, or be raised up in the eyes of society, through his heroic conduct in battle. When Henry says that ‘be he ne’er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition’, he means that every man, no matter how small (‘vile’ was used to refer to someone of minor social standing, e.g. (Henry, or rather Shakespeare, may well be drawing upon the brotherly relationship between Crispin and Crispinian, too.)Īnd it really is a case of ‘we few’, given how much Henry and the English army are outnumbered by the French enemy!

#Shakespearean call to arms series

‘Band of brothers’ gave its name to Steven Spielberg’s TV series about the Second World War, and the phrase is often associated with comradeship and camaraderie among soldiers serving and fighting together: although not related by blood, they are brothers-in-arms, through battle – or brothers in ‘blood’, not in the sense that they are related by blood, but because they have shed blood together. But then this was probably deliberate anachronism on Shakespeare’s part: he needed to mention the names of figures his audience would recognise from the popular history (and earlier plays, such as his own trilogy of Henry VI plays), otherwise Henry’s claim that these names would be ‘familiar … as household words’ in years to come might sound comically wide of the mark.

The reference to ‘mouth’ here suggests that the veterans of the battle will be telling their war stories to a rapt audience of neighbours in years to come: people who wish to hear of the part the men played in the heroic battle.Ĭuriously, Shakespeare is inaccurate in listing ‘Warwick’ and ‘Talbot’ as among those fighting at the Battle of Agincourt: Warwick was a later figure, mentioned in 1 Henry VI, and Talbot (John Talbot, First Earl of Shrewsbury) didn’t join the French campaign until 1419, four years after Agincourt. The names of those who lead the battle – the King and the noblemen who fight with him – will remain familiar in the mouth of every man who fought alongside them, as familiar as ‘household words’ or common phrases.