In trying to keep my thoughts away from that coming pesky election I noted that today is St Crispin's Day.
St Crispin is known as patron saint of shoemakers, leather-workers and suchlike.
Crispin and his (twin?) brother Crispinian were shoemakers as well as Christian martyrs, beheaded during the reign of Diocletian; the date of their execution is given as 25 October 285 or 286.
St Crispin's Day has become embedded in most minds, in Englnd at least, mainly through William Shakespeare's play, Henry V, in which the (as "1066 & All That" puts it) "utterly memorable Battle of Agincourt" took place, and Henry (via Will Shakespeare) made his oft remembered speech.
In unvarnished, unpoetic real life it's highly unlikely Ol'Henry Five ever said anything of the sort!
Information following was gleaned from shmoop.com (I wish we'd had access to this kind of help when presented with Henry V to study, as we were back in High School in England in the 1950s!)
St Crispin is known as patron saint of shoemakers, leather-workers and suchlike.
Crispin and his (twin?) brother Crispinian were shoemakers as well as Christian martyrs, beheaded during the reign of Diocletian; the date of their execution is given as 25 October 285 or 286.
St Crispin's Day has become embedded in most minds, in Englnd at least, mainly through William Shakespeare's play, Henry V, in which the (as "1066 & All That" puts it) "utterly memorable Battle of Agincourt" took place, and Henry (via Will Shakespeare) made his oft remembered speech.
In unvarnished, unpoetic real life it's highly unlikely Ol'Henry Five ever said anything of the sort!
Information following was gleaned from shmoop.com (I wish we'd had access to this kind of help when presented with Henry V to study, as we were back in High School in England in the 1950s!)
The play was written around 1599, but it portrays events that occurred immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415), which just so happened to occur on St. Crispin's Day, the feast day of the martyred twins, Saints Crispin and Crispinian. Like we've said elsewhere, the events in the play speak to some contemporary (Elizabethan) issues. As Shakespeare's original audiences watched Henry wage a war with France, they would have been reminded of their own long-standing problems with Spain and a recent uprising in Ireland, the Earl of Tyrone's Rebellion (1594-1603).
Henry V is a war play..... What's the play's attitude toward war? Specifically, what's the play's attitude toward Henry's decision to invade France? The answers aren't cut and dried because the tone shifts between patriotic fervor for Henry's campaign against the French and it's recognition of the horrors of warfare. On the one hand, the play celebrates Henry's triumph over the France, which seems miraculous given that the English troops were exhausted, sick, and seriously outnumbered at Agincourt. The play is also chock-full of patriotic speeches that suggest warfare is patriotic and ennobling. (The clearest example of this is Henry's famous St. Crispin's Day speech, where he insists that the men who fight alongside him will become his "band of brothers.") On the other hand, Shakespeare goes out of his way to show us the horrors of warfare, which involve brutal hand to hand combat, raping, pillaging, and endless suffering. As Exeter points out, neither side can escape "the widows' tears, the orphans' cries, / The dead men's blood, the pining maidens' groans, / For husbands, fathers, and betrothèd lovers."
Returning to St Crispin's Day, 2016: as shoemakers, in the traditional sense, are now few and very far between, their patron saints' workload in that department will have been considerably reduced, though not entirely eliminated. Western "cowboy" boots, belts, saddles especially come to mind in the USA; Spain, and maybe Mexico, still retain their leather-working traditions. St Crispin and St Crispinian have not been made totally redundant yet.
