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.”
