Battle of Agincourt Conquest of France", raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before the campaign. The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is William Shakespeare's "Henry V", written in 1599. The play focuses on the pressures of kingship, the tensions between how a king should "appear" – chivalric, honest, and just – and how a king must sometimes "act" – Machiavellian and ruthless. Shakespeare illustrates these tensions by depicting Henry's decision to kill some of the French prisoners, whilst attempting to justify it and distance
English longbow in England in the period between the Norman conquest and the reign of Edward III, but that powerful longbows shooting heavy arrows were a rarity until the later 13th century. Whether or not there was a technological revolution at the end of the 13th century therefore remains in dispute. What is agreed, however, is that the English longbow as an effective weapon system evolved in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The longbow decided many medieval battles fought by the English and Welsh, the most significant of which were the Battle of Crécy (1346) and the Battle of Agincourt