A newly renovated museum challenges dramatic ‘myths’ about the battle. But the playwright’s Henry V had many layers

I see Shakespeare’s been at it again. This time he’s helped to get us in trouble with the French, the very dernière chose we need right now. But we must hope that Brigitte Macron, who last week opened the newly revamped Centre for Medieval History in Agincourt (yes! The French still refurbish museums!), will have mercy on us. More, at least, than Shakespeare’s Henry V, who shut up the gates of mercy so that “the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart / In liberty of bloody hand shall range / With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass / Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants”. And that was before he even went into battle.

Related: Agincourt was a battle like no other … but how do the French remember it?

Continue reading...