As Stephen remembers Kevin Egan talking about his Irish
nationalist aspirations, he recalls a coinage from
Shakespeare's Henry V: "To yoke me as his
yokefellow, our crimes our common cause." The allusion
indicates that Stephen has no interest in becoming an
apprentice revolutionary.
In act 2 scene 2 of Shakespeare's play, the King and his
nobles prepare to embark for war in France, after sending
three English traitors off to face the executioner. The next
scene shows three of Falstaff's lowlife companions, Bardolph,
Nym, and Pistol, preparing to join the expedition. Their
motives are anything but noble, and the way their number
mirrors that of the aristocratic conspirators suggests that
Henry here faces another kind of internal threat. Pistol, the
vainglorious pugilist of the trio, makes clear that their
chief interest is in pillaging:
Yoke-fellows in arms,
Let us to France, like horse-leeches, my boys,
To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck! (2.3.54-56)
As the campaign unfolds, Bardolph is caught stealing from a
French church and King Henry, who has explicitly forbidden
such looting, sentences his old drinking buddy to be hanged:
"We would have all such offenders so cut off" (3.6.107-8).
Kevin Egan is an Irish fighter living in France, spouting
militarist rhetoric. By thinking of him as a "yokefellow"
looking to yoke others into his cause, Stephen makes clear
that he wants no part of the aging fenian's program of violent
"crimes."
