"This story shall the good man teach his son."

NOTE: Post bumped up as a gentle public service announcement for fellow bardolators.
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From Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare:

According to a legend which can be traced back no further than the eighth century, Crispin and Crispian were two brothers, Christian, living in Rome. They fled the persecution of Christians begun under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. They traveled to Soissons in what was then Gaul (later France), and there they remained in hiding, supporting themselves as shoemakers. In 286 they were found and beheaded, presumably on October 25, which became their day of commemoration. They were the patron saints of shoemakers and their day was particularly celebrated in France. And it was on October 25, 1415, that the Battle of Agincourt was to be fought.

Yes, Monday, October 25, is "call'd the feast of Crispian," a day we've been marking for about ten years now.

Admittedly, we began celebrating early this year. As it turns out, while the Misses have seen Henry V several times, learned wide swathes of it, and discussed it at length, they had never read it and participated in the sort of line-by-line analysis that we have done with such plays as Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing, and Julius Caesar. We sought to remedy that last week, and after working through two-thirds of the text, we treated ourselves to another screening of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (their fourth or sixth and my... oh, thirteenth? twenty-first?).

As I wrote in this entry, Act IV, Scene VII of the film wins my vote as "Most Moving."

When we finish the final third of the text this week, we plan to watch Laurence Olivier's 1944 version, which I saw just once, about ten years ago with Master M-mv. To say I disliked it would be an understatement, but I wonder if revisiting it, this time with the Misses, will temper my experience, much as revisiting Romeo and Juliet in their company utterly converted my mild contempt to abiding appreciation.

Why not join us in our Saint Crispin's Day celebration? Watch. Read. Think. Discuss. Learn.

Hey, and if this will be your younger set's first brush with Harry -- or even Shakespeare -- you might appreciate the following M-mv entries:

■ "I was not angry since I came to France / Until this instant...." (11.04.2007)

■ Shakespeare. Yes, again. And again. (9.30.2006)

(Other bardolatry entries are collected here.)
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From Act IV, Scene III of Shakespeare's Henry V:

King Henry:
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.