SOURCE: Steinsaltz, David. “The Politics of French Language in Shakespeare's History Plays.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 42, no. 2 (2002): 317-34.

In the following essay, Steinsaltz contends that in Henry V the English language is “intimately entwined with the life and honor of the English nation” and that the play is not merely “a representation of England's triumph over France, but … the humiliation and tumultuous trouncing of the French language, which had subjugated their native English for so long.”

Amid his arduous and apparently superfluous wooing of Princess Katherine of France, Shakespeare's King Henry V exclaims, “It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French.”¹ Since he has just conquered the kingdom this is no idle boast, but why does he speak so much French? And why is an entire scene of the same play conducted in French, save for a...