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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.