The Ballad of Agincourt
Introduction
Para1A poet, playwright and antiquarian, and a near exact contemporary with Shakespeare,
Michael Drayton (1563–1631) returned to the subject matter
of Henry V’s reign several times over the course of his long career, notably in his
contribution to the collaborative historical play
The First Part of […] the Life of Sir John Oldcastle (Munday et
al.). In 1627 he published a 315-stanza, meticulously annotated epic poem on the 1415
campaign,
The Battle of Agincourt,covering much the same ground as Shakespeare’s play covers, and following the same chronicle sources, though Drayton seems, like the author of Famous Victories, to have been more indebted to Hall than to Holinshed.
Para2In a more popular vein, Drayton included a ballad of Agincourt as
Ode 12in his volume of Poems Lyric and Pastoral of 1606, and again in a slightly revised form in his Poems of 1619. Aside from (possibly) its use of the adjective
bruisèdto describe Henry’s helmet (A5 Sc0 Sp1), Drayton’s poem seems to owe little directly to Shakespeare’s play. Nevertheless, it contains several flourishes reminiscent of Henry V, including the celebration of Henry’s refusal to name a ransom and his battlefield invocation of his army’s ancestors’ victory at Crécy. While Shakespeare’s play downplays the fact that the English army fought Agincourt while in desperate retreat, Drayton’s poem actively denies it, portraying the English as
March[ing] towards Agincourtas though by choice.
Para3The most conspicuous way Drayton’s treatment of Agincourt differs from Shakespeare’s
is the three stanzas he spends celebrating the most
famous aspect of the battle, the technological superiority of the English longbow,
which gave Henry’s army a decisive tactical advantage. Whether to
emphasize the role of divine providence in the victory or to downplay the part of
the yeomen in favour of the nobles, Shakespeare makes no mention of
the archers.
Para4The text below is modernized from a facsimile of the Bodleian Library copy of the
1619 Poems
(Drayton 305–308), provided by
Early English Books Online.
Michael Drayton, The Ballad of Agincourt
(1606/1619)
Para5To the Cambro-Britains and their Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt
Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance,
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train
Landed King Harry.
And taking many a fort,
Furnished in warlike sort,
Marcheth towards Agincourt
In happy hour,
Skirmishing day by day
With those that stopped his way,
Where the French gen’ral lay
With all his power.
Which, in his height of pride,
King Henry to deride,
His ransom to provide
To the king sending;
Which he neglects the while
As from a nation vile,
Yet with an angry smile
Their fall portending.
And turning to his men,
Quoth our brave Henry then,
Though they to one be ten
Be not amazed.1
Yet have we well begun;
Battles so bravely won
Have ever to the sun
By fame been raised.
“And for myself,” quoth he,
“This my full rest shall be:
England ne’er mourn for me
Nor more esteem me.
Victor I will remain
Or on this earth lie slain,
Never shall she sustain
Loss to redeem me.”
“Poitiers and Crécy tell,
When most their pride did swell,
Under our swords they fell.
No less our skill is
Than when our grandsire great,
Claiming the regal seat,
By many a warlike feat
Lopped the French lilies.”
The Duke of York so dread
The eager vanguard led;
With the main, Henry sped
Amongst his henchmen.
Exeter had the rear—
A braver man not there.
O Lord, how hot they were
On the false Frenchmen!
They now to fight are gone,
Armour on armour shone,
Drum now to drum did groan.
To hear was wonder,
That with the cries they make
The very earth did shake.
Trumpet to trumpet spake;
Thunder to thunder.
Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham,
Which didst the signal aim
To our hid forces!
When from a meadow by,
Like a storm suddenly
The English archery
Stuck the French horses.
With Spanish yew so strong,
Arrows a cloth-yard long
That like to serpents stung,
Piercing the weather.
None from his fellow starts,
But playing manly parts,
And like true English hearts
Stuck close together.
When down their bows they threw
And forth their bilboes2 drew,
And on the French they flew;
Not one was tardy.
Arms were from shoulders sent,
Scalps to the teeth were rent,3
Down the French peasants went;
Our men were hardy.
This while our noble king,
His broadsword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding
As to o’erwhelm it,
And many a deep wound lent,
His arms with blood besprent,4
And many a cruel dent
Bruisèd his helmet.
Gloucester, that duke so good,
Next of the royal blood,
For famous England stood
With his brave brother;
Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet in that furious fight
Scarce such another.
Warwick in blood did wade,
Oxford the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made
Still as they ran up;
Suffolk his axe did ply,
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily,
Ferrers and Fanhope.
Upon Saint Crispin’s Day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry.
O when shall English men
With such acts fill a pen?
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?
Prosopography
Challen Wright
Chris Horne
Donald Bailey
Eric Rasmussen
Eric Rasmussen is Regents Teaching Professor and Foundation Professor of English at
the University of Nevada. He is co-editor with Sir Jonathan Bate of the RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works and general editor, with Paul Werstine, of the New Variorum Shakespeare. He has received the Falstaff Award from PlayShakespeare.com for Best Shakespearean Book of the Year in 2007, 2012, and 2013.
James D. Mardock
James Mardock is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Associate
General Editor for the Internet Shakespeare Editions, and a dramaturge for the Lake
Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and Reno Little Theater. In addition to editing quarto
and folio Henry V for the ISE, he has published essays on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Renaissance
literature in The Seventeenth Century, Ben Jonson Journal, Borrowers and Lenders, and contributed to the collections Representing the Plague in Early Modern England (Routledge 2010) and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge 2013). His book Our Scene is London (Routledge 2008) examines Jonsonʼs representation of urban space as an element in
his strategy of self-definition. With Kathryn McPherson, he edited Stages of Engagement (Duquesne 2013), a collection of essays on drama in post-Reformation England, and
he is currently at work on a monograph on Calvinism and metatheatrical awareness in
early modern English drama.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Jodi Litvin
Joey Takeda
Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020
after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.
Martin Holmes
Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVicʼs Humanities Computing and Media
Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities
projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the
Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020.
He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He is the Founding
Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions, of which he was the Coordinating Editor
until 2017. In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and
huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them)
completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During
their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and
sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.
Nicole Vatcher
Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.)
in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was womenʼs
writing in the modernist period.
Tracey El Hajj
Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD
from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science
and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched
Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on
Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life.Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.
William Shakespeare
Bibliography
Munday, Anthony,
Michael Drayton, Robert
Wilson, and Richard
Hathaway. Sir John
Oldcastle. London,
1600. STC 18795. ESTC S106323.
Orgography
Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE1)
The Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE) was a major digital humanities project created
by Emeritus Professor Michael Best at the University of Victoria. The ISE server was retired in 2018 but a final staticized HTML version of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project is still hosted at UVic.
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | The Ballad of Agincourt |
| Type of text | Primary Source |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | |
| Source |
This document was written by James D. Mardock and originally published digitally by
the Internet Shakespeare Editions and in print by Broadview Press. It has been converted
from IML (the SGML markup language of the Internet Shakespeare Editions platform)
into LEMDOʼs customization of TEI-XML and copyedited by Janelle Jenstad and the LEMDO
team for republication in the New Internet Shakespeare Editions anthology.
Born digital.
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