Hello and welcome back to Epox where it's the big two-hondo, the 200th episode, and how appropriate

it is, how apt, how fitting and right, how apropos that I should be talking about one of the

greatest stories that the English monarchy ever created. That is the story of Henry V, the Dread Sovereign, Good King Howe.

I almost feel like I'm not worthy, as many have done before me, including Shakespeare himself,

thought that the story was so great that it would be difficult to tell.

Well, I shall endeavour nonetheless. So one of the first things to say about Henry

the 5th is that his story is so bound up with Shakespeare, Shakespeare's play, Henry the 5th,

and he also appears in the earlier plays of Henry 4th with Falstaff and all that sort of thing.

But in the play, Henry the 5th, it's so sort of famous, especially sort of the English or British mind,

that it's difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Of course, here in my story, as your friendly neighbourhood history bro, as your humble narrator,

I shall be talking about the real history, of course.

But here or there, I might actually quote from The Bard.

In fact, I'll start by quoting from the opening of the play, Henry the Fifth,

and it gives you a sense of that feeling for sort of how great the story is.

So the chorus, the narrator for Shakespeare's play, opens by saying this.

Over a muse of fire, that would ascend the greatest heaven of invention, i.e., I'm going to tell your story, but you're going to need to use your imagination.

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene, i.e. we almost need actual kings to play the parts in this play.

That's how great it is.

Then should war like Harry,

that's king, Henry V. War like Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars, Mars, the god of war.

He has become the god of war. And at his hills, leashed in like hounds, should famine,

...