Henry V

By William Shakespeare

Synopsis

Act 1

The play opens with a prologue from the Chorus, whose task throughout the play is not only to encourage patriotic fervour but also to give imaginative assistance to the audience:

"Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies…

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs i'th' receiving earth."

One consequence of this device is that it is easier for us in this play than perhaps any other of Shakespeare's to imagine ourselves watching an original performance in the Globe theatre and responding to the impressions from the stage. The first Chorus invites the audience to "deck our kings" with its thoughts, meaning that we should contribute to the bringing to life of the action with our own imaginative input.

The opening scene that follows initially seems understated after the rarefied tone of the prologue. Two bishops, rather than kings, enter and discuss a bill of law which is due to considerably reduce the church's money. It becomes clear later in the scene that the bishops are set to encourage wars abroad as a tried and tested way to divert attention away from this bill, advancing the king certain church money to ensure they don't lose too much. This self-seeking motivation of the churchmen is important in the wider examination of the background to war in the play, but the principal function of Canterbury and Ely in this scene is to reinforce the change of character in Henry for anyone who might not have seen Henry IV, Part II:

"The breath no sooner left his father's body

But that his wildness, mortified in him,

Seemed to die too"

Gone is the wild and flippant Prince Hal of the previous stage incarnations; in his place we are presented with a model of Kingship almost too good to be true:

"Hear him but reason in divinity

and, all-admiring, with an inward wish

You would desire the King were made a prelate.

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say it hath been all in all his study."

In the next scene the new thoughtful King duly calls upon Canterbury to spell out, without embellishment, exactly what his claim is to the throne of France, warning the Archbishop to "take heed…how you awake our sleeping sword of war". Canterbury, in a long and formal speech, clarifies the nature of the Salic Law of France, which states that the throne may not pass by the female line. Henry's claim comes via Isabel, mother of Edward III, and is hence void; Canterbury, however, explains that it is the French who are mixed up over the origins of their Salic Law, and urges the King to press his rightful claim in war.

Henry concurs, and after a discussion of the threat of the Scots from the North if England is left unguarded, the ambassador from the Dauphin, son of the French King, is called in. Henry is told that his claims are thought to "savour too much of your youth/ And bids you be advised". The ambassador then presents the King with a patronising gift of tennis balls ('real', or old-fashioned, tennis being a popular game in the middle ages). Henry doesn't show his anger, but instead deals with the slighting reference to what he terms "our wilder days" and responds with a playful threat, punning on the rules of real tennis:

"We will in France, by God's grace, play a set

Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard."

He shows the steely power of his resolve and rhetorical skill in informing the ambassador of his reply to his master:

"…many a thousand widows

Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands,

Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down,

And some are yet ungotten and unborn

That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn."

The ambassador departs, and the King's uncle says, "This was a merry message" in appreciation of his nephew's show of regal power.

Act II

The Chorus opens the act with great vigour and enthusiasm, telling us: "Now all the youth of England are on fire, / And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies". Fine clothes and idle pastimes are left behind and those of fighting age are on the move with their youthful King. The only fault lies with three noblemen, Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, who have become traitors on behalf of France:

"O England, model to thy inward greatness,

Like little body with a mighty heart,

What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do,

Were all thy children kind and natural!"

The Chorus presents England as a nation as beautiful and noble in its appearance as in its soul, let down only by some offspring lacking feelings of kin (so not 'kind') and law of nature. Again the audience is encouraged to feel patriotic but also to see beyond the constraints of the play to a wider sense of nationhood. In the second scene, we are allowed to see the traitorous nobles still paying lip service to their King, in the knowledge that Henry is fully aware of their treason. Once again the idea is to acknowledge the young King's mastery of statecraft as he discusses the release of a drunken prisoner before turning the traitor's harsh sentencing on themselves with a display of suitably Machiavellian policy:

"The mercy that was quick in us but late

By your own counsel is suppressed and killed:

You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy,

For your own reasons turn into your bosoms

As dogs upon their masters, worrying you."

Shakespeare has the King speak in deliberately involuted metaphors here, i.e. they are turned in upon themselves; so mercy is 'suppressed' just as the treason is, and their reasoning is turned into their own persons as unnaturally as dogs hounding their masters, the traitorous nobles being the dogs and King Henry the master.

The gracious strength the King displays here echoes through the final scene of the act, as his envoy Exeter dominates the stage and the Dauphin has his "Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt" flung back in his face. The momentum of the drama builds without needing the English King to be present to respond in person because he has exhibited every newly adopted quality of which his courtiers have boasted, and has the French King on the back foot.

In the two Henry IV plays, humour was used superbly through the character of Falstaff to break up the specifically historical scenes and develop a more natural rhythm and sense of life. The comedy is delayed in comparison in Henry V but still provides a welcome change of pace in the first and third scenes of the second act as the old crew of Falstaff react to their figurehead's death and prepare swaggeringly for the coming war, the excuse Shakespeare requires to press them into comic service again. As with much of Shakespeare's comedy, it is easier to appreciate its physicality and farce in the modern theatre than on the page, as the low diction is less clearly marked than was the case for the original audience. Once again, however, the scenes serve to throw into relief the main thrust of the action, and offer a reassuring angle of the common man in the examination of the business of war.

Act III

Once again, the Chorus serves to hasten the presentation of a long drawn-out campaign along, with its insistently imperative tone and demonstrative image-making:

"Play with your fancies, and in them behold

Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing…

A city on th'inconstant billows dancing,

For so appears this fleet majestical,

Holding due course to Harfleur."

The war is now engaged in earnest and Henry's famous line "Once more unto the breach…" propels the audience into the thick of the fighting. The speech is gloriously martial, a patriotic war cry made famous by Laurence Olivier in his 1944 film. The sentiment is taken up afresh at the start of the second scene by Bardolph, only for the other Eastcheap fellows to lag behind more cautiously, until the Welsh captain Fluellen (an anglicized spelling of Llewelyn) beats them into activity. The boy gives a quick character assessment of his companions before a lighter tone once again reasserts itself with the heated conversations of the diverse British officers: one English, one Irish, one Welshman and a Scot, all fighting, unusually for the time, in the same army, though unable to keep from each other's throats.

The siege of the French town of Harfleur has not been wholly straightforward, as the captains' talk of mining suggested, and King Henry's speech now encourages its surrender with dark threats:

"…in a moment look to see

The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand

Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters

Your fathers taken by the silver beards,

And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,

Your naked infants spitted upon spikes…"

This is the savage picture of war which Henry presents with a measure of hyperbole in order that it may be avoided in the siege, but there is no doubt that the brutality he describes is a reminder of what human beings are capable of in war, as much as emphasizing the ruthlessness with which Henry is prepared to assert his claim to the throne. The following scene, which neatly fills in stage terms the substantial chronological space while the tired English troops withdraw to rest, is a welcome change of mood with the French princess practising her English. Not named on stage, Katherine has already been named as a wife with a dowry for Henry should he withdraw, and her English lessons seem to prepare her for the eventuality of an English victory too, as well as allowing opportunity for sexual innuendo to keep the groundlings happy amid this rabble-rousing dramatic spectacle.

With the discussion of the French high command signalling the march of the English troops again, there is time for Fluellen and Pistol to come together and have words over the arrest of the pimple-faced Bardolph for robbing a church, preparing the way for the later scenes between Pistol and the disguised King. When the thief's name is advanced by Fluellen to the King there is a poignant dramatic irony since, as Prince Hal, he did indeed know Bardolph in the former plays. The King gives no indication of this previous intimacy, only replying that, "We would have all such offenders so cut off…"

The King faces a rude French envoy and does not avoid telling him of the problems of his troops, which will only glorify their victory and insult their foe:

"Though 'tis no wisdom to confess so much

Unto an enemy of craft and vantage,

My people are with sickness much enfeebled,

My numbers lessened, and those few I have

Almost no better than so many French"

The contrast with the bragging Constable and self-important Dauphin in the next scene whets the appetite for the great battle that is now fast approaching.

Act IV

This lengthy act displays both the excitement and spectacle of war and the universalization of its terrors in the fears of the English troops, outnumbered and wearied, on the eve of battle, with their King wandering amongst them to cheer and rally them. The Chorus describes how with "A largess universal, like the sun, / His liberal eye doth give to every one, / Thawing cold fear…" and unlike earlier helpful imaginings from the Chorus, this one is shown again in the opening scene, as the King borrows Erpingham's cloak and passes in solitary meditation through the camp. First to hail him is Pistol, who when told he is kinsman to Fluellen, directs a similar continental insult towards him. In fact there is little suggestion from Shakespeare that a natural kingliness will shine through mere disguise, since the King receives principally insults from the various (and some would say typically) churlish Englishmen he encounters. Meeting three common soldiers, Henry at first convinces them in lyrical fashion that the King is prey to just such fears, hopes and sensations as they are:

"I think the King is but a man, as I am;

…his ceremonies laid by, in his

nakedness he appears but a man"

The King is drawn into an argument, however, about the likelihood of his person being ransomed should they lose, with the result that gloves are exchanged so they may know each other to fight should the outcome of the battle allow it.

Shakespeare mixes his effects interestingly at this stage of the drama. The confrontation with Williams mimics the comedy of the Eastcheap tavern-based burlesquerie, but at the same time presents a more natural evocation of the nervous tensions on the eve of battle and the sort of misconceptions likely if a King mixes with his subjects at such a time. Our expectations are kept in the air, and the character of the King gains valuable depth through his musings in his emotional soliloquy that follows the exchange of gloves: "O ceremony, show me but thy worth! / What is thy soul, O adoration?" Reminded of his duties by Erpingham, the King pauses to lament his father's treatment of his predecessor Richard II, casting momentarily Henry's pursuit of the throne of France against his implicit awareness of the weakness of his own claim to the throne of England.

In the following scene, the French castigate the power of the motley English troops and the jingoistic, or anti-foreign, tone is re-established. It leaves only the King inspiringly to rubbish his nobles' wish for more troops on the English side, bagging the greater glory for each one of them should they win, and the final envoy of Montjoy seeking surrender, and battle is joined, signified by the stage term 'excursions'.

The swordplay and stage fury subsides into a vaguely comical confrontation between Pistol and a French soldier he has subdued, with the boy translating. This allows the battle to avoid a one dimensional or too hasty conclusion, with the subjugation of one French soldier leading neatly into the panicked consternation of the French nobles as the battle goes terribly wrong. It falls to Bourbon to mount one last valiant action before he too is captured. In the meanwhile, however, the fleeing French troops have attacked the English train, slaughtering the boys protecting the baggage (one of these poignantly being the boy so recently translating for Pistol). Henry gives the order for every French prisoner to be killed, whether in retaliation or necessity of battle is unclear: "I was not angry since I came to France/ Until this instant", the King remarks. The battle scene draws to a close, and a moving description of the deaths of the Earl of Suffolk and the Duke of York, along with a list of the miraculously few English dead book-end the remaining details of the act: the resolving of the quarrel between the disguised King and Williams the common soldier. The King invents a fiction to explain his possession of the glove and sends the comically passionate Fluellen off with a false reason to take a punch from Williams. The two come together and are separated without undue bloodshed and the act ends with a reconciliation that accords happily with the successful outcome of the battle. The King's remark from before the battle, "We are in God's hand, brother, not in theirs" finds its resolution in his own reply to the French envoy's "The day is yours": "Praised be God, and not our strength, for it!"

Act V

The battle of Agincourt was not in fact the end of Henry's wars in France, but Shakespeare with his customary selective presentation of history glosses over the subsequent campaign and employs the Chorus to refer to the large expanse of time between the battle and the peace negotiations. Once again we are invited "In the quick forge and working-house of thought" to picture the King's joyful reception in England. Interestingly, a precise clue is also given to the date and political scene of the Elizabethan period in a comparison to the acclaimed Essex, the Queen's favourite, might expect on his return from Ireland later in 1599:

"Were now the General of our gracious Empress,

As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,

Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,

How many would the peaceful city quit

To welcome him!"

In fact Essex's mission was not a success, and within four years he was executed for plotting against his Queen, Shakespeare's patron with him.

Returning to France, the business of the peace and betrothal of the French princess to Henry which occupy the rest of the act are augmented by the inclusion of another scene between Fluellen and Pistol. The Welshman has taken exception to Pistol's rudeness on St. David's day and has retained his ceremonial leek which he now forces down the soldier's throat while bashing him round the head with a cudgel, maintaining a comically polite manner of address throughout. This business over, Pistol is given the last word as the last of the Eastcheap crew still surviving; all he can look forward to is spending his remaining days stealing and playing up his recently acquired cudgel wounds in London.

The final scene reasserts the ceremonial feel appropriate to the play, as the Royal families of both nations come together for peace. The Duke of Burgundy produces a lengthy personification of "the naked, poor and mangled peace", elaborating on the familiar Shakespearean metaphor (see, for instance, Richard II ) of the 'rank and unweeded garden' representing a society not at peace with itself:

"And as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges,

Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,

Even so our houses and our selves and children…"

As the nobles leave to thrash out the details of the settlement, Henry keeps on stage the most precious of the clauses, namely Katherine, the French princess. The value of the earlier scene in which she practised her English becomes clear as Henry sets to wooing her, with the light tone repeated and Katherine able to speak, but leaving the King with the lion's share of the business. Katherine diverts the repartee from verse into prose at line 102, and the scene, which would have been played with a boy in the role of the Princess, maintains this easy-going feel throughout. Only when Katherine says "Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?" does she demur at all, and Henry is ready with the neat quip "in loving me you should love the friend of France; for I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it… ".

The bargain is sealed with kisses, one informal and another ceremonial, and the play is all but over, the French/English antipathy sealed in a light-hearted marriage, the traditional closure of comedy. It falls to the Chorus, in an epilogue, to admit that the "world's best garden" that Henry had won was soon thick with weeds again as the son of the great match, Henry VI, gave the hard-earned conquests away. This, however, is in the nature of historical drama, we are told, and the next stage might be seen elsewhere in the repertoire, in Shakespeare's own cycle of plays.