The king’s a bawcock, and a heart of gold,
A lad of life, an imp of fame;
Of parents good, of fist most valiant.
I kiss his dirty shoe.

Of all Shakespeare’s warrior royals, none sets English hearts beating more proudly than Henry V, who, though vastly outnumbered, routed the French at Agincourt on October 25, 1415. Six hundred years later to the day, the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon commemorated the victory with Gregory Doran’s production of the play that bears Henry’s name. The video shot that day stars Alex Hassell, lately familiar as the cock-of-the-walk Rupert Campbell-Black in the Disney Plus hit miniseries Rivals.

For lots of actors, the temptation to idealize Henry proves overwhelming, but Hassell resisted. Instead of a new-hatched mirror of chivalry, he presents a junior Minotaur, his manly voice cracking under stress like a high schooler’s, his heroic rhetoric achieved only by maximal mental exertion, his stiffish frame and limbs working like a GoBot’s. Hassell says that his father, who was a vicar, spoke about the Bible “without ever losing his humanity, without ever stopping sounding like my dad”—which may be the key to the way he himself speaks Shakespeare.

“To me,” Hassell told The Guardian while the show was still on the boards, “the story of a fairly mixed-up young man trying to do his best in incredibly difficult circumstances—with his father having just died and him being thrown into the spotlight—is far more interesting than the story of a king who is immediately very capable and just goes into France and wins.”

Doran has written of Hassell’s “wonderful anarchic energy on stage, balanced with a passionate rigor about Shakespeare’s text,” noting also his “chiseled good looks and enormous expressive eyes.” The spectacle Doran has built around Hassell is pure storybook, brimming with imagery that is traditional to a fault. Yet the unfolding of the story keeps catching you—and Henry—off-guard. When’s the last time you saw a soldier get called out for disrespecting the crown only to make amends by knocking his sovereign off his feet with a punch in the nose?

In the role of the Chorus, decked out in scarf and cardigan like a slippered college housemaster, the grizzled Oliver Ford Davies is not just a narrator but our life coach, ever challenging our powers of imagination. The veteran Jim Hooper touches the potentially tedious yet pivotal legalese tirade of the Archbishop of Canterbury with a mischievous twinkle, later returning as the veteran Sir Thomas Erpingham, heart aglow with loving loyalty. As Queen Isobel of France, Jane Lapotaire strikes chords of impassioned, wise, and wily diplomacy. Martin Bassindale, plainly no child, gives the doomed but plucky Boy in Henry’s army his dram of innocent tragedy. Robert Gilbert, a whiz with props, catches the Dauphin’s foppery without quite tipping over to camp.

As the Francophone princess Katherine of France, the irresistible Jennifer Kirkby blends notes of Shakespeare’s Juliet, Viola, Beatrice, and Miranda into a fragrance all her own. And watch out for Leigh Quinn as Katherine’s waspish interpreter Alice. Yes, Alice confirms when the courting Henry checks, that’s what the princess said about his blarney: “Dat de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits.” Full of de what did you say?! Full of de sheets, if you please—a translingual pun Shakespeare would have pinched in a heartbeat.

Henry V is available for streaming on MarqueeTV

Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii