We tired few, we overused Shakespearian allusions...

If there's anything my first year or so as a teacher lacked, it was a consistent curriculum. I taught three different varieties of social studies while student teaching, but my first paying gig was in an English department. Not exactly what I set out to do, but when you're a liberal arts major, you roll with the punches.

Now, it's an international law that every English class has to include a Shakespeare play or two. It doesn't matter what content or continent is covered, the bard has to be a part of it. My class read Romeo and Juliet along with 98% of the rest of the world. Nothing like a little teenage suicide to lighten up fourth period.

As great as Mercutio and the rest of Verona's rich and violent are, my favorite play was always Henry V, which is great because I'm not at all alone. I've read not one, but two books recently where the play's language is alluded to, and they could not be more different.

The first, by Christopher Moore, was A Dirty Job. It's the overly-gonzo story of a wishy-washy guy who becomes Death, or at least a death. He collects people's souls when they die. The book has its moments, some good and many bad, but it's about the last place I expected to see someone charging into a breach. Of course, this is a reference to that famous line shouted by Henry to his troops at the siege of Harfleur: "Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead." It is rendered thus in Moore's words:

"What irony, that he would finally summon his courage and charge into the breach, only to end up lost and stuck in the breach."

The story's protagonist finds himself both heading through the wall and closing it up at the same time. This cannot be a coincidence. The word "breach" when used this way is meant summon visions of Kenneth Branagh on horseback. Why did Moore decide that this was the image he wanted his comically inept hero to project?

Michael Lewis wants to conjure up similar connotations in his book Liar's Poker when he cribs from Henry's St. Crispen's Day speech. This is the speech of "band of brothers" fame, which lends its words to HBO miniseries and Confederate marching songs alike. Here's Lewis, describing a group of traders:

"No, there was no finer place to be in January 1985 than with Michael Mortara's righteous few, that rich band of brothers, the mortgage traders of Salomon Brothers."

Now, I like the way Lewis adapts Shakespeare's language. Henry's men were the "happy few," Mortara's the "righteous." Henry's men sally forth to slaughter Frenchmen, the traders pillage the savings and loan market. And Lewis isn't the only one in the book to use the phrase. Later on, another Salomon trader says, "We were a band of brothers."

Still, why is it that this play continues to be counted on by absurdist writers and Wall Street hotshots as a cheat sheet for how to talk in high leverage situations? Isn't there some other piece of martial high drama that can be called upon during climactic battles and inspiring board meetings? Why is Henry V the Elizabethan equivalent of Jock Jams?

I won't even mention Moore's Julius Caesar reference. Here's hoping someone writes something to take some of the pressure off of Shakespeare soon. In the meantime, let's just let Henry speak for himself:

http://www.chronique.com/Library/Knights/crispen.htm