In one of Catholic playwright William Shakespeare’s greatest plays, the historical drama Henry V chronicling events from the Hundred Years War (which also includes the magnificent St. Crispin’s Day speech and coined the phrases “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” and “Once more unto the breach, dear friends!”), this scene follows the English victory at the Battle of Agincourt:
When the kyng had passed through the felde & saw neither resistence nor apparaunce of any Frenchmen savyng the dead corsses, he caused the retrayte to be blowen and brought al his armie together about, iiij [4] of the clocke at after noone. And fyrst to geve thankes to almightie God gever & tributor of this glorious victory, he caused his prelates & chapelaines fyrst to sing this psalme In exitu Israel de Egipto, commaundyng every man to knele doune on the ground at this verse. Non nobis domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam, whiche is to say in Englishe, Not to us lord, not to us, but to thy name let the glory be geven: whiche done he caused Te deum with certeine anthemes to be song gevyng laudes and praisynges to God, and not boastyng nor braggyng of him selfe nor his humane power. (Act IV Scene 8)
The king commands his knights to celebrate their victory by the singing of two hymns: the famous Te Deum, and the less well-known Non Nobis, which reads: “Nōn nōbīs, Domine, nōn nōbīs, sed nōminī tuō dā glōriam/Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to thy name give glory.” (DRA) The latter is the incipit of the hymn, taken from verse 9 of Psalm 113 of the Vulgate (115:1 in Hebrew), which praises God for the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Shakespeare’s choice to use this hymn in this context is intriguing, but the hymn itself is even more interesting. In the so-called Middle Ages, the Non Nobis was sung as part of the Easter Vigil, matching the theme of the Exultet in which, during the Praeconium, the Passover of the Old and New Covenants is linked typologically and God is praised for the “happy fault” of sin which made possible the supreme blessing of Christ’s saving sacrifice and Resurrection. During the recitation of the Non Nobis, the celebrants would remain kneeling as a sign of humility and gratitude.
Musically, the popular form of the Non Nobis today derives from a canon composed from two passages in the motet Aspice Domine by 16th-century Dutch composer Philip van Wilder which together form the setting for the phrase non est qui consoletur (“there is none to console [her]”), with text provided by the Renaissance musician William Byrd (possibly for specific use in Shakespeare’s play). Van Wilder worked in the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England; there is some irony to this. He prospered from Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, yet the canon he composed was a favorite of the English Catholic recusants, largely due to its borrowing from a responsory in the Roman and Sarum Breviaries for the above-mentioned phrase:
Aspice Domine, quia facta est desolata civitas plena divitiis, sedet in tristitia domina gentium: non est qui consoletur eam, nisi tu Deus noster Plorans ploravit in nocte, et lacrimae eius in maxillis eius. Non est qui consoletur eam, nisi tu Deus noster./Behold, Lord, for the city once full of riches is laid waste, she who ruled the peoples sits in sadness: there is none to console her but thou, our God. She wept sorely in the night, and her tears were on her cheeks: there is none to console her but thou, our God.
One can see how the theme of this text, which was read at the time during Advent, also connects and looks forward to the saving exodus of God, both of the Israelites from Egypt and of all humanity from slavery to sin by Christ, which is the central theme of the Non Nobis. The recusants, who had been brutally persecuted for a century and would continue to be until the nineteenth century and later, saw themselves as captives in the new Egypt of Protestant England, hounded, extorted, tortured and martyred for remaining obedient to the True Faith. Filled with longing for the glory of medieval England, Mary’s Dowry, stolen by the lust for power and pleasure of Henry VIII and his illegitimate daughter Elizabeth, the recusants looked forward not only to the restoration of England but to the Second Coming, when Christ would reign as the true King of kings and Lord of lords and all sin would be destroyed forever. As St. John foresaw, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.” (Rev 21:4)
One of my favorite renditions of this beautiful hymn was composed and performed by Patrick Doyle for Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film adaptation of Henry V, seen here:
(Cover image source: By Milka85 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26058499)