‘And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered’
He also gives them a material reason to fight when he tells them,
‘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’
Repetition is often used in the passage to highlight important words such as Crispian, day, remember’d and honour. ‘Before Agincourt’ is written in blank verse and lines are written in iambic pentameter. This means that there is a rhythm with five strong beats. The words Shakespeare wants to highlight are placed in positions within the line that would make them emphasised when someone was reading them. This is why the words that are repeated are mostly found at the beginning or the end of the line.
At the beginning of the poem Henry talks about what he is thinking and uses ‘I’ but as the poem goes on he talks about ‘us’. This was probably to give the soldiers a sense of solidarity and loyalty to the King. He also instils a sense of pride within the soldiers. One example of this is when he says that the victorious soldier who returns home will ‘strip his sleeve and show his scars’. Alliteration is also used to highlight this phrase. Henry’s speech is very bold and confident. This would have made his soldiers feel as though they too had a reason to be confident.
In Wilfred Owen’s poem, ‘The Send-off’ young inexperienced boys are being sent off to fight in a foreign country. They don’t know what to expect and have no idea of the horrors that await them in the trenches.
The poem starts off with the recruits making their way to the train station; we are told that they ‘sang their way’. This would suggest that they are happy. They then line the train ‘with faces grimly gay’. The words grimly and grey are very sinister and contrast with the first line where they are cheerful. This line tells us that there is great uncertainty on behalf of the recruits as to where they are going and although they are trying to be happy they can’t help but worry about the ominous situation they are facing. Owen then goes on to say that,
‘Their breasts are stuck all white with
wreath and spray
As men’s are, dead.’
Wreath and spray are normally flowers associated with funerals and when Owen draws this comparison he is anticipating the soldiers deaths. While all this is happening ‘Dull porters watched…and a casual tramp stood staring hard’ this quotation suggests that there is an indifference from the porters and the tramp, they don’t think nor do they care that most of the men they see now will die. The tramp will be ‘sorry to miss them from the upland camp’ but this is probably because they gave him food and he is more sorry for himself.
‘Then unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.’
In this quotation the lamp and signals are personified through the use of the words ‘unmoved’, ‘nodded’ and ‘winked’. These are actions associated with people. They also suggest that there is some sort of conspiracy going on, that they know something that the soldiers don’t and aren’t supposed to know.
There is also an element of shame expressed in the poem. Shame on behalf of those who are sending the men of to war. They are taken away in the dark ‘like wrongs’ when no one could see them. When they returned home they were hidden out of shame once again. Owen uses a question very well when he asks,
‘Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild train-loads ?’
He answers the question with, ‘A few, a few, too few for drums and yells’. Owen uses repetition to emphasise the pity of the situation. This shame at the loss of life is further highlighted in the following lines.
‘…May creep back, silent, to village wells,
up half known roads’
The use of the words ‘creep’ and ‘silent’ suggest that the soldiers may be physically marred or too traumatised for celebrations. When Owen says that they are travelling ‘up half known roads’ this could be because their memories of their lives before the war have blurred after all the horrors they have witnessed.
I prefer Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘The Send-off’ to Shakespeare’s ‘Before Agincourt’. I like the downbeat and subdued rhythm and the rhymed verse. I also think Wilfred Owens views on war are far more truthful and coincide with my own. He not only illustrates the amount of pointless death, but he tells of the mental and physical anguish that tortures the survivors even after they have returned home. Owen does not give war any sort of false honour as there is nothing worth celebrating in a wasted life. He himself fought in the war and so was under no false illusions as to the harsh and brutal realities faced in the trenches. He wanted everyone else to know the truth about war and used poetry as his medium.
‘Above all I am not concerned with poetry.
My subject is war and the pity of war.
The poetry is in the pity.’
Henry V has many romantic notions of an honourable death, but death is not honourable when it is realised whilst trying to end the life of another human being.
