Shakespeare was a Lousy Historian - Part 2

As I wrote in my last blog, our Will was a lousy historian and one of the prime examples of this can be seen in his ever-popular play Henry V. The iconic picture of this medieval warrior-king (1387-1422) may be seen here below.

At the end of the play, when it comes to counting up the casualties on both sides in that "royal fellowship of death," Shakespeare, as before, was more accurate in counting up the enemy French dead than in counting up his own English soldiers k.i.a. In Act IV, sc. 8 he writes of the hundreds of "knights, esquires and gallant gentlemen" who were killed in addition to the thousands of mercenaries, barons, lords, squires "and gentlemen of blood and quality." In all, Shakespeare says that "ten thousand they [the French] have lost."

In contrast, the English lost only twenty-nine men, of whom three were nobles and one, Davy Gam, was an esquire.
Now although the Battle of Agincourt was a fantastic and unexpected English victory, these English casualty numbers are nowhere near the truth. While I was researching my university project, King Henry & Sergeant Shakespeare, I trawled though nineteen relevant English and French history books ranging from Monstrelet's Chronicles (c.1440) and Holinshed's Chronicles (1587) to the most recent books written by such experts as David Chandler and Anne Curry. 

Even though all of these books say that the French army was much larger and suffered many more casualties than their English opponents, they also say that Henry's army must have suffered at least several hundred casualties. We know that as was prevalent at the time, no strict lists of "all other men" killed in action was made. However, to think that the French lost thousands of men in contrast to a paltry twenty-nine English fighters is completely incredible!  

Another problem in this play consists of timing, or rather, the passage of time. The October 1415 battle ends in Act IV. sc. 8 and yet two scenes later, our brave Henry is marrying the French princess, Katherine. In fact over five years were to pass. During this time Henry returned to France and among other acts of war, brutally attacked and ransacked the town of Rouen before he married Katherine in 1520. This five-year gap is never hinted at in any way in the play.

Finally, even though the bulk of Henry's army consisted of archers, they and the critical tremendous arrow-storm that they fired at the beginning of the battle are never mentioned. Shakespeare refers to the "nimble gunner," "the develish cannon" and the "armourers with busy hammers", but nowhere do the archers never get a mention. As shown below, even the French remember them today in the town of Agincourt (Azincourt in French).

Here there is a museum which graphically recalls " the blasts of war" that echoed over the nearby fields and woods six hundred years ago. 

Next time we'll talk about "the Scottish play" and how, even though it's my favourite play, our William made some horrible historical blunders!

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