Once you are familiar enough with
his work, you begin to realize that Shakespeare—like Savoir Faire—is everywhere. You never know when he might show up.
I experienced this truth recently as I was rewatching that absolutely adorkale film from 2014, Knights of Badassdom. This minor gem of filmmaking features Peter Dinklage, Summer Glau, Steve Zahn and Ryan Kwanten—with minor appearances by Caltech ‘s President Siebert and Bert the geologist, both from Big Bang Theory (actually, you had me at Peter Dinklage and/or Summer Glau)—in a story involving medieval live-action role play (LARP), demons, and a spellbook written by Elizabethan “mystic” John Dee. Such a film has got to be worth watching, and indeed, rewatching.
And so there I was, rewatching this film, when I noticed something unexpected. The setting for the action of the story is a major LARP event in which two armies, arrayed (vaguely) like medieval knights, face off against each other on “the fields of Evermore.” As the two armies prepare, their two respective kings, King Diamond the Red, and King Kerry, give speeches urging them on to victory. As I listen to the two interlaced speeches, I knew I was hearing some distinctly Shakespearean notes. A few moments of research (Google can be a wonderfully useful tool if you are seeking to locate a few distinctly Shakespearean turns of phrase) confirmed what I had suspected: these two kings (mostly King Kerry) were echoing, not just Shakespeare, but, specifically, King Henry V in the play of that name. More precisely, they were cribbing words and images from two of the king’s great speeches: the one he speaks at the very start of Act Three, beginning with “Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more”; and the famous “Band of Brothers” speech later on in Act Four, Scene Three. A close comparison of their speeches and King Henry’s words make clear their debt to the hero of Agincourt.As noted, it is King Kerry who cribs nearly every image of his speech from Henry V, while King Diamond, though his speech is elevated and archaic, only directly echoes Shakespeare—so far as I can tell, anyway—at the very close of his speech. I will illustrate this by quoting each of the two sections of King Kerry’s speech, then the close of King Diamond’s, following each with excerpts from King Henry, to show how, in each case, the 21st-century LARPer has stolen from his Shakespearean predecessor.
King Kerry: “Some of you are gentle souls in peace, but when the horn of battle blows, we must
disguise our fair nature, summon up our blood! Draw up our most terrible aspect! Unleash our rage!”
King Henry V: In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility,
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage,
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect…”
(Henry V, Act III, Scene 1, lines 4-10 [III.i.4-10])
King Kerry: “I covet only one thing. Honor and victory! Wait—verily, that is two things. Join
me in coveting those same glories. For if it be a sin, let us be the most offending
souls alive!”
King Henry V: By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,…
But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.”
(Henry V Act IV, Scene 3, lines 27, 31-32 [IV.iii.27, 31-32])
King Diamond: They shall curse themselves for not being here, for not being able to
say they fought with us upon the fields of Evermore!
King Henry V: This day is called the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand o’ tiptoe when this day is named
And rouse him at the name of Crispian…
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
(Henry V Act IV, Scene 3, lines 43-46, 66-69 [IV.iii.43-46, 66-69])
It’s always nice to see people paying their respects to the Bard by stealing from him outright. As I look back at this, I see that in each of the last two excerpts from the movie, the kings simply steal one particular image apiece from King Henry: King Kerry steals the “most offending soul alive” image, while King Diamond borrows the rather obvious idea “they’ll curse themselves for not being here.” I also notice that, as King Henry ends on an image that emphasizes when they are fighting (Saint Crispin’s day), King Diamond the Red emphasizes the place of their conflict—the fields of Evermore! Still, King Kerry’s first speech excerpt is much richer. In the six clauses he speaks, he borrows six distinct images from King Henry’s speech, out of the eight Henry uses (expressed in only seven clauses and seven lines). Neither the “tiger” nor the “sinews” Henry mentions feature in Kerry’s speech, but all the other images are not only preserved, but presented in a new fashion that gives them as much power in Kerry’s modern prose as they had in Henry’s Elizabethan blank verse. Henry’s double image:
“Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage,”
With its antithetical parallelism between “fair” and “hard-favored,” is placed by him between “summon[ing] up the blood” and “lend[ing] the eye a terrible aspect.” Kerry, in his revision of Henry, separates the two images in the one line, then uses them as bookends, as he folds the other two into what is now a different type of four-part series. Now the images run from “disguis[ing] our fair nature,”—remembering that “fair” means both “beautiful” and “pale”—to “summon[ing] up our blood!”—which would bring some color to a fair face; this leads us to “Draw up our most terrible aspect” and “Unleash our rage!” It is a powerful, and perfectly logical sequence of images for men and women preparing for battle, a sequence where the connection is less causal than in Shakespeare (where one summons the blood in order to disguise a fair face with rage), and more a matter of pure association of images—a sequence more fitted to a modern film, with its constant cutting between one image and another.
And, of course, King Kerry renders the language less rhetorical and more directly personal by changing the abstract articulated expressions (“the blood…the eye [with] a terrible aspect”) to possessive ones using “our,” a word that joins Kerry and his soldiers together (something Henry does only in later movements of his speech not touched by Kerry)—not to mention enhancing “terrible aspect” with most and turning the noun phrase “hard-favored rage” into the exhortation to “Unleash our rage!”: “we [not the implied “you” of Henry’s speech, but we] must disguise our fair nature, summon up our blood! Draw up our most terrible aspect! Unleash our rage!”
Well done, King Kerry.
Perhaps I place too much emphasis here on a close reading of such subtle details, but that’s how we old school philologists do it—and it’s a thing worth being done. So ends my spiel on how a little knowledge of Shakespeare enhances your viewing of Knights of Badassdom. The rest of that movie’s glory comes from the excellent acting by the folks involved, which gives the film a wonderful B-movie charm. Peter Dinklage, Ryan Kwanten, and Steve Zahn, along with Summer Glau and a dash of Shakespeare… What else does one need in a monster movie?
