The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.2145 Tuesday, 29 October 2002
[1] From: Robert D. Swets <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Oct 2002 09:53:51 EST
Subj: Re: St. Crispin's Day
[2] From: David Nicol <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Oct 2002 15:24:32 +0000
Subj: Re: SHK 13.2136 Re: St. Crispin's Day
[3] From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Oct 2002 20:09:22 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 13.2136 Re: St. Crispin's Day
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Robert D. Swets <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Oct 2002 09:53:51 EST
Subject: Re: St. Crispin's Day
Branagh does a nice job with the scene, but the best film rendition I've
seen is from "Private Benitez" in "Renaissance Man." Noo Yawk accent,
but if you haven't seen it, check it out.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Nicol <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Oct 2002 15:24:32 +0000
Subject: 13.2136 Re: St. Crispin's Day
Comment: Re: SHK 13.2136 Re: St. Crispin's Day
Phil Rogers says of Crispin and Crispianus,
>There was a story that the two saintly shoemakers fled to Faversham, and
>there was an altar to them in the parish church there. No doubt that's
>how they got into Henry V. The Henry plays have numerous references to
>places on the London-Dover road.
Their story is recounted in Thomas Deloney's The Gentle Craft (1597). In
this extremely popular text, the two saints are represented as British,
not French. Perhaps this explains how St Crispin was turned into a
symbol of England.
Also look at William Rowley's 'A Shoemaker a Gentleman', which
dramatizes Deloney's version of the story.
David Nicol
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Oct 2002 20:09:22 -0500
Subject: 13.2136 Re: St. Crispin's Day
Comment: Re: SHK 13.2136 Re: St. Crispin's Day
This is one of those questions where one wishes that we had a bunch of
assiduous recorders of EARLY MODERN BRITISH popular culture to match
those who monitor EARLY C21 WESTERN popular culture, at least in
connection with things Shakespearean, on behalf of the rest of us. The
tricky issue is viva voce communication. The calendar of the Book of
Common Prayer radically reduced the list of holy days, and especially of
saints' days: essentially, to those actually named in the New
Testament--the apostles, Magdalen, Stephen, the evangelists, Paul. But
as the subsequent history of the Church of England indicates, the
popular desire to commemorate persons notable for their faith and works
sustained the memory of many others saints over a couple of centuries
during which the institutional church turned its back on them--how many
modern day Roman Catholics still send St. Christopher a prayer, now and
then? What we need to know is whether some number of Elizabethans
retained a memory of Sts. Crispin and Crispianus to make Henry's
allusion not merely dead history. The reference initially derives from
Holinshed; Gary Taylor's Oxford edition states that the feasts of the
two were "regularly marked in Elizabethan and Jacobean almanacs" (229
n.); T. W. Craik (Arden) notes a reference in Deloney's *Gentle Craft*
(289 n.): the citations suggests to me that the names remained as active
in the popular imagination as that, say, of George Best today.
David Evett
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