The Sentimentalizing of Communitas in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V | The Sentimentalizing of Communitas in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V
The Sentimentalizing of Communitas in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V
Patricia P. Salomon, University of Findley
In Henry V, Shakespeare's protagonist takes great pains in the well-known Crispin's Day speech to establish the closest possible rapport with his troops at Agin-court, a communitas in which his comrades of every social rank achieve a privileged moment of parity with the King himself:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
(4.3.60-63)
A close reading of the play, however, shows that until this moment of quasi-liturgical bonding, the Boar's Head Tavern subplot characters—Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym—were in every way inimical to the cause of Henry...
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