It’s just great, too. The St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
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.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
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 call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
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 Crispian’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 rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
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 accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
I don’t care that Kenneth Branagh is reduced to being Harry Potter’s foil; I hope he’s happy and healthy and being banged into insensibility by starlets every day for his incredible version of Prince Hal, in Henry V.
Every so often, an actor will nail a role so well that every time you pick up the book and read it, you hear the actor’s voice, and when I quoted Shakespeare below, I heard Branagh’s voice. The only other time that’s happened as strongly was in Catch-22; I still hear Alan Arkin’s voice in every line Yossarian speaks.
Sorry, back to serious politics later.
Quick! While your in a philosophical mood, surf over to David Brin’s website and read his full article on Tolkien (http://www.kithrup.com/brin/tolkienarticle1.html) as it touches on your thoughts concerning “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right…,”
For we need to seek our glories in the future and not find them in our past.
–Darryl Pearce / Ventura County CA
Brin is wrong.
“To follow a tradition means to do things in the same grand style as your predecessors; it does not mean to do the same things.” –Robert A. Heinlein
But you can’t follow a tradition unless you have one. And you can’t act in “the same grand style as your predecessors” unless you remember and, yes, honor them for that style.
I am almost tempted to say that you can’t genuinely innovate unless you have a past that you hope to live up to.
(By the way, I’m a molecular biologist at Caltech and have worked at scientific research for half my life. I am no technophobe. I, in fact, want very much to make glorious things in the future. But if I had to choose between Brin and Sauron, versus Gandalf and Aragorn, it wouldn’t even be a choice. I suppose Brin means well, but I think the moral points made by Tolkien have gone far over his head.)
Hmmm. Interesting reading…and he talks about Romanticism! Sadly, I’m the only Boomer in America who never read LOTR, except in the Lampoon version, and while I loved the movie, I’m a bit at sea on his references…
…hmm. Maybe some vacation reading…
A.L.
Funny that the Lord of the Rings came up already — as soon as I saw the St. Crispin’s Day speech (which Branagh did incredibly well, along with the whole movie — pity his other films haven’t lived up to his first), I thought about a literary passage that struck me when I read it earlier today.
I’ve been rereading The Two Towers prior to watching the movie, and as a New Yorker who takes a passionate interest in the rebuilding of my city and in the doings of our nation abroad in relation to the attacks we suffered, this passage (page 280 in my edition) hit me with some force. No previous Tolkien experience needed to appreciate it:
“For myself,” said Faramir, “I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves. War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Numenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.”
Not to throw a turd into this punchbowl of literary reference, but if you have not, I suggest you rent the Penny Marshall directed Danny DeVito film Renaissance Man.
Not a great flick, but the scene near the end where a recruit recites Harry’s soliloquy for his drill instructor is excellent, and worth the rental cost.
Branagh’s Hamlet is also a groundbreaking film. It is intensely political, and reclaims the Prince of Denmark from Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had diagnosed him with terminal mental infirmity. By inserting politics and almost the whole text back into the play, it returns to its original form: a play that discusses succession to the throne and national survival, written by an author living in the last days of an elderly queen who would die without heirs.
Branagh’s Hamlet roils on a constant undercurrent of war and instability. He makes clear the importance of a ruling class that is good and true to the interests of the country, and not morally depraved and self-seeking. By the end of the film it is clear that corrupt leadership and second rate “cabinet” leaders will make a country unstable, tumultuous, and war torn. In Shakespeare’s day, they didn’t have smart bombs, guided arrows, or dragoons uplinked to satellites, and war was much more of a hellish pell mell than today’s limited war / Clausewitzean extension of diplomacy by other means.
You owe it to yourself to check it out. Get some comfortable clothes on an a double batch of popcorn first tho – it’s 4.5 hours long.