Agincourt Speach

[himself]

Everybody does the "We few, we happy few.." Agincourt thing before a big 
battle in a movie these days.  Remember Bill Pullman's laughable attempt to 
rouse the troops in "Independence Day"? Aragorn's bathetically derivative 
spiel is not quite so embarassing.

The ONLY good re-imagining of a Shakespeare's definitive pre-battle 
exhortation are the historical words of G.A. Patton: 

"Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his 
country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his 
country. Men, all this stuff you've heard about America not wanting to 
fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans 
traditionally love to fight. ALL REAL Americans, love the sting of battle. 
When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest 
runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers . . . Americans 
love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the 
time. I wouldn't give a hoot in Hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's 
why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very 
thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Now, an army is a team. It lives, 
eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. 
The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the 
Saturday Evening Post, don't know anything more about real battle than they 
do about fornicating. Now we have the finest food and equipment, the best 
spirit, and the best men in the world. You know . . . My God, I actually 
pity those poor bastards we're going up against. My God, I do. We're not 
just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to cut out their living guts 
and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those 
lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now some of you boys, I know, are 
wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about 
it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. 
Wade into them. Spill their blood, shoot them in the belly. When you put 
your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friends 
face, you'll know what to do. Now there's another thing I want you to 
remember. I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our 
position. We're not holding anything, we'll let the Hun do that. We are 
advancing constantly, and we're not interested in holding onto anything 
except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose, and we're going 
to kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the 
time, and we're going to go through him like crap through a goose. Now, 
there's one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, 
and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you're sitting 
around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, "What 
did you do in the great World War Two?" You won't have to say, "Well, I 
shoveled shit in Louisiana." Alright now, you sons of bitches, you know how 
I feel. Oh! . . . I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle 
anytime, anywhere. That's all." 

 


joeallonby writes: 

> There's an Anthony Burgess short story that puts Shakespeare and his players
> in Spain where they are impressed by a pageant display that depicts Don Q
> and Sancho Panza before a bullfight as an expression of national pride in
> Cervantes and his new creation the novel. Will uses this as inspiration for
> Falstaff and Prince Hal and goes on to produce his greatest series of plays.
> To be a total digressing geek for a moment, has anyone noticed that
> Aragorn's speech before the gates of Mordor is straight out of Henry V? 
> 
> Oh, yeah. What was I talking about. 
> 
> I don't remember the name of the Burgess story but it was in the same
> compilation as his Attila novella. 
> 
> Where was the earthquake and is everybody OK? 
> 
> Joe 
> 
> on 12/20/03 11:36 AM, bekah at bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net wrote: 
> 
>> Um. Yes and no. Shakespeare and Cervantes did
>> technically die on the same date but, the date is
>> noted in the Gregorian calendar for Cervantes and
>> the Julian calendar for Shakespeare. 
>> 
>> So what do we have?  Per the Gregorian calendar
>> Shakespeare died on May 3, 1616. 
>> 
>> <http://www.renaissance-faire.com/Renfaires/Entertainment/William-Shakespeare-
>> death.htm> 
>> 
>> Bekah
>> holy shit, we just had an earthquake! I'll let you know 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> At 7:07 AM +0100 12/20/03, Otto wrote:
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Vincent BRACQ" <vincent.bracq at wanadoo.fr>
>>> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 7:42 PM
>>> Subject: Re: Don Quixote 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Le vendredi, 19 déc 2003, à 19:22 Europe/Paris, Ghetta Life a écrit : 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1105510,00.html 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Don Quixote - the first modern novel - remains the finest. As a new
>>>>> translation of the Spanish classic is published, Harold Bloom argues
>>>>> that only Shakespeare comes close to Cervantes' genius 
>>>>> 
>>>> Do you know that Cervantes and Shakespeare die the same day ? 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> The article puts it even stronger: 
>>> 
>>> "Cervantes and Shakespeare, who died almost simultaneously (...)." 
>>> 
>>> Must've been a bad day for literature! 
>>> 
>>> There's an e-text of the 1885 translation by John Ormsby.
>>> http://www.donquixote.com/english.html 
>>> 
>>> Otto
>>  
>> 
> 
>   
> 
>  
>