Shakespeare is the number one best-selling author in the world, with Agatha Christie as a close second. (Taking into account that Bible has one Author, and He not of this world). But while Shakespeare is amazing as a writer, he really wrote to be spoken. When put in the hands of a brilliant director, like Kenneth Branagh, the result is magic. I’ve seen Branagh’s adaptation of Henry V several times, and it still gives me chills. Like Fiddler on the Roof, it’s one of the few older films that stand the passage of time.
There’s one scene
in particular, near the end of the movie, which, without fail, makes my heart
soar. King Henry V, nicknamed “Harry”, has led the British troops into France,
and the Battle of Agincourt approaches. The French outnumber them by a large
margin. It’s a pretty hopeless situation.
A fellow named
Westmoreland laments, rather understandably, “O that we now had here but one
ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!”
