"What Ish My Nation?"

On the radio last week, I heard a couple of interviews with native Michiganders who had lately experienced both an increase in the frequency of racial slurs hurled in their direction, and a subtle change in the nature of those slurs. Both interviewees were men of South Asian descent -- brown men, presumably -- and while neither was a stranger to casual ethnic insults, both noted that the newer expressions of hostility were more threateningly edged. In short, unfriendly strangers now feel empowered to threaten deportation. One interviewee said, more or less, "Now, instead of 'Go back where you came from', it's, 'You're going back where you came from!" The man added, "That pisses me off, because I came from here."

Listening to these accounts gave me new insight into a puzzling interchange between soldiers in what is perhaps Shakespeare's most famous war play, Henry V, set during the latter years of the Hundred Years' War. In one scene, as the British storm the French town of Harfleur, officers of their invading army quarrel behind the lines about how best to participate in the action. These men, significantly, are not what J. D. Vance might call "heritage English." Fluellen is Welsh, Jaimy's a Scot, and Macmorris is an Irishman. But they're all English subjects, fiercely loyal to the king (himself a Welshman), and committed -- more committed, it seems, than some native English soldiers whom we meet in the next act -- to retaking the portion of France they believe is England's by ancestral right. When Fluellen, the Welshman, says to Irish Macmorris, "I think ... there is not many of your nation--," Macmorris angrily interrupts him with "Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain and a bastard and a knave and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?"

Scholars, directors, and actors commonly interpret Macmorris's outburst as, in Barbara Mowat's words, "an expression of outrage that Fluellen might be about to slur the Irish."* I think they're wrong. Macmorris is reacting -- possibly over-reacting -- to Fluellen's implication that his "nation" is something other than the one for which he is fighting. He wants it understood that his nation is England (or Britain, although this name of national collective identity would not be in common use for more than a century after this scene was written). To grasp Macmorris's meaning, we must overlook (as Shakespeare did) the often unwelcome colonialist imposition of English identity on Ireland (and, to a lesser degree, on Scotland and Wales), as well as the dubious morality of the late-medieval English campaign against France which is the play's main action. For this scene of British unity, Shakespeare has not only deliberately chosen soldiers from what were, in his time, England's provinces, but made them officers. They may  be proud of their geographical heritage (Fluellen certainly is), but they're even prouder that they're Britons, fighting together. Whatever we think of their war, we should grant them the national identity they rightfully claim. Their accents mark their place of origin (and let's overlook Shakespeare's sad mistake, repeated centuries later by George Bernard Shaw, of trying to write regional accents into lines rather than just telling actors to speak like Cockneys, or Irishmen, or whatever). These soldiers' Scottishness, Welshness, or Irishness does not prevent their inclusion in the British commonwealth. Macmorris wants that fact respected.

In the case of the Michiganders I heard on the radio, the deportation threats, implying that the U.S. is not these citizens' "nation," have even less ground than Fluellen's suspicion (if that's what it is) of Irish Macmorris. In fact, those contemporary threats and insults have no ground at all. It's ugly to threaten anyone in this way, but it's particularly ludicrous to suggest that Asian (or African, or Latin) heritage precludes Americanness. As all but the ignorant know, if you were born in one of the fifty states, or are naturalized, the U.S. is your "nation." I'm not in favor of British imperialism, but I would count the Henry V scene as Shakespeare's argument against hypocrites such as J. D. Vance with his puzzling and offensive concept of "heritage" American-ness. Vance has suggested that someone whose ancestors (say) fought in the Civil War (even if they fought against the U.S.?) is more worthy of citizenship than other Americans. (Nation of immigrants, anyone? And where does this concept leave Vance's own children? That's a head-scratcher.) Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare knew that a "nation" could be wider and wilder than its insular definers. In this election season, we should all take that fact to heart.

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*Mowat, Barbara, ed., Henry V, by William Shakespeare (NY: Folger, 1995), nn 125-27, p. 94.