Donald Macintyre's Sketch: A king’s sword and a bard’s spirit as England remembers Agincourt

Somehow it’s hard to imagine quite this spectacle for – say – the fallen at Saratoga or Gallipoli

Sam Marks reciting the St Crispin’s Day speech (AFP/Getty)

Blame That Play. Yes, Agincourt was a classic drama, the “poor condemned English”, as Shakespeare has them, half-starved, exhausted and heavily outnumbered by fresh French troops, yet led from the front by a super-dashing king to a stunning long-odds victory.

But as Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London (whose solid bearded form, when clad in his mitre and blue and gold cope, it’s strangely easy to imagine as that of a 15th century prelate) said in his address, the battle wasn’t really a long-term turning point since by the end the Hundred Years’ War England had lost almost all its Continental possessions. And it was 600 years ago.

Without The Life of Henry V would Agincourt really have qualified for the full dress, musically superb, and at times theatrical, commemoration service it got in Westminster Abbey?

OK, the royal celebrants were Championship rather than Premier League – Princess Michael of Kent and the Duke of Kent. But this was ecclesiastical pageantry at its English best, Henry’s actual sword faultlessly carried to the altar – just as it was for his funeral here 593 years ago – from the Great West Door by, appropriately enough, the Master of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers.

And the bard was here in spirit. The actor Robert Hardy celebrated both the battle and his own 90th birthday with a sonorous reading of Shakespeare’s prologue with its eve of battle description of the King among the troops, “thawing cold fear… a little touch of Harry in the night.”

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, at the service (AFP/Getty)

And the RSC’s Sam Marks, in armoured costume, paced up and down beneath the nave’s huge vaulted 100 foot-high roof reciting the St Crispin’s Day speech – “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” – with which Shakespeare had Henry inspire them.

But the service reflected the British split personality. We invariably commemorate victories, torn between jubilation and a professed desire for peace. The words of the 15th century “Agincourt Carol” – exquisitely sung by the Abbey choir – are ultra-bellicose. “That town [Harfleur] he [won] and made affray, that Fraunce shall [rue] tyl domesday. Deo gratias.”

This was tempered by references to the French fighting beside the British 100 years ago, and a polite prayer read by Robyn Ridgeway, a Year 13 pupil at City of London Academy, giving “thanks for the Republic of France.” Indeed Pascal Deray, a municipal leader from the Pas De Calais read – in French – an account by a First World War French soldier reflecting about an Agincourt commemoration in the trenches that in the past France had “been too selective about our anniversaries”.

It’s true of us too. Somehow it’s hard to imagine quite this spectacle for – say – the fallen at Saratoga or Gallipoli.