I should have seen this one coming. Raj Whitehall, rallying his men before a major battle, adapts an appropriate speech:
"'I tell you, in the years to come, rich Messrs who're safe and warm in bed tonight will curse the fact that they weren't here...'"
-The Forge, CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 259.
I will not quote Raj's entire speech but it is there to be read and its ancestry is clear. It does not surprise us that Nicholas van Rijn was there before Raj, on another planet in another future history.
In my childhood, a comic strip biography of Winston Churchill showed British soldiers on D-Day. One quoted "St. Crispin." Another responded. "''Ark at 'im!'" Yet another English social contrast. See here.
3 comments:
There's a movie titled Renaissance Man, about a fellow hired to teach basic literacy to some Army recruits who lack it. Though a critical and commercial failure, the movie includes one scene in which a trainee recites the St. Crispin's Day speech to their drill sergeant during a field training exercise as they stand in pouring rain. It's clear even the hardened NCO is reluctantly stirred by Shakespeare's words ... and by this previously-unteachable recruit having committed them to heart.
David,
Shakespeare crops up everywhere, of course.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And in Poul Anderson's THE LONG WAY HOME we get a "futuristic" quote from Shakespeare's "To be or not to be" soliloquy from HAMLET. In very modified form, of course. Another example of Shakespeare "cropping" up everywhere!
Sean
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