Westmoreland wishes
..."That we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!"
but Henry lives on a higher plane:
"No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honour."
But this high-couraged sentiment is taken almost word for word from
Holinshed. The rest of the speech shows us Shakespeare, as a splendid
rhetorician, glorifying glory; now and then the rhetoric is sublimated
into poetry:
"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."
Shakespeare's chief ambition about this time was to get a coat of arms
for his father, and so gentle his condition. In all the play not one
word of praise for the common archers, who won the battle; no mention
save of the gentle.
Again and again in Henry V. the dissonance of character between the poet
and his soldier-puppet jars upon the ears, and this dissonance is
generally characteristic.
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