SOURCE: Womersley, David. “France in Shakespeare's Henry V.” Renaissance Studies 9, no. 4 (December 1995): 442-59.

In the following essay, Womersley investigates the topical significance of Shakespeare's complex and ambiguous treatment of the French in Henry V.

‘Messires, what newes from Fraunce, can you tell! Still warres, warres.’ John Eliot, Ortho-Epia Gallica. Eliots Fruits for the French (1593), sig. A3^r

In 1559, when it seemed likely that England would find itself at war with France, John Aylmer urged his countrymen to take heart:

what people be they with whome we shall matche: are they Giaunts, are they conquerours, or monarks of the world? No good Englishe man they be effeminate Frenchmen: Stoute in bragge, but nothing in dede. They be such as you haue alwayes made to take their heles. They be your slaues and tributaries: whose Castels, Cyties, and townes, you haue possessed, whose armies you haue not ones but. 500. tymes...