Please see this website:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Eengl24/study_questions/errors/index.html

Henry V
Prologue. This prologue would be apt, in its theory of dramatic representation, for any of the history plays. Upon whom does the Chorus place responsibility for making kings appear like kings? Is this theory not analogous to a skeptical political theory of monarchy?
1.1. To take Canterbury at his word here, you would think the King had managed to achieve the perfect education of a Prince merely by partying all the time. Kind of makes you wonder what you're doing here at college, huh? On the other hand, Canterbury's own sense of how to manage policy and interpret holy doctrine, church and secular rights and privileges hardly rises above quotidian concerns and strategies (76-82). For the classic humanist account of the education of a king, see Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince (Baker/Berry Stacks JC/145/E65/1936 and Baker/Berry Stacks JC/145/E65/1997). Another popular version of a renaissance Prince was Nicolo Machiavelli's The Prince (ca. 1515). See also Lily B. Campbell's compilation of contemporary teaching on the subject in Mirror for Magistrates: Baker/Berry Stacks PR/2199/M5/1938/cop. 2 and Sanborn House PR/2199/M5/1938,
1.2. What are we to make of Canterbury's long list of precedents here: all usurpers of the French crown who used thin arguments of lineal descent through mothers and grandmothers to make legitimate-sounding claims on the crown they had usurped (64-85)? Is this not embarrassingly close to Harry's strategy and situation? Shakespeare reproduces more or less word for word the casuistical argument from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England Scotland and Ireland (1587). (Special Collections in Rauner has two copies: Special Collections, Hickmott 109 and Special Collections, Rare Book DA/130/H732/cop.2; a modern edition is in Baker/Berry Stacks DA/130/H74.) The King strictly charges Canterbury not to twist the truth of his researches in this regard (13-32), and there's no reason to believe he has, especially since he makes his argumet for Henry's claim no better than that of other usurpers of the French crown. It seems that Henry has tried to lay the burden of responsibility on Canterbury and Canterbury has quite expertly shifted it back again to the King; that is, he has not wrested or "bowed" his reading from the truth, but he has delivered the response Henry asked for, if Henry is willing to take it as support for invading France. For a picture and brief biography of Henry V, see this link. Also see Edward III, his great-granduncle (Richard II's grandfather).
From 136-220, Harry skillfully maneuvres Canterbury into agreeing to supply much of the defense of England against the Scots while he is off in France.
Is responsibilty for the French wars now to be assigned to the Dauphin and his mockeries (282-88)?
2.0 Chorus.
2.1. Nim, Bardolph, Pistol, and Sir John Falstaff (dying offstage, heartsick since Henry scorned him publicly in 2 Henry IV 5.5) were once Hal's Eastcheap companions in drink, reveling, gambling, and whoring. They now plan to follow their King (once their buddy) to France. Why? "Profits will accrue" (101).
2.2. Didn't Hal's father, Henry IV, prevail over the anointed Richard with the help of French soldiers? Have Scrope, Grey, and Cambridge done much worse? Compare the way Shakespeare's Richard II deals with traitors and the way Henry V deals here with traitors. Henry engineers the matter so that they effectively condemn themselves in public before he condemns them. THis is all of a piece with Henry's strategy of engaging all his subjects in sharing the responsibility for the repair of the shaken discourse of monarchy. In their confessions, they speak the king's power to execute them, even as the king is in the act of showing mercy to a "poor wretch": "The mercy that was quick in us but late/ By your own counsel is suppressed and killed" (76-77). Thus, the power of the monarch is restored here by the breath and words of his subjects, not his own. In Noam Chomsky's memorable phrase, we watch Henry here "manufacturing consent" to the discourse of divine right of kings.
"No king of England, if not King of France" says Henry in closing this scene. Why link his legitimacy in England to the success of a French campaign? Is legitimacy to be achieved, or is it a matter of birth and lineal descent as was so elaborately argued earlier? Or does achievement make good the discourse of lineal descent? Does the discourse of birth and blood and divine right require the support of martial achievement and clever policy? Henry does well not only to avoid situations that will expose the cracks in the discourse of legitimacy, but also to deck that discourse with achievement, win with his powerful arm and ascribe success to God, and so re-manufacture consent to the very principles his father's and Richard's actions did so much to tarnish with skepticism.
2.3. Is it worth comparing Nim, Bardolph, and Pistol here to Richard II at the death of Old Gaunt? Their Old John has no wealth to seize, but their attitude towards him in death betrays a cynicism not unlike Richard's.
2.4. Just as he laid the responsibility on Canterbury for the legitimacy of the French war, so now Henry offers to lay the responsibility for war upon the French King (105-109). If the French King capitulates, that is tantamount to granting Henry's claim to the French crown "by gift of heaven,/ By law of nature and of nations" (79-80). Thus can "Bloody constraint" (97) be translated effectively into the "law of nature"?
3.0. Chorus. What "culled and choice-drawn cavaliers" (24) has the play presented us with so far? When the Chorus enjoins us to "Work, work your thoughts," does he ask us to see what the play partly refuses to present? Are we to re-interpret Nim, Bardolph, Pistol, Fluellan, Jamy, and McMorris as "culled and choice-dran cavaliers"? What encouragements do we have to "eke out" the "performance"?
3.1. Surely we are invited to compare Harry's description of his soldiers to those who appear in the next scene (3.2)? Does not the King sound somewhat like his own Chorus here?
3.2. and 3.3. In 3.2 the play shows us the men of "grosser blood" (3.1.24) who follow Henry. In 3.3, we see the middling sort--"good yeomen" (3.1.26). What are we to make to the play's complicity with the silliest sort of class and nationalist stereotypes? And this in the face of Harry and the Chorus repeatedly enjoinging us to "piece out our imperfections with your thoughts"? Can our thoughts do this? Can Harry's and the Chorus's solicitations make us want to do this?
78-120 is a good candidate for detailed rhetorical analysis. How does King Harry manage, like a Chorus, to get Harfleur to submit? How does he work on our and their imaginations? How does he manage to make them responsible for their own imminent destruction?
3.4.and 3.5. and 3.7. How does the play represent the French? What stereotypesdoes the play depend upon?
4.0. Chorus. and 4.1. Again, we are invited to compare the Chorus's wordish depiction of Harry's majesty as King and skill as general to what the play presents in the following scene, especially 3.0.35-47.
Harry's encounter, in disguise, with Williams and Bates, bears close analysis. What exactly is William's argument about responsibility for and in war? What Bates? How does Harry manage his part of the argument without betraying himself. Williams threatens. without knowing it, to expose perhaps the greatest carck or aporia in the doctrines of monarchical authority, responsibility, and trust. Henry knows how much he requires the "breath" of every fool to constitute and uphold the power, the "breath" of Kings (216-259). How does Harry's speech on ceremony, especially lines 239-259, echo the deposition scenes from Richard II?
4.3. and 4.4. Again, the play invites us to compare Harry's rousing speech, especially 4.3.60-63, to the scene that follows of bloodsucking Pistol.
4.5. -- 4.7. How often does the play manage to have us hear about the daring and honorable deeds of Harry's noble soldiers, but see the dishonorable (but funny) deeds of his peasants and yeomen? We are told about the dying noble brotherhood of York and Suffolk, but we see Pistol and Fluellan.
4.8. Just how does Harry mange the upshot of his encounter with Williams? How does Harry "save the appearances"? This is one of the most important scenes in the play even though Branagh omits it entirely from his production? Why do you suppose he does so?
"Non Nobis" (Not unto us) are the first two words of Psalm 115 in the Vulgate. It would be sung liturgically to plainsong chant. 5.2. Why "brother France" and "brother England" and so on? What work is the rhetoric doing here? Does Henry woo, conquer, or bargain successfully for Catherine and for France? Which image must we credit for all to be as well as we want it to be?
Much recent debate about Henry V has been generated by the following essays:
Stephen Greenblatt's chapter on Henry V in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare on Masculinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 31-51.
David Kastan, Chapter 3 of Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1982), 56-78.
Andrew Gurr, ed. "Introduction" to King Henry V (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 6-16.
Steven Marx, "Holy War in Henry V" Shakespeare Survey 48 (1995): 85-97.