Word: agincourt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...trying to answer the question Keegan dwells extensively on three famous battles, unified in space by about 100 miles but separated in time by five centuries: Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. At Agincourt a tired, hungry English band of about 5,000 archers and 1,000 foot soldiers met a French force of some 25,000 on Oct. 25, 1415. In Shakespeare's Henry V the English king naturally dominates the stage. Keegan is more interested in the ragtag soldiers and what sustained them: prayer, a hope of booty from French casualties, ransom for prisoners and plenty of strong...
...parlous uncertainties. He has been a playboy prince who has boozed it up in the taverns with Falstaff. Does he possess the mettle for kingship? His men have divided hearts about the war in France. He must inspire them with "a little touch of Harry in the night." Before Agincourt he soliloquizes over the crushing burdens and terrible loneliness of royalty ("Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls ... our children and our sins lay on the King! We must bear...
...tenor of the play. Once one accepts the limitations of the director's concept, there is nothing to fault in the brio of the cast, the racehorse pace or the sense of battle-weary valor conveyed. There are different ways of showing British pluck. Dunkirk is not Agincourt...
...finding humorous aspects in the role, such as when, on donning a monk's disguise, he mimies Friar Peter's rolling of the hands. (Shakespeare had already used the ruler-in-disguise device in Henry V, when the king wanders incognito among his troops just before the Battle of Agincourt...
...bring a good performance of Shakespeare to a larger and more varied audience than would ever come to the theatre. Some highbrow critics found his film disappointing and unsophisticated the same unfair criticism leveled at more recent films of Shakespeare--but the audiences loved both the spectacular Battle of Agincourt and Olivier's acting...