Standing "a tip-toe"

Last Sunday (October 25th ) was the Feast of St Crispin – commemorating  the early Christian saints Crispin and Crispinian (also called Crispinus and Crispianus), twins who were martyred in about AD 286. This long ago event, although still part of the Roman Catholic calendar of saint’s days, would probably have slipped from the pages of history had it not been for William Shakespeare who used the day as the centre piece of arguably one the  greatest speeches that he wrote: that of Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt on October 25^th 1415. So, Sunday was a double celebration if that be the word: the six hundredth anniversary of one of the great battles of history – between England and France – and the commemoration of these two little known saints.

A mediaeval impression of the martyrdom
of Crispin and Crispinian

I don’t think I am alone, when I say that I believe that of all Shakespeare Henry’s speech is one that sends the most shivers down the spine. It has been used over the centuries to base great clarion calls to arms or to great endeavour and whether or not  one takes a cynical view of war and battles and the claims of politicians and generals (as I do) I do not believe that one cannot be moved and inspired by Shakespeare’s great words. Shakespeare, of course, was  a clever man who could build up a story, pull on the heart strings, use words in such a way that they became etched in the mind. He could, by his very use of words, make an everyday event or a great battle seem the essence of mankind. And this is just what Henry’s speech does. Shakespeare used a bit of fact and a lot of fiction to place the speech and indeed, if one looks at historical fact the speech and the story are totally spurious.  Henry had no legitimate claim on the French throne as he was the son of a usurper and therefore had no de jure right to the English throne either. His invasion of France was as much an act of aggression as Hitler’s on Poland. The great diarist William Hazlitt, in his sketches of Shakespearian characters  is clear:“Henry was.... careless, dissolute, and ambitious—idle, or doing mischief. In private, he seemed to have no idea of the common decencies of life, which he subjected to a kind of regal license; in public affairs, he seemed to have no idea of any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice....... he was ready to sacrifice his own life for the pleasure of destroying thousands of others.”  But, this is the theatre, it is make believe, it is Shakespeare; so we love Henry the hero because of what Shakespeare made him just as we hate Richard III, the villain, for exactly the same reason.

The RSC at Stratford

But imagine the scene Shakespeare painted for us. The small, exhausted English army - little more than a rabble - led by Henry have been in France for months. Winter is coming, they are a long way from home, hungry and aware of the mounting French threat. They have fought a series of battles against the far superior French. The French army has horses, the best resources and machines of war and, critically, far superior numbers. Henry’s men are ready to go home – dejected, tired, ill and fed up. And then they again meet the mighty French war machine. On a cold, rain soaked stretch of land near Agincourt in northern France the two armies face each other about a mile apart and in the early morning light Henry speaks to his generals and soldiers, trying to revive and inspire them to one last effort which he well knows will probably result in all their deaths. One of his generals and Henry’s cousin, the Duke of Westmorland, bemoans their weak position in relation to the French:

“O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!”

But Henry, the King, will have none of it. He rises to chastise his cousin and inspire his men:

“What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark'd to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
No, faith, my cousin, wish not a man from England:
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispianus shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day”

I have heard that speech declaimed and I have read it literally, I suppose, thousands of times; I have used it over and over again in lessons that I have taught. But never once do I tire of it and never once does it not raise the hairs on the back of my neck. And I know that I am not alone. Below is the Kenneth Branagh rendering of the great speech from his 1989 film:

On Thursday of last week Pat and I went to Stratford Upon Avon – the birthplace of William Shakespeare. It takes us about ninety minutes from here in Nottingham and whenever we go it is usually to visit the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre – the home of Shakespearian drama. Our children had bought me an RSC voucher for my 70^th birthday a few months ago and we decided to spend it on seeing Henry V at the RSC. The current  production has had rave reviews and is shortly to transfer to the London theatre.

Whenever we go to the RSC, and we have been many times over the years, I still get the same buzz. As I walk across the open space towards the theatre, past the statues of Shakespearian characters and enter the great doors my heart quickens just a little and somewhere deep within me I feel I am at the very heart of what it is to be English. Other nations of course will have the same emotional response to things that are definers their own culture: every Frenchman might feel exactly the same about Bastille Day or every German his Wagner; the Italian might feel his heart lift at the thought of Verdi and every Russian stand proud at the poetry of Pushkin or the novels of Tolstoy; the American would, I’m sure, shed a tear on listening to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; the Austrian might be uplifted at the sight of his alpine scenery  or the Scot might feel the need to raise his glass to Robbie Burns. This is not simple nationalism it is about the very essence of what it is to be German or Russian, Scottish or English or whatever. Nor is it confined to my own feelings. Just because I feel it does not mean that other English men and women should also feel it in the same way. One does not have to love Shakespeare or get a buzz out of Stratford to define oneself as an Englishman. Others will have different, equally worthy and inexplicable emotions or beliefs that they feel get to the very essence of their being.

The English rabble army setting off to France

It isn’t just a visit to the RSC or hearing the great lines of Shakespeare that make my heart miss a beat or suddenly feel a welling up of emotion.  Nor is it about  jingoistic patriotism – I will have no truck with that. It is simply about things that remind me of what and where I am and how very small I am in the great scheme of things and in the great sweep of the time and place that I inhabit – a tiny dot on a small island in the northern hemisphere in the late 20^th and early 21^st century. I can get the same feeling standing on a bleak east coast beach such as Thorpness or Aldeburgh while looking out to a flat, grey sea. It can come upon me when I hear the opening bars of Handel’s Messiah or listen to the evocative music of Gerald Finzi so redolent of English apple orchards and dusky autumn days. I have felt it standing on the end of the cobb at Lyme Regis, watching the waves batter the sea wall or while sitting in the silent and overwhelming grandeur of somewhere like Kings College Chapel in Cambridge. I’ve certainly felt it when reading Dickens – the opening paragraphs of Bleak House or Great Expectations never fail to make my heart race, no matter how many times I read them. Similarly reading a piece of poetry such as Housman’s  A Shropshire Lad, some of John Betjeman’s works or any of the war poets who recorded the tragedy of the Great War. Whenever I return to the area of my birth – Lancashire – I feel it as I look out over bleak Lancashire moorland, or see the skyline of some Lancashire mill town with its tall factory chimneys and rows of little terraced houses, or I pass what were once great cotton mills, the “dark satanic mills” recalled in Blake’s great poem. The vibrations of their weaving looms are now long silenced but the noise and the trembling of the pavement is still fixed in my memory from when, a life time ago,  I played under their shadow in the narrow streets of Preston. And I still get the buzz. The list could go on and on and on.  It is about my very being, it reminds me who and what I am.

It is not uniquely English or British. It is not about great victories or high culture. It is of both the common man and the greatest in the land. It is so profound and yet it is so basic. It is inexplicable and intangible but also so clear that it can almost be touched so strong is its presence. It can be the everyday and the ordinary or the great overwhelming event. Many people still talk of the 1984 Live Aid Concert and the group Queen’s performance having this effect upon them. I can understand that but equally far more prosaic events can be just as effective. When our children were small and we visited their grandparents in south London many years ago I would often take them to meet granddad as he arrived home from the City on the train each evening. The children would wave to the trains as they glided under the bridge and I would stand there mesmerised as each train poured out its never ending stream of business suited and umbrella carrying London office workers onto the platforms below us like a unstoppable human river. And it was in its way exciting and made me feel very, very small.

Henry talks to his troops

A week or two ago Pat and I went to the funeral of an old friend. The funeral was in his local village church which was filled to overflowing, people standing outside. We knew it would be so. Our friend, a lifelong sportsman and keen rugby player had been an international rugby referee and we knew the rugby fraternity would be there in force. And so they were. As I looked around me I saw rows of men each wearing with pride their blazer – England badges, Welsh badges, British Lions badges – it was a history book of the rugby game’s great and good. Occasionally I saw a face I recognised, an international player or sports commentator. Hands were shaken between old sporting foes and comrades all gathered to pay their final respects to their old friend. And as I opened the order of service I saw what I had deep down, half suspected would be there – the great Welsh rugby anthem, the hymn “Guide me O Thou Great Redeemer”. Brian, our friend, was English through and through but this Welsh talisman so representative of the sport Brian loved was right and everyone knew it was so. And when the congregation rose to sing it was like standing at the Welsh national stadium before some great game – voices around me swelled, backs straight, pride bursting through at every word and note. Brian was given a magnificent send off. Like at the theatre on Thursday, the hairs on my neck stood up. I and others felt very small in the shadow of this great moment in this tiny village church in the middle of England and which  we were witness to.

The cynic might say it’s just a bit of emotion, everybody gets it, get over it, move on.  And we do get over it – until, that is, the next time it occurs. It is so basic to our being that it cannot be got over. No matter how many times I hear the Henry V speech or read Owen’s  great war poem Dulce et Decorum Est or walk a bleak east coast beach or listen to Gerald Finzi’s dreaming music of England the hairs still prickle and the heart beats a little faster. It is not something we should dismiss. I feel for the person who does not experience it – they are missing something in their makeup, and something which helps one to make sense of the world and to know our place within it.

Henry in battle

It is, too, a delicate thing that can easily be ruined and lose its effect. The still, bleakness of Thorpness beach in Suffolk would be ruined should a children’s playground be built; the wonderful word pictures painted by Dickens in the opening paragraphs of Bleak House would lose its strength and overpowering atmosphere were it to be rewritten modern, easy to understand prose; the music of Finzi would lose its quiet dreamlike resonance if it were “jazzed up”. It is the same with Shakespeare – a fact that was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago. We went to see the new film blockbuster of Macbeth – a production that has received widespread acclaim. Macbeth is, of course, a tragedy, death and destruction stalks every line. It is not a pretty play, nor should it be. We were warned before hand by the press – describing it a violent and bloody production – “Well, it should be, it’s Macbeth”, I thought. As we settled down in our seats to watch, however, I became a little anxious: “Based upon Shakespeare’s Macbeth” we were advised by the credits. “Mmmmmm! I thought, what does that mean?”  Well, it was certainly violent; blood, spittle and gore spread everywhere, Great brooding, bleak Scottish skylines dominated and no opportunity was missed to remind the audience of the bleakness and violence of the tale. But as the final credits rolled we sat totally unmoved. Cold to what we had seen. And the reason? Such was the desire by the director to make this tale as dreadfully realistic as possible every actor had spoken their lines in the broadest Scottish accent, and for extra effect they had mumbled their lines too, as is the wont of so many film actors today. The result, Shakespeare's great words, ideas, thoughts and the subtle nuances of  his mighty plot about intrigue, murder, an increasingly demented Scottish king and the subsequent carnage that followed were totally lost - indecipherable in this mumbling Glaswegian mess. Instead of giving insight into the tortured minds and actions of Macbeth and his wife it had merely became a sort of medieval gangster film – the Godfather in Scotland; its power to impress or overawe lost.  It had became a mumbling and rampant excuse for gratuitous screen violence rather than one of the great stories of man’s devious, scheming and vengeful nature.

I love all Shakespeare and I am pretty sure that there are parts in all his plays that can have the same effect on me as Henry’s great speech. The opening lines of Romeo and Juliet make my pulses race:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

As do its closing lines:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.

The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.

Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd.

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

I never fail to respond to one of Shylock’s great speeches in the Merchant of Venice:

He hath disgraced me, and

hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,

mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my

bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine

enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath

not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,

dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with

the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject

to the same diseases, healed by the same means,

warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as

a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison

us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not

revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will

resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,

what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian

wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by

Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you

teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I

will better the instruction.

And I know that as I watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream my mouth is frequently wide open and tears well when I hear the immortal lines:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.

Surely the most beautiful writing in the whole of the English language! This really is the stuff of dreams. Can there be anything more over whelming in its poignancy and sheer beauty. And I'm a sucker for it every time! And pleased to be so, for it is at the very root of me and reminds me that I still retain the capacities to respond to these very basic aspects of mankind. It tells me that whatever else I am, I am still human.

The wonderful RSC auditorium. Our seats were in the very
bottom right hand corner

So we went to the RSC theatre. We had wonderful seats. So close were we to the action that as the actors entered and exited we felt as if we were players in the scenes, courtiers at the French King’s court, soldiers in Henry’s army or witnesses to the mighty battle which a few highly talented actors were able to magically convince us was taking place in front of our very eyes and on that very stage. And I know that I wasn't alone. As Henry stood before his frightened and exhausted troops, ready to utter the great words that would bring him great victory in the face of overwhelming odds  an air of expectancy fell. Everyone knew the words but we also knew that we wanted to hear them again. This wasn't about a simple story of a rather dubious English King. Nor was it about a great patriotic victory (although historically, it was certainly that) and it wasn't really about great literature. It was, I believe, because everyone sitting there in the RSC knew it was about themselves and the very deepest aspirations, hopes and fears that inhabited their souls . They knew that it was good to “stand a tip toe” and feel proud or to reminisce to our children and grandchildren about our past or our deeds; they knew that it is a perfectly natural thing – especially for an English man - to want to stand up for the underdog, which Henry’s rabble army certainly were that October Crispin morning in 1415; we all knew the basic instinct of wanting to be remembered for something good or valiant or kind and to be respected for it by our peers and descendants; we knew that we all deeply desire to be a “band of brothers” united and respected for our beliefs and our actions. It is what humans do and what humans are. We are social animals who have deep feelings of joy, regret ambition, remembrance and the rest. We are different from the  animal world. We are human. Yes, Shakespeare in that speech, as in so much of his writings, offered every person in the audience some of the greatest human emotions that they could understand and desire; he was speaking directly to our inner soul and at the same time reminding us of it.