I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips …įollow your spirit, and upon this chargeĬry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!” “Once more into the breach, dear friends” … “Once again. Or close the wall up with our English dead … Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more Remember how he quoted them? “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” And his response: “Some chicken!.Some neck!” 1415…Īt the siege of Harfleur, before Agincourt, Churchill writes in his History that the British were badly outnumbered, yet “foremost in prowess.” And Shakespeare quotes King Henry: That passage smacks of his 1941 speech to the Canadian Parliament about the French generals in 1940. We shall have each, a hundred Englishmen.Īnimal analogies are things Churchill deployed, but that is not the connection here. It is now two o’clock: but, let me see, by ten That dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion….
You may as well say that’s a valiant flea At Agincourt, before any fighting takes place, as the French prepare to rout the English, the Duke of Orleans opines:įoolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bearĪnd have their heads crushed like rotten apples. First example: the enemy’s overconfidence.
“True leadership,” writes Andrew Roberts, “stirs us in a way that is deeply embedded in our genes and psyche.…If the underlying factors of leadership have remained the same for centuries, cannot these lessons be learned and applied in situations far removed from ancient times?”Ĭhurchill’s war speeches are-what shall we say-inspired by, remindful of, analogous to Shakespeare’s works in ancient times. Shakespeare’s Henry: Parallels and InspirationsĪbove all and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership. Excerpted from “Churchill, Shakespeare and Henry V.” Lecture at “Churchill and the Movies,” a seminar sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives, Hillsdale College, 25 March 2019.
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