Once More unto the Breeches

Astoundingly enough, some rhodomontade of rah-rah by which a toadying playwright flattered his royal masters has been used by later princes to excuse their youthful follies. In his plays about the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V, Shakespeare portrays England's revered frog-buster as a rascally youth who roisters and boisters alongside the blithering bladder Sir John Falstaff and some amusingly working-class females, only to resolve his daddy issues and show himself a great warrior and inspirational shouter. One commentator refers to this kind of thing as "addressing royal history," which seems a rather poetically licensed way of putting it: there is no historical evidence for Henry V's youthful escapades, and as an adult he was cold, calculating and sanctimonious, entirely devoid of the chivalrous flourishes that make the Conqueror, the Lionheart and Edward III legitimately admirable. Though not the merriest of monarchs, Henry did quite enjoy boiling heretics; and after his victory at Agincourt he had his prisoners massacred, though whether he did so as a phlegmatic response to the possibility of a new French assault or simply in a spirit of sporting English fun remains a matter for speculation. While understandably glossed over by Shakespeare, his end was singularly appropriate for our times: while killing yet more foreigners over rights to which he had no proper claim, he gloriously shat himself to death.