This is a #4thCentennial post about tennis, Anglo-French relations, warfare, and masculinity. It also explores a more peaceful, better way in which a conflict could have been solved (unfortunately, it was not the way it unfurled in history):
FRENCH AMBASSADOR.
KING HENRY V.
- What treasure, uncle?
The treasure chest full of tennis balls as it appears in The Hollow Crown, starring Tom Hiddleston
(AKA Loki, plus best Cassio ever in the history of Othello).
EXETER.
- Tennis balls, my liege.
The fuzzy yellow balls of present-day tennis.
KING HENRY V.
- We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us.
- His present and your pains we thank you for.
- When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
- we will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
- shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
- Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
- that all the courts of France will be disturb'd
- with chaces. And we understand him well,
- how he comes o'er us with our wilder days,
- not measuring what use we made of them.
- we never valu'd this poor seat of England;
- and therefore, living hence, did give ourself
- to barbarous licence; as 'tis ever common
- that men are merriest when they are from home.
- But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,
- be like a king, and show my sail of greatness
- when I do rouse me in my throne of France.
- What a shame that Henry V chose to settle those matters not with rackets, but with cannons!
- A lot of lives could have been spared if there had just been a game of tennis between the two future brothers-in-law. Just Henry and Louis, each one with a racket, sending one another a ball to and fro, and no casualties at all. But, you know, boys will be boys and war will be war... and royals will go balls to the wall over even the slightest squabble.