King Henry V combines strident jingoism, weak comedy, structural instability, and some of Shakespeare’s dullest blank verse.
It also presents us with a windy protagonist who bears little resemblance to the saucy, shifting Prince Hal of the Henry IV plays. I find it a pain reading Henry V, except when the king is offstage, when it gets even more annoying.
What do so many other people see in this play anyway?
The last of a series of Shakespeare histories that follow the successive reigns of three English kings, Henry V features the title monarch just after inheriting the throne from his troubled father Henry IV, who in turn had taken it from Richard II. As with the earlier plays, the focus is on what makes a just ruler. It is not enough for Henry V to assume the monarchy, he must somehow earn it by subjugating France.
This he does, because Henry V is one helluva guy:
CHORUS
A largess universal like the sun
His liberal eye doth give to everyone,
Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all
Behold, as may unworthiness define,
A little touch of Harry in the night. [Act IV, scene 0, lines 43-47]
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| Henry V at Harfleur, the French port fortress from which he began his successful invasion in 1415. Shakespeare famously depicts him at the wall, urging his men: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!" Image from https://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/M819130/King-Henry-V-of-England-Leading-his-Army-at-the-Siege-of-Harfleur-in-1415. |
Of course, a little touch of Harry is what France doesn’t need, but that’s just what Henry V orders. Most of the play is concerned with France’s conquest by the young king, and how impressed everyone is with his firmness and steely purpose while he plows through the land.
I studied Henry V in college, and under my professor’s guiding care found myself impressed with the ambiguity of his reading. As Dr. Anselment explained it, Henry V is set up as morally complicated, a good leader who nevertheless uses war as a tool for consolidating his authority. Shakespeare intends for us to view him with skepticism.
But what seemed sensible when parsing over selected passages doesn’t at all jibe with later, less supervised readings. The play isn’t written as a send-up but a celebration; not of tyranny, exactly, but a kind of national will to power that unabashedly promotes war as personal growth tool:
KING HENRY V
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;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect. [III, i, l. 3-9]
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| Henry's route to victory in France took him from Harfleur to Agincourt and finally home via Calais in just over two months. Image from https://www.timeref.com/episodes/henry_v__the_hundred_years_war.htm. |
Henry’s rousing speeches before Harfleur and Agincourt remain in my mind as they do for many. The more I read Henry V, the more unhappy I became about it not coming up to anything close to what I remembered.
Henry offers neither a figure to cheer for nor an intriguing anti-hero like Coriolanus or Richard III. Decked out with plot armor a mile thick, he gets what he wants, no matter how wrong or seemingly impossible. He’s Shakespeare’s Mary Sue, a character of such annoying perfection you wish someone would stick a sword in him to let all the hot air out.
Our play begins with a pair of churchmen talking about a vague threat to their ecclesiastical holdings. They seek remedy via war with France. This suggests some moral ambiguity right at the outset about Henry’s rush to war, but it is never resolved or even referenced again. Instead we see Henry lectured by these two churchmen about why he is France’s rightful king. They drone about this at some length, which sets a low bar for other run-on speeches that follow.
The explanation they give, that he should have inherited the throne from a maternal ancestor wrongly cheated of the French crown, is clearly meant as just cause by the author. French ambassadors up the ante when they show up bearing tennis balls, which they suggest young Henry amuse himself with while leaving politics to the grown-ups.
Bad timing, to be sure. Henry is rightly riled at this:
KING HENRY V
And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his
Hath turn’d his balls to gun-stones, and his soul
Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them… [I, ii, l. 281-284]
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| Laurence Olivier directed and starred in Henry V, a 1944 British film that trims much of the fat and packs a punch. I enjoyed it, and I hate the play, so imagine how much fun you might have seeing it! Image from https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/49-henry-v. |
There is much punning in Henry V, though of a bloody sort. The Henry IV plays presented some famous comic supporting players, so Henry V doubles the laughter by killing them off, and switching the humor to a speech-impaired Welshman who rambles on about the Roman art of warfare and the need to respect the vegetable he wears on his head.
Meanwhile, Henry keeps rolling along. After threatening rape on the women of a French city and warning not to be “guilty in defense,” he woos the French princess Catherine with some rather unconvincing and labored lovetalk that centers around penis puns and the fact he is her new king. When she asks if she could love an enemy of France, Henry replies: “I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it.”
This stifling smugitude typifies Henry V throughout the play. Shakespeare presents him as “the mirror of all Christian kings,” [II, 0, l. 6] a tonal constant despite some odd bits of nastiness from Harry that apparently fall under the category of “cruel to be kind.”
The basics of the plot involve Henry’s conquest of France, which history records as a cakewalk owing to early use of the English longbow and the insanity of French King Charles VI. Neither of these points show up in the play, however, which is concerned only with promoting Henry.
Act II features a threat on Henry which is resolved when he hands papers to his would-be attackers, somehow foiling their plans. Thrilling. Act III features a long scene of two women speaking French, which Shakespeare uses as an excuse to throw in some dirty words. Naughty Will! Act IV, the only developed act in the play, gives us Agincourt and Henry’s famous “we happy few” – the play’s best moment – but the subsequent battle is over before it begins. Cue trumpets.
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| Henry V Discovering The Conspirators, a painting by Henry Fuseli, depicts one of Henry's moments of insufferable perfection in Shakespeare's play. Image from https://www.paintingstar.com/item-henry-v-discovering-the-conspirators-s122978.html. |
All that’s left is for Henry to soak in the applause:
FLUELLEN
By Jeshu, I am your Majesty’s countryman, I care not who know it. I will
confess it to all the ’orld. I need not be asham’d of your Majesty, praised be
God, so long as your Majesty is an honest man.
KING HENRY V
God keep me so! [IV, vii, l. 112-114]
Shakespeare wrote this play at the height of his powers and success. We know this because of a reference to an invasion of Ireland that Great Britain launched in 1599, which Shakespeare crows about so much we know it had to have been debuted before said invasion flopped and its commander got chucked in jail by Elizabeth I. Perhaps that’s one reason the nationalism expressed here is so unbecomingly bellicose.
KING HENRY V
The signs of war advance!
No king of England, if not king of France! [II, ii, l. 193-194]
The play does feature one marvelous character, not a person per se, but rather something called the Chorus, who pops up between acts to literally set the stage for what will happen. Shakespeare employed similar devices in other plays, such as Rumour in Henry IV Part 2, which seems a model given that is set immediately before this.
The Chorus is a magnificent addition, who incites the reader (or theatergoer) to employ their imagination in producing desired effects. The deft lyricism employed here is sonnet-level Shakespeare:
CHORUS
O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! [III, 0, l. 13-17]
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| Henry V's marriage to Catherine in 1420, as depicted in a miniature at the British Library. Two years later, Henry was dead. Image from https://www.ancientpages.com/2019/02/04/catherine-of-valois-scandalous-queen-who-caused-drama-even-after-her-death/. |
Henry V provides some closure to the storyline of the Richard II/Henry IV plays, by giving us a ruler who is both a man of action and conviction, rather than one or the other. In the beginning of this Henriad cycle, Richard II was depicted as lazy and preferential. Henry IV was far more dynamic but compromised both by what he did to achieve his rule and his guilt over doing so. Henry V knows what’s best for his country and what he must do to get it – even if he must kill a friend.
Of course, this brings up the play’s most notable character, notable by his absence: Sir John Falstaff. He was featured in the two Henry IV plays as Henry’s bosom friend, inclined to drink and mischief. As a result, Henry banishes him upon assuming the throne, breaking his heart.
Falstaff dies, offstage and unseen, early in Henry V, leaving a giant void. The idea that Henry grows as a king because of the corpses he leaves behind him is a recurring one here. A depressing thought, and certainly not dismissible for that alone, but Shakespeare never circles back to show what beyond territorial acquisition (all soon to be lost by his son Henry VI) there ever was worth celebrating about this Harry guy.
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