ABSTRACT
Henry V’s ‘Crispin’ speech may serve as a startingpoint for an inquiry into Shakespeare’s use of proper names. 1 It contains examples of two main literary uses: (i) a good list of place-names to make a poetic cluster, though these are, it is true, personal titles; and (ii) a single personal name ‘Crispin’, acting as a verbal talisman, in which ‘more is meant’, as Milton says of the old myths in Il Penseroso, ‘than meets the ear’.
