I came upon a report about a French document from the siege of Harfleur by King Henry V in 1415 which gives an insight into how news was transmitted to the French commanders at Rouen and elsewhere.
The BBC News report which first caught my attention was so garbled - and more about Shakespeare than the events of 1415 - as to be useless but it pointed me to a rather better account of the document which gives its contents and also points to the rarity of such an item turning up these days.
This account nevertheless manages to privilege Shakespeare over the real history of the document as can be seen in the illustrated article which can be read at A Shakespearean Discovery: A Newly Discovered Real Life Document With Great Events Made Famous in Shakespeare's Henry V
The fact that Shakespeare wrote about the siege of Harfleur is seen as more significant than the historic events themselves, without which Shakespeare would have had nothing to write about in the first place …. I am sure readers can come up with other literary-historical links that are equally cart-before-horse.
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