These four lectures cover the aspects of Henry V outlined below. Each lecture includes detailed discussions of one or more passages from the play.

Lecture One: The late Medieval and Elizabethan contexts; the play’s structure and development.

Lecture Two: Henry’s characterization in relation to heroism, war, and patriotism.

Lecture Three: How other aspects of Henry V relate to these three issues.

Lecture Four: The significance of secondary figures (i.e. everyone except Henry).

Henry V: LECTURE ONE

CONTEXTS AND STRUCTURE

PART A: THE MEDIEVAL CONTEXT

The late Middle Ages was a turbulent period in English history. During the reign of Edward III (1327-77) the monarchy remained a centre of power, but England was involved in border skirmishes with Scotland and in French wars. The Hundred Years’ War with France went on much longer than the span of 1337-1453 usually allotted to it, though it included long intervals of uneasy peace. In 1346 Edward III consolidated his reign by winning a famous victory over French forces at the Battle of Crécy, and a decade later his son the Black Prince won an equal measure of military glory at the Battle of Poitiers. Edward’s death postdated that of the Black Prince, and his grandson succeeded him in 1377 as Richard II. Richard was deposed in 1399 by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, later crowned as Henry IV. Richard was later murdered in prison.

This was the first of the series of conflicts over the English throne waged by descendants of Edward III that is known to history as the Wars of the Roses. Violence escalated,and both sides committed gruesome acts of treachery and vengeance. The Battle of Bosworth finally settled matters, when a third dynasty, the Tudors, came to the throne in 1485.

The reign of Henry V (1413-1422), great-grandson of Edward III and son of Henry IV, was a period of comparative stability that temporarily cooled England’s internal power struggles. In dramatising Henry’s victory over the French at Agincourt in 1415, Shakespeare’s Henry V refers back to the victories of Edward III and Edward the Black Prince in the preceding century (e.g. Act 2 Scene 4, lines 48-64). Henry V’s prayer on the eve of the battle of Agincourt (Act 4 Scene 1, lines 277-93) seeks forgiveness for the illegal taking of the throne by his father, Henry Bolingbroke, and for the murder of Richard II.

PART B: THE SHAKESPEAREAN CONTEXT

Shakespeare wrote two groups of four English history plays, each group being known as a tetralogy. The earlier tetralogy to be written and performed traces the later part of the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses and consists of Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III. The closing Chorus to Henry V points out that Henry VI has often been played: (“Which oft our stage hath shown”: Epilogue, line 13). Indeed these plays seem to have been popular with Shakespeare’s audience, since he later drew on earlier history (late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century) to produce a second tetralogy, consisting of Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. Henry V is the most optimistic and patriotic of Shakespeare’s history plays, vindicating his belief, which was standard for his era, that the stability and prosperity of the nation-state depended on rule by a king who had to be strong, just and wise.

Shakespeare completed the writing of Henry V for the London public theatre by May or June of 1599. Gary Taylor’s Introduction to the Oxford edition, pages 4-8, examines the evidence for accepting this dating. Henry V is therefore a play of the declining years of Elizabeth I (d. 1603), but written when Shakespeare (23 April 1564-23 April 1616) was at the peak of his creativity–when he was within a year of writing both Hamlet (1600) and As You Like It (1600), regarded respectively as his best tragedy and comedy. The first recorded performance of Henry V was at the court of King James I on 7^th January 1605. However the reference in the play’s first Chorus to “this wooden O” makes it virtually certain that this play was written for the first Globe Theatre, built in 1598 or 1599. Londoners and visitors can now enjoy watching performances of Shakespeare’s plays at Sam Wanamaker’s “Shakespeare’s Globe,” constructed about 200 metres from the site of Shakespeare’s original playhouse. Henry V was the first play to be performed when the reconstructed theatre opened to the public in 1997, four centuries after the completion of the original.

Shakespeare’s Globe was a roughly circular building. An apron stage projected into a central courtyard which was open to the sky. Better-off audience members paid for seating in tiered galleries built into the inner walls of the theatre. Performance was what today we would call “in the round” and the audience and actors were physically close. The actors used words, costuming, and gestures to awaken the audience’s imagination, without attempting to reproduce “reality.” In Henry V the role of the Chorus is to mediate between performers and audience; to guide the audience’s responses; and to apologise for inadequacies in the performers’ attempts to reproduce large-scale events. The Chorus uses grand and vital poetry to awaken the audience’s imagination and enthusiasm and to make up for limitations in the size of the theatre and the cast. The unusual attention that Henry V gives to theatrical representation may reflect Shakespeare’s awareness of what was then his new theatre.

C. DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF HENRY V

Henry V is no exception to Shakespeare’s practice of developing the structures of his plays so as to maintain audience engagement. Suspense builds to climaxes that alternate with more relaxed or comic scenes.

Act 1: The King’s Motive for War

The opening scenes are notoriously slow, so slow that productions regularly cut the speeches, especially those of the Archbishop of Canterbury.The purpose of the speeches is to justify Henry’s invasion of France by right of the king’s descent through the female line from the French royal family. Act 1 nevertheless builds up to the Dauphin’s insulting gift of tennis balls and Henry’s powerful rebuff.

Act 2: The English Leave for France

Act 2 begins by introducing the sub-plot. In Elizabethan plays the sub-plot often has the function of parody, i. e. satiric or comic imitation of events and characters of the main plot. Sub-plot lower-class characters often question, ridicule or reverse the moral values accepted by the main plot’s noble or upper-class figures. Thus in Henry V Bardolph, Nim and Pistol present a different perspective on patriotism and glory than the one maintained and ultimately endorsed in the main plot. They join the army that is about to invade France because they hope to make money by thieving. The battle between Corporal Nim and Ensign Pistol, who has married the hostess Mistress Quickly and her property, is a parody (or mockery) of real combat. In fact Nim and Pistol are variations on the stock comic character of the miles gloriosus—the vainglorious soldier who boasts ceaselessly of his exploits but who is really a coward. A question raised by these figures is whether their presence and opinions add up to a critique of the glory-hunting and patriotism of the other English fighters? Or do these “honourable” and socially-approved motives shine more brightly by contrast with the base self-interest and cowardice of Nim, Pistol and Lieutenant Bardolph?

Act 2 Scene 3 covers the sad event of Falstaff’s death. This isn’t performed on stage but narrated with deep feeling and unconscious comedy–some of it sexually explicit–by Mistress Quickly (lines 9-24). Falstaff was already well known to the first audiences of Henry V as the beloved comic lead in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor (dated tentatively to 1997). Following Mistress Quickly’s narrative, a saddened Bardolph, Pistol, Nim and the Boy depart for France.

Scenes set in the English and French courts interweave in Act 2. At the point of embarkation, Henry uncovers the treachery of Cambridge, Scrope and Grey. The speeches of Henry’s ambassador Exeter at the French court balance the challenge that the French ambassadors deliver to Henry in Act 1.

Act 3: Victory at Harfleur and the Eve of Agincourt

Following the stirring representation of the successful English siege of Harfleur, Act 3 begins the build-up of suspense to the battle of Agincourt.

Act 4: The Climax—Victory at Agincourt

This act is full of heroic speeches and actions, military success against the odds, death and glory.

Act 5: The Aftermath—Peace Terms and Henry’s Courtship

Henry V is expertly organized, initially to engage the audience’s sympathies with Henry and his army. A minor climax comes in Act 3, with the capture of the French town of Harfleur. Tension mounts from that point, as Henry’s exhausted and depleted army looks like being defeated by the fresh and numerous French troops. The English soldiers anticipate their deaths, and the king prays for forgiveness for his father’s sin on the eve of battle. However, Henry his rallies his forces in a famous speech. Further losses lead to an ultimate overwhelming victory in Act IV. In Act V the audience shares in the varied aspects of Henry’s triumph.

Henry V Passage for Analysis 1: Act I, Scene 2, lines 259-89: Henry’s response to the Dauphin

1. What has just happened to occasion Henry’s reply?
2. How does the speech adapt tennis imagery to the circumstances (lines 261-66)?
3. What part of his personal history is Henry referring to in lines 266-67?
4. What favourable interpretation of his earlier behaviour does Henry offer in lines 268-72?
5. What does he say his intention is now?
6. Trace the similes and metaphors in lines 272-80.
7. What impression of the battles to come is given in lines 281-89?
8. What character traits does Henry reveal in the course of this speech?
9. How far are you as reader or audience won over to Henry’s point of view?

Henry V: LECTURE TWO

INTERPRETING SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY

INTRODUCTION: DIVIDED VIEWS

Stage and media performances of Henry V have disagreed about Henry’s character. Twentieth-century revivals often made the play a vehicle for a patriotic, heroic message (see Gary Taylor’s introduction to the Oxford edition, p. 11). Stage performances during World War I in England took this form, and during World War II Laurence Olivier made film and theatrical history with the play’s first screen adaptation. Olivier’s version removes all ambiguity from Henry’s characterisation and military feats, so that the play becomes an uplifting experience, inspiring the anxious and war-weary audience to patriotism and heroic sacrifice. Films and stage performances of the 1970s restored the ambiguity of Shakespeare’s Henry, and sometimes went to the extreme of playing him almost as a war criminal (see Gary Taylor, p. 51). The ambiguity of Henry’s character and actions was maintained in Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film version, made when he was twenty-eight. See http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1048671 for a summary of TV and film renditions of Henry V. The differing and sometimes contradictory interpretations of actors and directors have been reflected in publications by critics, who have often taken up opposing positions as Henry’s defenders or detractors. The divided interpretations both on stage and in commentaries invite the conclusion that Henry V does indeed inject ambiguities into its portrait of Henry. The remainder of this lecture considers some of the complexity of Henry’s motivation and character.

THE HUMAN HERO OR THE AMBITIOUS “GREAT MAN”?

A. The Human Hero?

While Henry certainly shares with Beowulf and Ulysses some of the characteristics of an epic hero, Shakespeare ultimately presents a more rounded figure.He humanises Henry through his friendly relationships with his brothers, cousins, his uncle Exeter and other nobles, and his compassion for old Sir Thomas Erpingham (4.1.13-15, p. 206). During the preparations for Agincourt, Henry is an exemplary leader in the emotional support he gives to his soldiers of all ranks. When he visits his men in disguise in the night before the battle, he behaves like a romance hero and thus,apart from any historical authenticity, Shakespeare introduces yet another literary genre into the mix. Henry’s night-time visitation to his men is also an opportunity for dramatic irony, as Henry’s soldiers, ignorant of his identity, feel free to give their honest opinions about the battle to come, kingship, and Henry himself. Many of these opinions have objective merit.

Henry V Passage for Analysis 2: Chorus at the beginning of Act 4 (Oxford edition, pages 203-206, lines 1-53)

1. What situation is the subject of this chorus? i.e. what point has been reached in the play’s developing action?
2. Comment on the words and imagery (i.e. metaphors, personification, similes, if any) used to describe the night scene and the early dawn (lines 1-16).
3. How is the French army represented? (Again, comment on the choice of words and imagery.)
4. How is the English army represented?
5. How is Henry represented?
6. What does the Chorus reveal about the resources and limitations of the Elizabethan theatre? How far does the Chorus’s poetic description compensate for any deficiencies in that theatre’s power to represent events realistically? How important in your view is it to represent events realistically on stage? Compare contemporary cinema: name some of the ways in which Elizabethan theatrical conventions differ from those of modern cinema and TV dramas.
7. “This chorus is attempting to control the audience’s response to the situation, to each of the opposing armies and to Henry.” Do you agree? If so, is this a valid theatrical project? How far,if at all, do you as reader or audience feel obliged to agree with the Chorus’s judgments?
8. The Chorus opens each Act and also closes the play (Oxford Edition, pages 91-94; 118-20; 157-59; 258-61). By what means do the choruses as a group seek to guide audience response to Henry, to events, to the theatre and to the company of actors? How far do they succeed?

Henry’s introspection, reported in his long verse soliloquy in the night watches before the battle of Agincourt, further humanises him by revealing the burdens of kingship and the king’s often unacknowledged labours, undertaken to benefit his subjects (4.1.219-72). Henry contrasts the peaceful life of peasant farmers with a king’s anxieties as his country’s protector–though the English army’s invasion of France seems to have been motivated in Act I as much by pride and glory as by defence of territory and legal rights. He argues that empty ceremony is the only advantage that a king enjoys. Finally he is humanised by his prayer before battle, in which he tries to come to terms with the guilt of his father’s crimes of usurpation and murder. The theme of Henry’s humanity during the night preparations is summed up when, in dialogue with the soldier Michael Williams, he insists,: “I think the King is but a man, as I am….All his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man….” (4.1.99-103).

The final humanising of Henry occurs in his courtship of the French princess Catherine in Act 5, Scene 2 (pp. 270-77). As a bluff warrior forced into the unaccustomed role of lover and suitor, and having to communicate as much as he can in French, Henry is indeed a likable human figure. This is one of the most theatrically successful courting scenes in Shakespeare

B.   Henry’s Humanity Undermined?

The image of a human Henry is nevertheless undermined in a variety of ways. In Lecture 1 above I mentioned the significance of the jolly, fat, life-loving and deep-drinking Falstaff as a comic lead beloved by the audiences of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. Mistress Quickly’s narrative of Falstaff’s demise (2.3.9-24) is a masterly blending of the pathetic and comic modes. However it is disturbing for our judgment of Henry that she can say: “The King has killed his heart.” (2.1.83);and later in the same scene Nim and Pistol (2.1.112-121) suggest that Falstaff is dying of a broken heart, following Henry’s rejection of him as a friend and drinking companion. (Henry’s brutal moralistic banishment of Falstaff is in fact enacted at the end of Henry IV Part 2, Act 5, Scene 5, lines 47-69.) Some audience members will want to excuse Henry for this behaviour, in accordance with the model of the great man who must follow his destined path to the fulfillment of his talents and ambition and to the glory of his country. There’s no complete answer to the issue, but it’s one which the play demands that we think about. The patriots, great man worshippers and glory hounds don’t have it all their own way.

A parallel event occurs later. On learning that Bardolph, another of his early companions, is about to be executed for stealing a pax (a tablet stamped with a crucifix) from a church, Henry merely comments: “We would have all such offenders so cut off” (3.6.108). Later we learn that Nim too has been hanged for stealing. Henry the king is constantly contrasted with the dissolute Prince Hal, and some members of the audience will subscribe to the moral rigour of the judgments he imposes. After all, the worthy and brave Fluellen provides a contrast for judging the failings of Bardolph, Nim and Pistol, and this is surely part of the point that is being made. Other audience members will nevertheless resist Henry’s judgments on his former companions as lacking in compassion, loyalty and gratitude.

Henry’s night visitation of his soldiers also has limitations as a humanising exercise. The prose dialogue with Michael Williams in Act 4, Scene 1, lines 141-177 is a legalistic explanation of the limits of the king’s responsibilities to his soldiers. However rationally or ethically correct, some audience members might regard the stance taken as ungenerous. Again, Henry’s prayer is a “state” rather than a personal prayer, in that it focuses on his father’s public or “state” crime—the deposition and murder of Richard II—rather than on any personal failings.

As a final point, it could be argued that even in the courtship scene, Henry holds on firmly to his royalty and power, at the same time as he appears to set them aside (5.2.166-170). Catherine has no genuine option of refusal; she is a prime commodity, to be handed over in accordance with the peace terms that Henry has imposed on her father. The courtship scene enacts the proverb, “to the victor belong the spoils,” and ,as often in history, those spoils are sexual, as well as power, lands and wealth. So again some members of the audience will feel uneasy as the delightful scene is acted out.

Henry V Passage for Analysis 3: Henry’s speech to the defenders of Harfleur, Act 3, Scene 3, lines 82-123

1. What situation is the subject of this chorus? i.e. at what point does it come in the play’s action?

2.  Comment on the words and imagery (i.e. metaphors, personification, similes, if any) used to describe the night scene and the early dawn (lines 1-16).

3.  How is the French army represented? (Again, comment on the choice of words and imagery)

4.  How is the English army represented?

5.  How is Henry represented?

6.  How does the Chorus comment on the resources of the Elizabethan theatre? How far does the Chorus’s poetic description compensate for any deficiencies in the theatre’s power to represent events realistically? How important in your view is it to represent events realistically? Compare contemporary cinema: in what ways might Elizabethan theatrical conventions differ from cinema?

7.  “This chorus is attempting to control the audience’s response to the situation, to each of the opposing armies and to Henry.” Do you agree? If so, is this a valid theatrical device? Do you as reader or audience feel obligated to accept the Chorus’s judgments?

8.  The Chorus opens each Act and also closes the play (Oxford Edition, pages 91-94; 118-20; 157-59; 258-61). How do the choruses as a group seek to guide audience response to Henry, to events, to the theatre and to the company of actors? How far do they succeed?

Henry V: LECTURE THREE

WAR AND LOVE

In this lecture we’ll extend our discussion of the representation of war in Henry V. This representation is dense and problematical, and composed of many different facets. We’re not likely to arrive at simple solutions, but I hope that we’ll come to appreciate the complexity of Shakespeare’s representation, which reflects the tragic complexity of war itself.

RELIGIOUS SUPPORT FOR MAKING WAR

In Act 1 Scene 1 the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely reveal to the audience the agreement that they have come to with Henry to fund his French wars. The Church is prepared to hand over to Henry more military funding than to any earlier king. The scene, which draws heavily on the sources that Shakespeare uses throughout—Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) and Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of York and Lancaster (Gary Taylor, Intro. pages 28-30)—is realistic to the extent that it demonstrates the politics behind wars. It supports Henry’s leadership by describing the sudden reformation that has come upon Henry since his wild days as Prince Hal: “Consideration like an angel came/ And whipped th’offending Adam out of him” (lines 29-30). The King’s reformation is a key factor in the Bishops’ decision to fund his invasion of France. Thus begins the religious sanction of the hero-leader and the war.

This is extended in the Archbishop’s long legitimisation of Henry’s dynastic right to the throne of France in Scene 2, which is clinched by the Bible’s authority (1.2.97-98). The Archbishop is one of several characters who pray for God’s blessing on Henry, e.g. Sir Thomas Erpingham: “The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry.” (4.1.34). A final divine endorsement of his decisions and actions, including making war, is the miraculous nature of the English victory. The play emphasises the exhaustion and depletion of the English forces before the battle: the fact that many English fighters are diseased and that they are outnumbered five to one. However, in the outcome, only four titled and twenty-five common men die on the English side, as against ten thousand French soldiers, one hundred and twenty-six French princes and nobles, and eight thousand knights and gentlemen. Henry’s humility in attributing his victory to God is presented as a strong point in his favour. A thrilling victory snatched from apparently certain defeat is a recurrent feature of heroic plots.

THE HEROIC SIDE OF HENRY’S WAR

Henry V  holds up heroic actions for the audience to admire and participate in vicariously:

• In some stirring poetry, the Chorus captures the joyous heroism of young men setting out for the adventure of war. The feelings captured in the Chorus’s early descriptions may remind you of the enthusiasm with which the young Australian volunteer soldiers set out for France, Gallipoli and other battlefields at the beginning of World War I. The difference is that in the play, the young soldiers’ optimism and joy are justified by their final victory at Agincourt. As a staunch supporter of Henry, the Chorus can see no fault in “this grace of kings,” “this star of England.”
• Henry puts forward a persuasive argument for acting with decisive violence in war in his first speech before Harfleur, opening Act 3:  “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man/As modest stillness and humility,/But when the blast of war blows in our ears,/Then imitate the action of the tiger.”  In other words, a person should adapt his behaviour so as to flow with the situation in which he finds himself, since whatever occurs has been predetermined by a wisdom that underlies all things. This idea has been the basis of several world philosophies.
• The heroism is frequently supported, as in this same speech, by patriotism—the Elizabethan audience evidently enjoyed the patriotic feeling attending Henry’s wars and victories. Several playwrights had already capitalised on this feeling in simpler plays performed earlier than Henry V, some of which Shakespeare knew.
• In the speech that we examined earlier, Henry makes blood-curdling threats against Harfleur. However following the city’s surrender, he orders that mercy should be shown to all the citizens.
• Triggered by the Earl of Warwick’s wish for more men to fight the battle, Henry’s speech of encouragement before Agincourt is one of the best known dramatic pieces in English.
• Before Agincourt several events reinforce this heroism, including Henry’s staunch refusal to negotiate a ransom which would save his own life in event of a defeat but which would not benefit any other English captives.
• Other characters apart from Henry are inspired to heroism by his example. The Duke of York, who begs to lead the vanguard of the army, and who is slain, is the prime example of this: see Exeter’s description of his brotherly and chivalric dying in company with the Duke of Suffolk (4.6.7-32, pp. 241-42). The chivalrous French herald, Mountjoy, is also shown as admiring Henry’s courage and determination.
• Characters of lower social rank, such as Fluellen, Pistol and Bardolph, extend the play’s debate about issues of honour and heroism. I’ll discuss these in more detail in Lecture Four, but can note here that the debate’s outcome favours heroic idealism.

Henry V Passage for Analysis 4: Henry’s St Crispin Day Address, Act 4 Scene 3, lines 18-67

1. What argument does Henry put forward to counter Warwick’s wish for more soldiers?
2. What does Henry not care about (lines 24-27)? Conversely, what does he say he primarily seeks in this battle?
3. What do you understand by the word “honour”? What do you think Henry means by it?
4. What offer does Henry make to his men in lines 33-39? How do you judge this offer?—as bravado? as a wise move that will build his army’s confidence? Has Henry possibly been carried away by the power of his rhetoric?
5. What are the details of the rosy future that Henry foresees for the man who “outlives this day and comes safe home”? How valid is the picture that Henry draws? (You might like to compare Henry’s picture with the experience of soldiers who have returned home from modern wars.)
6. What ideal for male friendship emerges at the end of the speech (lines 60-67)? What view of manhood itself is implied?
7. How recognisable to you as a contemporary reader are the implied views of heroism, war and manhood in Henry’s speech? As a final point, consider his later words, lines 92-101 (Gary Taylor, ed., p. 231), in relation to Rupert Brooke’s poem, “The Soldier”: http://www.englishverse.com/poems/the_soldier.
8. What words or phrases are repeated in the speech, and what are the emotive effects of the repetitions?

TRAGEDY AND REALISM IN HENRY’S WAR

As well as in Henry’s reply to the Dolphin’s tennis balls and in the Harfleur speech that we studied earlier, realism about war appears in two events late in the battle of Agincourt.

A) The Slaying of the French Prisoners (4.6.36-39)

When Henry fears that the defeated French soldiers will rally and fight on, he orders his men to kill their prisoners. Gary Taylor suggests that the slaughter is written to be carried out on stage (Introduction pp. 32-34), and points out that most productions of the play (including Olivier’s and Branagh’s film versions) omit it. Shakespeare drew Henry’s order and its implementation from his chronicle sources, which excuse them as a necessity of war: the small English army could not afford to guard prisoners while fighting off a renewed assault. In Henry V the slaying of the prisoners follows Exeter’s account of York’s classically heroic death.

B) The Slaying of the English Boys (4.7.1-10; 50-60)

Fluellen reports that the French have killed the English boys in charge of the baggage, and Henry’s delayed reaction follows (p. 246). The Branagh film especially makes much of Henry’s grief. The killing of the boys may be interpreted perhaps as a retrospective justification for Henry’s order to kill the French prisoners. The English soldier Gower sees it as such (4.7.7-10), though he refers also to the looting of Henry’s tent as Henry’s justification.

Whatever effect these two incidents have on our evaluation of Henry, they certainly deepen the drama’s representation of war, acknowledging that senseless slaughter is as likely an outcome as honour and conquest.

Henry V Passage for Analysis 5: Henry’s Courtship: Act 5, Scene 2, lines 132-173

1. Comment on Shakespeare’s choice of prose for this courtship scene. What significance (if any) can you find in the fact that Henry encourages his soldiers in poetry but courts his wife in prose? What is the effect of the prose scene in the midst of scenes of high statecraft?
2. What qualities as a wooer does Henry lay claim to, and what qualities does he say he lacks?
3. What ideal of manliness is implied by this passage? e.g., by implication, which is favoured—the man of words or the man of action? Give reasons for your choice. Discuss the stereotypes of courtier and soldier.
4. What words does Henry use in promising Catherine that he will be faithful to her?
5. How effective a wooer with words is Henry in fact?
6. What use of metaphors and similes raises the passage above prose? How do repetition and alliteration enhance the passage?
7. Conversely, what are the effects of the short sentences, the simple constructions and the colloquial language?
8. Comment on the validity of Henry’s reasoning in the speech that begins, “No it is not possible you should love the enemy of France…”
9. How much is revealed of Catherine’s character in this scene?
10. Following this passage, how does the scene develop towards its conclusion?

Henry V: LECTURE FOUR

MINOR CHARACTERS

Minor characters, defined here as everyone except Henry, deepen the play’s representation of heroism and war by providing contrasting perspectives.

NOBLE TRAITORS AND IGNOBLE THIEVES

Act Two introduces sets of high-ranking and low-ranking characters who look on war as an opportunity not for winning honour but for making money. The noble trio, Richard Earl of Cambridge, Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham, and Sir Thomas Grey of Northumberland, show Henry in the role of just judge for the first time. He will be further tested in this role later in the play. In Act 2 however we applaud his condemnation of the noble traitors all the more readily because earlier they advocated heavy punishment of a “wretch” who abused the king, an insignificant crime compared with their own. Dramatic irony operates as the traitors fail to realise that they have been found out, for example in Henry’s reference to their “too much love and care for me” (2.2.51). They are enlightened only when they receive what they think will be their commissions. This scene establishes in the audience’s mind the king’s obligation to judge his people without fear or favour.

The sub-plot in Elizabethan drama often has the function of parodying the main plot. Accordingly, the ignoble thieves, Bardolph, Nim and Pistol, with their false soldierly status and pretence of being fierce if not heroic fighters, are parodies of the upper class heroes. They offer a divergent perspective on Henry’s French wars, in that they are driven by greed for money, not by heroic aspirations to glory and conquest. When Pistol and Nim almost come to blows over Pistol’s marriage to Mistress Quickly, Pistol’s speech is a parody of old-fashioned heroic stage language (2.1.43-59; Gary Taylor’s edition, pages 124-125). An even more striking parody occurs in Act 4, Scene 4 (pp. 233-38), when Pistol captures a French prisoner who regards him as a gentleman, and who is (for once!) more afraid of Pistol than Pistol is of him. This is a parody of the heroic capture of other French prisoners by the more professional English soldiers.

The Boy’s speech, (lines 61-67, p. 238), which reports that Nim, like Bardolph, has been hanged, is a good summary of Pistol’s cowardly character: Pistol is like the comic-devil figure in medieval drama, who went around roaring and brandishing a wooden knife. However the comedy of Pistol’s interchanges with his French prisoner is suddenly and gruesomely undermined when he slits the prisoner’s throat (p. 243). According to Gary Taylor, in Shakespeare’s theatre Pistol would have carried out this murder in full view of the audience.

If you would like to consider these soldier-burlesques further, read the Boy’s speech reporting their doings in Act 3, Scene 2 (pp. 162-63). In contrast with his idiosyncratic elders, the Boy is a model of rationality.

The comic-satiric figures of Bardolph, Pistol and Nim, like Falstaff himself in Shakespeare’s earlier plays, nevertheless possess a genuine humanity, so that they live on in an audience’s memory. They seem more real than many people that we know. This may be because they dare to be themselves–they are keen to gratify their own simple desires however “earthy” and debased, independently of the abstract codes, such as “honour,” the sense of rank and hierarchy, and the ambitions that alternately inhibit and drive more exalted characters in the play, as in real life they (apparently) drive people of higher social standing. We’ll explore some of these ideas further when we discuss the passage chosen for study in this lecture, namely the scene describing Falstaff’s death and enacting the comic soldiers’ departure for France.

Henry V Passage for Analysis 6: Falstaff’s Death: Act 2, Scene 3, lines 1-56

1. How far is Pistol’s parting from Nell (Hostess) a parody of the brave soldier setting out for the wars?
2. Explain some of the puns in the scene, as these might have been perceived by audiences at Shakespeare’s Globe.
3. Nell speaks a language all her own. Give examples of some of her errors. How does this bizarre style of speaking contribute to her characterisation?
4. What is purely comical about her description of Falstaff’s dying? What is bawdy or sexually suggestive about it?
5. How is the genuine grief of all the characters present indicated in their dialogue?
6. What are some of the idiosyncratic features of Pistol’s way of speaking, and how do they contribute to his characterisation?
7. What language is used to convey the mercenary motives of Pistol, Bardolph and Nim?
8. Comment on the Boy’s role. Is this role’s main purpose to interpret the scene and characters to the audience? Why might Shakespeare have thought he needed to control the audience’s responses? How far does the Boy guide the audience’s judgment of Pistol, Bardolph, Nim and Falstaff?

SOLDIERS IN THE ENGLISH ARMY

Although they are such vivid characterisations, Bardolph, Nim and Pistol only lightly challenge heroic ideology such as service to one’s country or the pursuit of honour. (This differs from Henry IV Part 1, where in a famous speech Falstaff rejects honour as a motive for risking one’s life (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 129-41).) The audience may feel that Henry’s condemnation of Bardolph is well-founded—that Henry is again fulfilling the leader’s responsibility to administer justice without fear or favour. Furthermore, some of the ordinary captains in Henry’s army—belonging to the middle class, only one level above that of Bardolph, Nim and Pistol—are as valiant as their leaders. Heroic virtue is therefore not confined to the upper classes,but shown as within the reach of all.

These captains come from different parts of the British Isles: Captain Gower is an Englishman; Captain Jamy a Scot; Captain MacMorris an Irishman and (above all) Captain Fluellen a Welshman. They may be designed to win over audience members from these nations, or even to advocate or foresee a “United Kingdom.” It’s as if Shakespeare wanted as many in the audience as possible to identify with the participants in Henry’s adventure. The four captains recognise the discomforts of soldiering, yet are still determined to do their duty. Fluellen is the opposite of Pistol in his touchy bravery, and in his readiness to take up any challenge that might however remotely impinge upon his honour or that of Wales (see Act 5 Scene 1, when he forces Pistol to eat a leek, the Welsh national symbol.) At first Fluellen is misled into believing that Pistol is genuinely brave. When Pistol pleads with him to save Bardolph’s life from the King’s justice, Fluellen refuses (Act 3, Scene 6). He later develops a fantastical comparison between Henry and Alexander the Great (4.7.11-48), designed especially to prove Henry’s affiliation with Wales. This interchange is nevertheless soured by irony when Gower asserts that, unlike Alexander, Henry “never killed any of his friends.” The deaths of Falstaff and Bardolph have already disproved this. Fluellen sees Henry’s rejection of Falstaff as Henry “being in his right wits and his good judgments.” This important dialogue invites the audience to think through the implications of Henry’s treatment of his friends, and to see beyond the comic and romantic appeal of Fluellen’s blind loyalty.

Henry’s practical joke inducing Michael Williams to challenge Fluellen and not himself as the bearer of the glove, the token of challenge, substitutes a different kind of comedy for the bawdy human comedy of Bardolph, Nim, Pistol and Mistress Quickly. How might we describe this comedy? Perhaps it is soldiers’ comedy, or heroic comedy?

The French Opposition

The French are shown as over-confident, comfortable and a little decadent, in contrast with the energetic aspiring English. Gary Taylor argues that after Act 3 Scene 5 the Dauphin disappears from the play that Shakespeare wrote. Taylor reverts as editor to the textual tradition that makes the Duke of Bourbon the speaker of the lines excessively praising his horse (Act 3 Scene 7). King Charles and the Constable of France are more sensible and cautious in their determination not to underestimate the English, especially Henry. The contrasting attitudes appear in the first French counsel scene (2.4.48-64). The patriotic impulse behind Henry V appears in the contrast that develops between the leaders of England and France, but the scenes involving the French characters are by no means lacking in dramatic interest.

Conclusion

In sum, most of the material involving minor characters that we have briefly considered promotes a reading of Henry as sympathetic—the audience is invited to regard him as a model leader and hero. The weight of the evidence also suggests that while war is full of suffering, wounds and death, it provides an opportunity for heroic, manly and patriotic adventure on a scale that is uplifting for both the viewer and the participants. However, cracks in the heroic facade of Henry V, such as the Pistol, Nim and Bardolph parodic subplot and the Captains’ comparison of Henry and Alexander, invite the audience to entertain alternative judgments.