Henry V – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Shakespeare’s ideal sovereign seems to have been Queen Elizabeth (r. 1558-1603), who had a strong sense of prerogative but also evidently felt deep responsibility for the well-being of her subjects. Elizabeth knew how to play politics like a true Machiavellian operator, but she also wrote the “Golden Speech” by which she is so well remembered today. [1]

Her reign was marked by what today we would call a shrewd concern for public relations—that is, for managing the Queen’s image and keeping the various subsections of the populace as favorable as possible towards her policies. The Cult of the Virgin Queen encouraged by Elizabeth’s officials and courtiers proved a successful means of maintaining order. (She never married, partly because that would have meant diminished power for herself and an increase in dominion for her continental Catholic suitors.) [2]

What about Henry V, the subject of the present drama? Henry must have been high on the playwright’s list of proper kings, judging from the accolades he receives in the history play that bears his name. Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV after taking the crown from Richard II in 1399, was the son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (John of Gaunt was in turn a son of King Edward III) and John’s wife Blanche of Lancaster. So Henry Bolingbroke’s son, upon ascending the throne in 1413 at the age of 26 as Henry V, continued the Lancastrian line.

That Henry V was a Lancastrian matters because the first Tudor King, Henry VII (who vanquished the Yorkist Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485), was himself head of that great house by virtue of his mother Margaret Beaufort (great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his third wife Katherine Swynford). The Tudors, therefore, favor the Lancastrian side of English history, not the Yorkist side. [3]

It would be natural for Shakespeare (who in his history plays partly follows Raphael Holinshed’s Tudor-friendly Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland) to offer a flattering reconstruction of the Lancastrian Henry V, and that is mostly what we get in Henry V.

Modern cultural materialist critics have offered a counter-reading that sees irony everywhere in plays such as Henry V; but then, critics in any era tend to recast their favorite authors to suit their own ideological convictions. After all, every generation must re-examine the past to find out what is still valuable in it—valuable, that is, to the new generation itself.

It’s interesting to read The Tempest, for example, in part for what it has to say about how European colonizers treat “others” like Caliban, and it’s worthwhile to study Othello for its engagement with early-modern European ideas about racial difference. Similarly, it’s possible to sympathize with the Regency republican author William Hazlitt when he criticizes Henry V for its willingness to applaud a king whom Hazlitt considers a brute bent on imperial conquest.

In a lecture from The Round Table, Hazlitt writes, “Henry, because he did not know how to govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his neighbours. Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid claim to that of France.” [4]

That is a frank and authentic response to an attitude Hazlitt finds offensive in his countrymen. Still, critics ought to impose some limits on themselves when they work with centuries-old material. Claiming that Macbeth is a nihilist manifesto or that in Henry V Shakespeare is laughing up his ruffled sleeve at monarchy is unconvincing.

It is hard to see how the most valued member of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men during Elizabeth I’s reign and then of The King’s Men theater company for James I could be anti-royalist. Shakespeare was very likely a believer (at least to some extent) in the Renaissance’s prime image of earthly order: the Great Chain of Being, wherein everything has its place and God sanctions the order of things. [5]

Shakespeare is neither an anarchist nor a murmurer against the political order of Elizabeth Tudor or James Stuart. In his plays, the human order generally builds itself around the providential, if not always easily discernible, plan of God, and monarchy is not to be flouted without consequence.

This is not to say that Shakespeare is a shameless mouthpiece for the powers that be. We can see from Henry V and other plays that he doesn’t support monarchy blindly: the strengths and weaknesses of his characters amount to something like a Mirror for Magistrates (the title of a moralist book that went through a number of editions around Shakespeare’s time). [6]

This author never tears the institution of kingship down, but in the end the advice Henry V himself gives in our play holds good: “the King is but a man.” And a “man,” in the view of Renaissance authors, is for the most part a collection of virtues and vices just like every other individual, high-born or not. There are plenty of sin-riddled or otherwise wrongheaded rulers in Shakespeare’s canon, and they never fare well. But this leads us to a consideration of Henry V as a character.

Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his Lectures on Shakespeare, have written about the way many of this playwright’s characters manage to be both strong individuals and yet representatives of a class of people.

Coleridge writes in an essay on Romeo and Juliet, “The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakespeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class,—just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age.” [7]

There is something universal about the Nurse’s eccentric individual behavior. She is an uneducated but good-hearted old woman, and all such people show similar tendencies in their speech and conduct. In that sense, suggests Coleridge, the Nurse is a universally human character even as she shows us and others her exuberant and very particular personality.

In a similar way, Henry V is the very type of a good king. He achieves this paradigmatic status because over the course of three plays (I and II Henry IV plus Henry V), Shakespeare allows “Prince Hal” or “Harry” to transform himself from a playful rascal into a sovereign of iron will and implacable virtue, the burden of which role is at times lightened by the sense of humor that comes from being kicked around by life enough to acknowledge one’s own limitations, amongst them spiritual error and common mortality.

ACT 1

Act 1.0, Prologue (791, the Chorus offers its vision of a stage adequate to so great a monarch and so great a field of action: “Oh, for a muse of fire …; but since that cannot be, the Chorus asks the audience members to use their own imaginations, thereby filling out the scene.)

The Chorus calls upon the audience to flesh out the play with imagination: “may we cram / Within this wooden O the very casques / That did affright the air at Agincourt?” (791, Prologue 1.0.12-14) The Prologue admits that history plays in particular call for a level of realism they can’t deliver: the field of action is too vast to be taken in on a little stage, and we must turn to metadramatic awareness and reflect on the representational limits of what is before our eyes. [8]

The Prologue refers to the actors onstage as zeros: each is a “crooked figure” (770, 1.0.15) and as such, he asserts, when coupled with the imaginative powers of a willing audience, he can take on an almost miraculous power to multiply and transform the little scenes we see on stage to suggest the sublime events and figures English history. As for the grand temporal sweep of that history, the Prologue speaker begs leave to take care of that: “Turning th’accomplishment of many years / Into an hourglass” will be his or her task (791, 1.0.30-31).

Act 1, Scene 1 (791-94, the Archbishop of Canterbury tells the Bishop of Ely that there’s a bill in Parliament that threatens to reduce Church revenues; the Archbishop means therefore to encourage the young king to set himself against the French and pursue his claim to the throne of that great and populous nation; to that end, says, Canterbury, the Church has offered Henry a great deal of money.)

In the first scene, the prelates’ motive is to remove pressure from their own estate. Parliament has called for taking some of their lands, and they need to create a diversion of the sort that occurred during the reign of Henry IV. The Archbishop of Canterbury points out that if this reiterated bill is successful, “We lose the better half of our possession” (792, 1.1.8), consisting of the Church’s secular holdings in England.

Giving the new king money to wage war in France would be a good investment: Canterbury proposes that with regard to France, the Church should “give a greater sum / Than ever at one time the clergy yet / Did to his predecessors part withal” (793, 1.1.79-81). But the French ambassador is about to be granted an audience with King Henry, so the churchmen had better get to work.

Act 1, Scene 2 (794-800, King Henry V asks the Archbishop of Canterbury to explain and justify his claim that he has the right to rule France; Canterbury details the claim in all its confusing glory; Henry decides in favor of making war against France; the ambassadors of that country present to Henry the Dauphin’s insulting gift of “tennis balls”; Henry gives a chilling speech in response, and tells his surrounding lords to prepare for war.)

The priests cite a confusing historical record to refute the Salic law barring claims based on a female’s rights [9] —Edward III had claimed France based upon the fact that his mother Isabella was the daughter of Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre. Edward’s claim started the Hundred Years’ War on the Continent, 1337-1453.

Shakespeare is having fun at the expense of the dry historical record. What matters is the now of the play’s setting, so Canterbury is perfectly comfortable making light of the musty old foundation for current claims: “So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun, / King Pépin’s title and Hugh Capet’s claim, / King Louis his satisfaction, all appear / To hold in right and title of the female” (795-96, 1.2.86-89).

Canterbury insists that Henry V must take his place amongst a series of English kings who have asserted their claim to rule France: he tells Henry that his fellow monarchs “expect that you should rouse yourself / As did the former lions of your blood” (796, 1.2.123-24). Henry is quickly resolved to do precisely this, and Canterbury tells him to take one fourth of England’s available troops to France to prosecute his claim, and Henry declares, “France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe, / Or break it all to pieces” (798, 1.2.225-26).

Next comes the Dauphin’s mockery of King Henry. [10] The French heir still thinks of Henry V not as a mature ruler but as a prodigal youth, the very one that many of Shakespeare’s audience members will know from the delightful Henry IV plays in which “Prince Hal,” close companion of the roguish, dynamic knight Sir John Falstaff, causes his father so much anxiety before finally taking on the responsibility that properly belonged to him.

The claim is that Harry is still playing games; thus the tennis balls. Tennis developed from a medieval French game called jeu de paume, like handball. The Dauphin offers this gift along with the contemptuous admonition, “let the dukedoms that you claim / Hear no more of you.” (799, 1.2.257-58). [11]

King Henry’s bold response stuns the court: “tell the Dauphin / His jest will savor but of shallow wit / When thousands weep more than did laugh at it” (800, 1.2.295-97). He has full command of state policy and martial rhetoric, and shows that he understands the deadly nature of the “game” he is about to initiate. He is clearly not who the Dauphin thinks he is—not anymore.

We notice the extreme threats of violence that keep getting voiced in this play: war has always been about doing damage to civilians, even back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. What we deign to call “collateral damage” may not be intentional in any particular instance, but in a larger strategic context, it is surely not incidental; it may even be essential. Medieval war was largely about wearing down the capacity of a people to support long-term struggles, and we might say as well that the Allies won World War II largely by the same means.

ACT 2

Act 2.0, Chorus (800-01, the Chorus says King Henry V’s prospective war is popular with young men; preparations are under way, but peril surrounds the King: the French have bribed three English aristocrats close to Henry, and they are preparing to assassinate him.)

The Chorus sets forth a tableau in which “all the youth of England are on fire” (800, Chorus 2.0.1) and there is vast care and expenditure in preparation for the coming expedition.

King Henry’s readying of his forces while still in England frightens the French, says the Chorus, and so they resort to a plot to assassinate the English King. [12] They’ve bribed three English noblemen to do the deed: Richard, Earl of Cambridge; Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham; and Sir Thomas Gray, Knight, of Northumberland. The King has come to Southampton, where we audience-goers are expected to sit tight and imagine ourselves while we wait for the potentially dire murder plot to be resolved, and then it’s off with us to France, a “gentle pass” (801, 2.0.39) promised to us.

The Chorus is having some fun with the neoclassical unities, [13] promising to break them cheerfully and cause no seasick stomachs on the way. All in all, we moderns may feel a bit like the first visitors to Agincourt Park: able to observe and enjoy what present themselves as magnificent scenes of heroism and carnage at no risk to ourselves. The fearsome “Battle of Agincourt” is, after all, one of the most riveting moments in English history, and remains so even though the English hold on France lasted little longer than the short life of Henry V himself.

Act 2, Scene 1 (801-04, Henry’s old companions Pistol and Nym nearly come to blows over debts and Pistol’s wife, Hostess Quickly; Bardolph stops their quarreling; the Hostess reports that Falstaff is mortally ill.)

In Southampton, Pistol and Nym [14] quarrel over Nell Quickly (801, 2.1.15-17), whom Pistol has married, and about a debt Nym wants to collect from Pistol, who at first says only, “Base is the slave that pays” (803, 2.1.89). Pistol is full of bombastic talk (802, 2.1.42-45), and he plans to become the camp sutler, which will be his particular way of operating as a war profiteer (803, 2.1.99-104).

Hostess Quickly informs everyone that Falstaff is dying, and Nym reminds us that the gregarious, carefree “Prince Hal” who consorted with him has undergone a transformation as deep as death, too, and it has proven to be devastating to Sir John Falstaff: “The King hath run bad humours on the knight” (804, 2.1.113). [15]

Act 2, Scene 2 (804-08, Henry finds out about the treasonous plot involving his companions Scrope, Grey, and Cambridge, and confronts them; he refuses to commute their death sentences since they have just counseled him not to pardon a drunkard merely for verbally abusing the king; the three condemned men admit that the king’s sentence is just; Henry turns his attentions toward the preparations for war in France.)

Scrope, Grey and Cambridge’s treason is revealed before Henry’s assemblage, and they are denounced and sent to their deaths (805-06, 2.2.39-81). It must be most painful for Henry to listen to any of these men urge extreme harshness against an offender who verbally abused the King a short while ago, when they themselves would do much worse. So when Scrope, Grey, and Cambridge are exposed and liable to sentencing, Henry tells them, “The mercy that was quick in us but late / By your own counsel is suppressed and killed” (805-06, 2.2.77-78).

Scrope’s participation in the dastardly plot is most painful of all to Henry, since the two men were apparently close friends. Henry laments, “May it be possible that foreign hire / Could out of thee extract one spark of evil / That might annoy my finger?” (806, 2.2.98-100).

The best Henry can do here is to understand that the doctrine we know as “the King’s two bodies” must be applied: that is, the ordinary mortal “Henry” doesn’t take the threat personally, but in his person he also embodies the realm of England, and these guilty men threatened the realm when they threatened him, so they must pay the ultimate price. [16]

King Henry explains to the condemned men, “Touching our person seek we no revenge, / But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender, / Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws / We do deliver you” (807, 2.2.173-76). With this declaration, Henry’s transformation from a private, prodigal son to a public man, a genuine king, is complete. With that, he turns his attention to preparations for war in France.

Act 2, Scene 3 (808-09, King Henry’s old tavern friends all mourn the passing of Jack Falstaff; Hostess Quickly aptly eulogizes Falstaff; Pistol again reveals that he is a war profiteer, not a real soldier, but he, Bardolph, Nym, and a boy depart for France.)

Pistol tells the audience that Falstaff is dead. In practical terms, he says, that means “we must earn therefore” (808, 2.3.6). They must fend for themselves.

Hostess Quickly speaks with great affection about Falstaff, and recounts his dying moments, ending with “all was as cold as any stone” (808, 2.2.23; see 9-23). But that old rascal Sir John is a remnant of Henry’s past, and Pistol’s intentions about the wars are none too honorable: he says, “Let us to France, like horseleeches, my boys, / To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!” (809, 2.3.46-47) Pistol and his ilk are parasites who will make their way by afflicting their military host.

Act 2, Scene 4 (809-12, the French King Charles VI and his advisers plan France’s defense against Henry V’s English forces; Henry’s uncle Exeter presents Charles VI with his nephew’s claim to the French throne; as England’s ambassador, Exeter outright threatens Charles and his court, and issues a statement of defiance as a rejoinder to the Dauphin’s earlier gift of tennis balls; Charles, in council with his advisers, takes Exeter’s demands seriously.)

Charles VI, [17] who would be late-middle-aged at 47 during the action at Agincourt in 1415, returns his counselors’ memory to the first strife between France and England: the victories of Edward the Black Prince [18] at Crécy and Poitiers. He sees the continuity of English stock and valor: “Think we King Harry strong. / And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him. / The kindred of him hath been fleshed upon us, / And he is bred out of that bloody strain / That haunted us in our familiar paths” (810, 2.4.48-52). That is quite a description, perhaps mingled with fear.

Charles VI admonishes the Dauphin and the Constable alike to be wary of this youthful English King, so late considered a wastrel: he all but pleads with them, “fear / The native mightiness and fate of him” (803, 2.4.63-64).

Exeter [19] soon arrives and levies a stern demand on Henry V’s behalf: to the French king, he declares, Henry “bids you then resign / Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held / From him, the native and true challenger” (811, 2.4.93-95). The Dauphin scorns this demand and tries to justify his earlier gift: “matching to his youth and vanity, / I did present him with the Paris-balls” (812, 2.4.130-31).

The French king doesn’t share the young man’s attitude, and Exeter’s comeback in Henry’s defense is effective: once a prodigal, admits Exeter on Henry’s behalf, “Now he weighs time / Even to the utmost grain” (813, 2.4.137-38). No one is playing anymore, at tennis or otherwise.

ACT 3

Act 3.0, Chorus (812-13, the Chorus pictures the setting out of Henry V’s fleet across the Channel to France; Henry readies his siege of Harfleur; negotiations between the French and the English fail; the siege of Harfleur begins.)

The Chorus informs us that Henry has embarked from England, sailed for France, and made his way to the French port town of Harfleur. England, says the Chorus, has been left largely unguarded (813, Chorus 3.0.20-21) since all the young men made their decision to follow Henry to France. A siege is building against Harfleur, and King Charles VI has offered through his ambassador “Katherine his daughter, and with her, to dowry, / Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms” (813, Chorus 3.0.30-31), which offer Henry rejects.

Act 3, Scene 1 (813-14, King Henry gives a stirring speech to his troops as they stand ready to storm the town of Harfleur that they have been besieging.)

Shakespeare’s method for capturing the variety of experience is often to give us competing portraits or vignettes: in the first scene we hear Henry stirring his troops towards the coming battles with martial rhetoric: “there is none of you so mean and base / That hath not noble luster in your eyes” (813, 3.1.29-30). [20] Henry apparently sees the unifying force of military endeavor: it can make all those ordinary men he beholds into something extraordinary, connect them in ways they hadn’t imagined, give their lives meaning it wouldn’t otherwise have.

Act 3, Scene 2 (814-15, Bardolph, Pistol, Nym, and a boy quit the storming action against Harfleur, but Captain Fluellen espies them and forces them back into action; in soliloquy, the boy confesses that he considers his three adult masters cowards.)

In Scene 2, the vignette gives us the ordinary person’s perspective: a Servant Boy to Nym and Pistol exposes them to us as cowards and thieves: “three / such antics do not amount to a man” (814, 3.2.28-29). This Boy is yoked to three men who are not good enough to serve him, and he is painfully aware of it: “I must leave them, and seek / some better service” (815, 3.3.45-46).

Shakespeare gives us a sense of the complexity underlying the heroism of even the grandest military campaigns: the underbelly of war consists of fierce doubts and anxious hopes for personal betterment. Heroes larger than life and self-conscious parasites share the field with those who are just trying to survive. There’s more going on than initially meets the eye: as with any complex endeavor, motives abound, and they inevitably conflict when those who act upon them cross paths.

To be reckoned with are both the “big picture” that writers of historical narrative generate from their study of events and claims, and the untold individual perspectives (fragmented, biased, partial) that can only be conjectured and conjured with one’s understanding of human nature as the starting point, at least when the events in question happened more than a lifetime ago. [21] But this isn’t to say we are being treated to easy relativism: the Servant Boy’s outing of Pistol and Nym as frauds demonstrates that it is possible, at least sometimes, to cut through the pretension and the rhetoric and just tell the truth.

Act 3, Scene 3 (815-17, Captain Fluellen, an ideologue and military historian, speaks at some length about battle tactics with Captains Gower, Jamy, and Macmorris; Fluellen gets into an intense argument with Captain MacMorris.)

The Welshman Captain Fluellen loves to prattle about military method: “For, look you, the mines is not according / to the disciplines of the war” (815, 3.3.4-5). He’s a military historian of sorts (816, 3.3.31-35), but quarrels with the Scottish Captain MacMorris when the latter tells him that “It is no time to discourse” (816, 3.3.46). MacMorris is given to offering rejoinders just short of violence: “I do not know you so good a man as myself. So / Chrish save me, I will cut off your head” (816, 3.3.70-71). Fluellen seems flummoxed by this kind of talk.

The Welsh captain is courageous, but he’s also a pure ideologue in his love of war’s professional side. Fluellen is loquacious, has a comic Welsh accent, and ends up talking sometimes while others are fighting. Even so, his vehemence (“look you, now” and “in your conscience!”) is as honorable as Henry’s occasional exuberance—Fluellen speaks as he does from an excess of uprightness and national pride, not from unworthy motives, and his over-fondness for talk about “the disciplines of … the Roman / wars” (816, 3.3.38-39) stems from admirable erudition in military history.

Act 3, Scene 4 (817-18, Henry threatens Harfleur with merciless outrage and complete destruction if they won’t yield to his forces; Harfleur’s governor admits that the town is “no longer defensible” and surrenders; Henry accepts the surrender and orders that no harm should come to the citizens of Harfleur.)

King Henry harangues Harfleur’s defenders, paying tribute to war’s stark violence with the shocking advice, “Take pity of your town and of your people / Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command” (817, 3.4.28-29). The speech as a whole bristles with references to primal violence: “the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart, / In liberty of bloody hand shall range / With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass / Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants …” (817, 3.4.11-14).

This is the dreadful reality that we must contrast with Fluellen’s ideal. Henry himself realizes that he has only the thinnest control over the violence he has unleashed—the fearsome call of “Havoc!” is never far from an ancient battlefield. [22] But the gambit (or, more likely, the deadly serious promise) works, and the town of Harfleur surrenders, prompting Henry to order that his men “Use mercy to them all” (818, 3.4.54) while the coming on of winter and illness drives him to declare a temporary retirement to Calais.

Perhaps in the speech just mentioned Henry seems to revel at length in the horrors his men will inflict on the defenseless town, but his purpose is blunt and (arguably) even humane, as the concluding rhymed couplet of his speech makes clear: “Will you yield and this avoid? / Or, guilty in defense, be thus destroyed?” (817, 3.3.42-43) Henry is a talker, but he’s much more than that: he is a doer whose words suit his purposes and his actions, be they good or ill.

Act 3, Scene 5 (818-19, Princess Katherine of Valois learns some comically indecorous English from her maid Alice.)

Katherine and her maid Alice practice their English. This is Agincourt’s lighter side, with deep differences reduced to linguistic felicities and embarrassments, culminating in Katherine’s declaration that certain English words are not only ugly-sounding but also “corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non / pour les dames d’honneur d’user” (819, 3.5.48-49). We also get a sense of what the wars between the English and French mean from a woman’s perspective, though here that perspective consists in remaining oblivious. Aside from France itself, Katherine is the prize for Henry. [23]

Act 3, Scene 6 (819-21, the French commanders admit that they are ashamed of their performance thus far against the English; the French King Charles VI encourages his generals to confront Henry boldly and stop him before he reaches Calais; Charles commands his herald Montjoy to visit Henry and ask how much ransom he would be willing to pay to avoid capture by the French forces.)

King Charles VI bids his ample army to bring Henry prisoner to him: “Go down upon him—you have power enough— / And in a captive chariot into Rouen / Bring him our prisoner” (821, 3.6.52-54). Around 1400, France, even after the plague had killed perhaps one-fourth of the people, had around 12-16 million inhabitants. Compare that with England’s 2-3 million. [24] Some of the Elizabethans’ slights against the French are English propaganda, but it seems true that the advantage lay with the French.

Late-medieval France was a wealthier and more populous land than England, even if both countries were often beset with internal power struggles.

Act 3, Scene 7 (821-24, Fluellen and Gower run into Pistol, who puts on soldierly airs and tries to enlist Fluellen on Bardolph’s side since that man has been sentenced to death for robbing a church; Fluellen says the sentence against Bardolph is proper, and Pistol disparages him for saying so; Henry arrives and upholds the sentence; Montjoy encourages Henry to offer a ransom, but the English king defies him, and commits his cause to god.)

Fluellen is fooled into taking Pistol for an honorable soldier until the latter begs him to intervene for Bardolph, who is to be hanged for robbing a church: “let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut / With edge of penny cord and vile reproach” (822, 3.7.43-44). Fluellen flatly refuses to honor this request: “if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke [Exeter] to / use his good pleasure and put him to execution” (822, 3.7.49-50). Fluellen is now determined to expose Pistol for what he is: he cannot stand such a gap between appearances and reality: “If I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind” (822, 3.7.76).

Henry, citing principle, shows no mercy for Bardolph: “We would have all such offenders so cut off” (823, 3.7.96): riot and advantage-taking against the common people cannot be allowed when one is “gamester” for a territory like France (823, 3.7.101). Henry also refuses ransom to the French king, pledging through the French Herald [25] only “this frail and worthless trunk” (824, 3.7.140; see 139-42), and places himself in God’s hands.

Act 3, Scene 8 (824-27, the French commanders flaunt their prospects as the morning and the battle approach: Bourbon talks of war-horses.)

The French rehearse their arrogance regarding the English prospects. Bourbon (or the Dauphin in some versions) poeticizes about his horse: “I will not change my horse / with any that treads but on four pasterns [hooves]” (824, 3.8.11-12). Orléans, Rambures, and the Constable jest about Bourbon’s valor, and the Constable concludes with comic irony, “I think he will eat all he kills” (824, 3.8.84).

They all expect victory. Bourbon is a bit like the Welsh ideologue Fluellen, except that he talks of horses and not counter-mining operations: both love the idea of war above all, though they also show genuine spirit.

ACT 4

Act 4.0, Chorus (827-28, the Chorus describes the demeanor of the French and English armies just hours before the battle of Agincourt—the French are eager to gain the victory they expect, while the English are riven by anxiety; during the night, Henry walks among his men and bucks up their spirits; the Chorus again, as at the play’s outset, expresses the fond wish that the stage could better do justice to the representation of so great an event as this, the Battle of Agincourt, in English history.)

The Chorus-speaker describes the evening calm before the storm, with the French awaiting their victory and the diminished, anxious English forces hanging on until morning comes. He previews the English Henry’s night-time walk through his encampment to give heart to his soldiers as “A little touch of Harry in the night” (828, 4.0.47). [26] As for the audience, our task consists as usual in, “Minding true things by what their mock’ries be” (828, 4.0.53).

Act 4, Scene 1 (828-34, disguised, Henry walks through his anxious camp before battle, and runs into Pistol, listens in on Fluellen and Gower’s back-and-forth, and argues with the common soldier Michael Williams: what responsibility does the king bear for the souls of his slain soldiers? Henry and Williams defer their quarrel until the battle is done, with their gloves as the pledge; in soliloquy, Henry reflects on the burdens of his kingship, and begs God not to punish him at Agincourt for his father Henry IV’s treason against Richard II.

The King speaks to Erpingham about setting an example: “‘Tis good for men to love their present pains / Upon example” (829, 4.1.18-19). He understands the mass psychology of battle, the importance of exemplary conduct. Montaigne suggests in his essay (as translated by John Florio) “Of the Inconstancie of Our Actions” that our virtues fluctuate with circumstance and desire: yesterday’s virtuous woman is shameless today, and the courageous man of a recent battle is just as likely to turn and run next time.

In sum, when it comes to our thoughts, Montaigne suggests, “Our ordinary manner is to follow the inclination of our appetite this way and that way …” and “all is but changing, motion and inconstancy.” [27] King Henry’s insistence on the importance of his personal presence seems to flow from that kind of awareness.

As “Harry le roi” (a nom de guerre that an Englishman might pronounce “Leroy”), Henry goes on a walking tour, meets first with Pistol, who praises the king but threatens Fluellen: “Tell him I’ll knock his leek about his pate / Upon Saint Davy’s day” (829, 4.1.54-55).

Meanwhile, Fluellen is busy lecturing Gower on not being foolish enough to let the opponent hear his carryings-on: “If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating cox- / comb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be / an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb …?” (830, 4.1.75-77) [28] Gower agrees to pipe down.

The king in disguise meets the common soldier Williams, [29] who speaks with a mix of fear, distrust, and anger. But first, to the more amenable Bates, Henry argues that nobody in the host should rehearse their fears and doubts in front of the king: “I think the King is but a man, as I am” (830, 4.1.98); the point is that a ruler is approximately as susceptible to despair and paralysis as the ordinary soldier or mid-level commander: all are linked in a chain of responsibility for the welfare of one another’s mental and physical well-being.

But the key to Henry’s response is directed at Williams. The king’s groundedness and view of the big picture in morals and politics shows in this exchange with this humble but almost threatening subject, who tells him, “if the cause be not good, the King himself hath / a heavy reckoning to make …” (831, 4.1.125). Against this charge Henry sums up his argument with the thought, “Every subject’s duty / is the King’s, but every subject’s soul is his own” (832, 4.1.161-62). [30]

To a thorough philosophical materialist, this exchange would be pointless because both parties speak of end things, of Christian eschatology: they talk of mortality and eternal judgment following the resurrection of the dead. In such a context, the soul is more than the body, so the King can send his subjects to fight in a foreign war without being responsible for their physical demise, even if the cause is unworthy. Henry neither wants his men to be killed nor can he answer for the state of their souls at the point of death—that is something only they can answer for.

King Henry V can relate to his subjects at their own level, yet he retains the superior perspective of a man operating on a higher plane of experience and understanding. Not knowing who he’s talking to, Williams takes Henry’s words ill, and strikes up a quarrel with him to be finished later, when time permits. The two men exchange gloves as a pledge. (832, 4.1.192-96)

Alone at last, King Henry meditates on his burdens as monarch: he asks of the “ceremony” (833, 4.1.229) that makes a king, “Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, / Creating awe and fear in other men …?” (833, 4.1.223-24; see 207-61). He is considered responsible for everyone, so only peasants sleep well (833, 4.1.250-51). The gap between the person and the symbol is huge, potentially infinite. Perhaps, then, monarchy is a projection of the subjects’ own desires, an investment in something symbolic, something larger than themselves on which the king in his material person is then expected to make good.

There is a penitential structure to Henry’s kingship: much of what he does here in France seems meant to wash the blood from his father’s hands, some of which attaints him as well: he prays to the “God of battles” earnestly, “Oh, not today, think not upon the fault / My father made in compassing the crown” (834, 4.1.270-71). The irony of starting an expiatory war—if that is indeed what it is, in part—in which thousands of innocents and combatants are bound to be killed apparently does not occur to Henry.

All in all, Henry’s soliloquy suggests intense awareness that the life of kings is not their own: they are actors on a grand stage, and all eyes behold them. Few are the moments when they can, as Henry does now, turn inward and converse with what they find there. [31]

To appreciate fully the maturity of this young king as Shakespeare casts him on the eve of Agincourt, 1415, we must remind ourselves of the road Henry has traveled to get to this point. In I Henry IV, back when Henry V was still the prodigal son “Prince Hal” and as such a thorn in his father’s side, Henry had spent much of his time with hard-drinking rascals like the jolly knight and sometime highway robber Sir John Falstaff and his friends, some of whom we meet in Henry V.

Henry’s father the King found that such brazen behavior violated his own “public relations” principle that a great prince is more prized by making himself scarce than by mingling with low company. [32] That failure to appreciate the dignity of his office is among the chiefest of the faults in Richard II that Henry Bolingbroke, soon to be Henry IV, used with such ruthless effectiveness against his predecessor, who “Mingled his royalty with cap’ring fools.” [33]

Even so, this “mingling” was Prince Hal’s way of getting to know his subjects, the better to govern them. So in I Henry IV, the Prince is busy trying out various roles, learning how the various subjects in his future kingdom think and live.

In Act 1.2 of that play, Hal himself describes his antics in providential terms: “My reformation, glittering o’er my fault, / Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes / Than that which hath no foil to set it off” and pledges to himself that his reformation will amount to “Redeeming time when men think least I will.” [34]

In other words, kingly virtue has always been Henry’s redemptive goal, whatever capers he may have committed on his way to the throne. That may or may not have been true of the real Henry, but it seems true of Shakespeare’s character, who goes from “Hal” to the ultimate warrior-king Henry V, October 1415’s victor at Agincourt against an imposing French army.

All of the above makes Henry V, 4.1 the successful culmination of a long process. “Prince Hal’s” method has always been that of an actor, a grand one who has play-acted and workshopped his way to present glory, interacting with all manner of citizens from the common tavern to battlefields full of fiery nobility.

Henry V’s is not a romantic, unique, nameless, intimate self, but is rather the product of trying out many different stations and styles on his way to appreciating his one true office [35]—a medieval relational term for defining a person by his or her role in life, entailing as it does certain responsibilities within the political and social order. A king must understand, in Shakespeare’s terms, that he plays a role on the “stage” of life. That means taking on grave burdens and enduring potentially harsh consequences, but it’s no less a role than if the person were simply strutting across the theatrical boards.

Henry’s playful past has also imbued him with the medieval and Renaissance truth that the king has not one body, but two—a natural body that desires, breathes, and dies, and a body political or civil whose boundaries go beyond the personal and the physical. The King is in part a walking set of duties, and this transpersonal aspect of him is what promises political continuity as well as (to borrow Thomas More’s term in Utopia) the “majesty” that comes with respect for whatever is larger than material affairs and ordinary humanity. [36]

Act 4, Scene 2 (834-36, the French commanders continue to think the battle will be embarrassingly easy to win since the English forces are in terrible shape.)

French cockiness and high-spirited words continue: says the Constable, “A very little let us do / And all is done” (835, 4.2.32-33).

Act 4, Scene 3 (836-38, Henry inspires his troops just before battle begins, calling them a “band of brothers” whose courageous deeds will be spoken of in times to come; Montjoy again visits Henry about a potential ransom, and an exasperated Henry rejects the offer.)

Henry now makes his most rousing battle speech, with its great exhortation, “Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by / From this day to the ending of the world / But we in it shall be rememberèd …” (837, 4.3.57-59). His comparatively tiny “band of brothers” (837, 4.3.60) will take the palm for honorable exploits, come what may.

At this point, Henry V is the perfect Tennysonian king: such are for glory, not long life, and they never shrink from lending flesh, blood and bone to the symbolic power that belongs to them. [37] For the last time, Henry refuses Montjoy’s entreaty to give in, and the latter departs suitably impressed: “Thou never shalt hear herald any more” (838, 4.3.127).

Act 4, Scene 4 (838-40, Pistol captures a French soldier and threatens him for a large sum in ransom; the boy says that Bardolph and Nym have been executed and that the English camp has been left all but unguarded.)

Pistol captures a French gentleman prisoner, whose offer of 200 crowns to spare his life he promptly accepts (839, 4.4.40-44). This is a comic scene, but it kicks off several scenes that highlight the confusion or “fog” of war: it’s hard to tell one person from another, and morals become muddied. The Serving Boy makes an ominous announcement: Bardolph and Nym have both been hanged for thievery, and at present the English camp is nearly defenseless. As the Boy admits, “I / must stay with the lackeys with the luggage of our camp. / The French might have a good prey of us if he knew of it, for / there is none to guard it but boys” (840, 4.4.67-70).

Act 4, Scene 5 (840, the French commanders are so humiliated when the English rout them that they decide to go down fighting—strategy be damned.)

The French are losing, and they throw order to the winds; says the Constable, “Let us on heaps go offer up our lives” (840, 4.5.19), which sounds like an invitation to engage in a suicidal charge.

Act 4, Scene 6 (841, the French grow desperate; Henry is informed that York and Suffolk have been killed in battle; due to a renewed French call to arms and the arrival of reinforcements; Henry orders his French prisoners’ throats—otherwise, they might escape and rejoin their own forces.)

King Henry orders his French prisoners’ throats cut because “The French have reinforced their scattered men” (841, 4.6.36), which means that they might regroup and carry on the fight against the English. Many French prisoners would probably break free and join in the struggle, taking more English lives. At the beginning of the next scene, Gower has apparently heard that the king gave this order because the French burned his tents.

Act 4, Scene 7 (841-45, Fluellen says to Gower that Henry is as magnificent as Alexander the Great, and rages at the French army’s slaughter of boys in the English camp; Welsh pride abounds; Montjoy informs Henry that the English have won; Williams shows up with Henry’s glove, but Henry, by pretending not to recognize the glove, sets up a trick on Fluellen and Williams: he sends the irascible Fluellen to challenge Williams to a duel, then sends Warwick and Gloucester after Fluellen to prevent violence.)

This scene and the next one round off the battle: when Fluellen learns that the youngsters in the English camp have been slain, he remonstrates against this violation of “the law of arms” (841, 4.7.2). But in truth, the day (Friday, 25 October 1415) is over and the English have won. The battle takes its name from a nearby castle: Agincourt. [38] Fluellen’s Welsh patriotism is a bonding point with King Henry: “I do believe your Majesty takes no / scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day” (843, 4.7.93-94).

Williams enters again, and Henry (who is too high in rank to accept a challenge from a commoner) plays a trick: he gives Williams’ challenge-glove to Fluellen, who now becomes liable to the incensed soldier’s assault; Henry sends Warwick and Gloucester after the hothead Fluellen to make sure nobody ends up getting killed (845, 4.7.153-66).

Act 4, Scene 8 (845-47, Williams strikes Fluellen, but Warwick and Gloucester cut the quarrel short; Henry enters and reveals that Williams offered to strike him, the king, and Williams decorously apologizes for this unintended insubordination; Henry is informed of the terrible French losses and the small English losses; Henry dedicates the English victory to God, and plans to sail home to England.)

Williams strikes Fluellen, who accuses him of treason because he thinks the blow was struck in remembrance of the Duke of Alençon, whose glove Henry falsely told him it was (823, 4.8.13-17). Henry is almost like the merry Prince Hal of I & II Henry IV for a moment, as he enjoys telling Williams that he is the person the common soldier had in fact insulted and challenged. But Williams handles himself well, saying, “Your majesty came not like yourself” (846, 4.8.46), and both Henry and Fluellen forgive him.

The French and English dead are tallied, with the report being that 1500 of the French nobility have been slain, and perhaps 10,000 soldiers, with most of them ranking as gentlemen or knights, and not many mercenaries or common soldiers. The English are said to have lost few—almost none, in fact (847, 4.8.97-100).

The French greatly outnumbered the English, but apparently, they put their nobility up front, and when the English killed so many of them, the rest of the French soldiers weren’t much use. But the battle was more complex than that, and the casualties given in Shakespeare’s play sound dubious. [39]

Henry commands the singing of Psalm 115 “Non nobis,” and the canticle “Te Deum” (847, 4.8.117), the burial of the dead, a trip to the port city of Calais, and thence another trip across the Channel to England. As for “Te Deum,”the first lines in the Vulgate Latin run, “Non nobis, non nobis, Domine / Sed nomini tuo da gloriam.” Essentially, both pieces, oppose pretensions to human autonomy and pride. [40]

ACT 5

Act 5.0, Chorus (847-48, the Chorus says that the English army returned home to a thunderous welcome, and recounts how the Holy Roman Emperor visited to make peace between the English and the French, and King Henry returned to France.)

The Chorus-speaker sets the current year as 1421, with two more invasions into France behind, the year before Henry V’s death and six years after Agincourt. [41] But at the outset of the Choral speech, we see the people of London and their dignitaries go out to meet King Henry V as if he were a “conqu’ring Caesar” (848, 5.0.28). There’s even a reference to the future Queen Elizabeth I’s sometime favorite, the Earl of Essex, who around the time of the play’s writing would have been expected back from fighting Irish rebels. [42]

Act 5, Scene 1 (848-50, the year is 1421; Fluellen humiliates Pistol with Welsh leeks; Pistol will return home to England, steal for a living, and lie about his exploits: he epitomizes war’s unheroic dimension.)

Fluellen and Pistol are at odds over Saint David’s Day, the day of homage to Wales’s sixth-century CE patron saint David. [43] Legend has it that seventh-century CE King Cadwalladr ordered his men to wear leeks during a battle with the Saxons, those post fifth-century Germanic invaders of England. Anyhow, Pistol has insulted Fluellen about his Welsh heritage, and Fluellen forces him to chomp down some of the Welsh vegetable Pistol mocked (849, 5.1.29-46).

Pistol is humiliated, and worse yet, he informs us, Nell Quickly is dead. Still, he is not quite done for: Shakespeare is true to the complexities of character and events. The retelling of Henry V’s reign can’t be all about heroic battles and diplomatic triumphs because that would do violence to a proper understanding of the human beings who made all those things happen. Pistol laments that he has grown old, and says, “To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal; / And patches will I get unto these cudgeled scars, / And swear I got them in the Gallia wars” (850, 5.1.78-80).

The statement has a certain eloquence to it, and the pun on “steal” reinforces the pathos of this unheroic character’s future: Henry said everyone who came back from the war in France would be remembered eternally, [44] but that hardly rings true for an aging malcontent like Pistol. With no honorable role to play back home, he’s sure to come to an ignominious end.

Act 5, Scene 2 (850-57, Charles VI agrees to terms with the English; Henry’s men negotiate the peace treaty while he successfully charms the French princess Katherine into accepting his marriage proposal; Charles VI ratifies all of the English demands, and Henry is promised that he will be heir to the French throne when Charles dies.)

Burgundy has worked hard to bring the French and English kings together, replacing fighting with binding words, and at last it pays off (851, 5.2.23-28). King Charles VI gives the medieval equivalent of “my people will get back to your people,” but in essence he must agree to the terms (853, 5.2.77-82), at least for the present. [45]

Henry V must now try his luck at being a suitor for the hand of Katherine of Valois, and he proves both clumsy and charming: “I know no ways to mince it in love…” (853, 5.2.123). Katherine has some trouble understanding Henry’s word-puzzles, which are not as adroit as his military campaigns (853, 5.2.163-67).

The fifth act is partly interested in the interplay between words and deeds: the former are seldom as efficacious as we wish, while the latter are usually more complicated than we like. Words often call for deeds, but deeds usually give way to words, too, if affairs are to come to a satisfactory completion.

“[N]ice customs curtsy to great kings, Dear Kate” (855, 5.2.248) is Henry’s answer to Katherine’s concerns about it not being the fashion for French ladies to kiss before marriage. Again, the merely human dimension of the King appears when he plays the role of tongue-tied suitor. Henry says there is “witchcraft” (855, 5.2.254) in Katherine’s lips, more than in all the eloquence of her father’s counselors.

As for fashion-setting, well, nothing’s set in stone: war’s violence changes territorial markers, and in a nicer key, simple gestures can change frosty fashions. Tradition? Says Henry, “We are the makers of manners, Kate, and / the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all / find-faults” (850, 5.2.250-52).

Act 5, Epilogue (857, the Chorus reminds us that King Henry V died a young man, leaving the English throne to the infant Henry VI, who would go on to lose the vast possessions in France that his father had won.)

The Epilogue makes brief but significant reference to the brute fact of history that what Henry V won, his incapable son Henry VI lost right back during a tumultuous, interrupted reign that drove England into the dark period known as the Wars of the Roses, ending only with Henry Tudor’s putting-down of the Yorkist King Richard III in August 22, 1485.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Histories + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93859-3.

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] See Elizabeth I’s “Golden Speech.” The National Archives, UK. Accessed 9/1/2024.

[2] See “Queen Elizabeth I.” Englishmonarchs.co.uk. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[3] Visit Tudorhistory.org. for detailed materials on all things Tudor. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[4] Hazlitt, William. Collected Works of William Hazlitt, eds. A.R. Waller and Arnold Glover. London: J.M. Dent, 1902. pg. 285. The quote appears in The Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, “Henry V.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/1/2024.

[5] See Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Harvard UP, 1976. First published 1933. See also Scala Naturae: Great Chain of Being and Great Chain of Being, R. Fludd, 1619 (Wikimedia)

[6] See Mirror for Magistrates Volume 1 and Volume 2. HathiTrust. Accessed 3/4/2024.

[7] Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare …, Vol. 1. London: William Pickering, 1849; “Notes on Romeo and Juliet,” 155. “Romeo and Juliet.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/1/2024.

[8] Theseus, Duke of Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, makes the case for the audience filling out the stage’s very limited representations with their own imagination: speaking partly of the tales told by the fanciful poet, the Duke says that “imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown” and then the artist’s “pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name” (444, 5.1.14-17). See Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53.

[9] See the entry “Salic Law of Succession” in Britannica.com. Accessed 9/2/2024. See also Margaret Wood’s Library of Congress blog entry “Happy Birthday William: Shakespeare, Henry V and Salic Law.”

[10] It’s good to remember that there were three Dauphins (the French term analogous to the English title for heirs to the throne, “Prince/Princess of Wales”) in quick succession during the time covered by Shakespeare’s Henry V. The Dauphin referred to in the first part of the play—the one who gave Henry tennis balls for a guest gift—is Louis, Duke of Guyenne. He died of dysentery in December 1415. Next came John, who died in April 1417. Finally came Charles, Dauphin from 1417-1422, who would become Charles VII, King of France in October 1422 upon the death of Charles VI.

[11] On tennis, see “The Royal & Ancient Game of Tennis: A Short History” at uscourttennis.org. As for tennis balls, see this entry, “The History of Tennis Balls,” at tennisplayer.net. Both accessed 9/2/2024.

[12] On the so-called Cambridge or Southampton plot of 1415, see “The Cambridge Plot” at Britainexpress.com. See also “The Southampton Plot” at Hampshirehistory.com. Both accessed 9/2/2024. Finally, see T. B. Pugh’s Henry V and the Southampton Plot. Sutton Pub. LTD, 1988.

[13] In The Poetics, Aristotle stresses only the “unity of action” (i.e. the unity of the plot events); the insistence on adhering to a very narrow conception of a play’s temporal and spatial setting was a latter-day preoccupation.

[14] On the possible significance of the name “Nym,” Wikipedia’s entry “Corporal Nym” suggests that it derives from the verb “nim” (to take) and is related to “nimble” in the sense of “quick.” Nym is, after all, a thief who ends up being hanged for his misdeeds in Henry V. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[15] The theory of the humors traces back to the Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE): the four humors or bodily fluids are black bile (associated with the element earth), yellow bile (associated with fire), phlegm (associated with water), and blood (associated with air). Balanced amounts of these fluids in the body were thought to maintain health and good temperament. An excess of the first-mentioned (black bile) could make a person depressed or irritable; excess of the second (yellow bile) angry, ill-tempered; excess of the third (phlegm) taciturn, unemotional; excess of the fourth (blood) cheerful, amorous or bold, sometimes to the point of lechery or foolhardiness. See also “Funny Medicine: Hippocrates and the Four Humours” (Vaccines Work), which offers an excellent summary and diagram. Accessed 5/14/2024.

[16] See Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton UP, 2016. Orig. published in 1957.

[17] See “Charles VI, King of France” at Britannica.com. Charles was sickly, and suffered from bouts of madness. There is no trace of that historical background, however, in Shakespeare’s treatment of Charles. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[18] Edward the Black Prince was the eldest son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, father of Richard II, and grand-uncle of Henry V.

[19] Exeter refers to King Henry’s uncle, Thomas Beaufort, 1st Duke of Exeter (1377-1426). See “Duke of Exeter” at shakespeareandhistory.com. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[20] Henry’s words are surely a “set speech” of the sort that historians themselves used until the advent of modern historiography. In other words, Shakespeare ascribes to Henry a speech that he might plausibly have given, based on his experience of war and the circumstances.

[21] Oral history sometimes makes it possible to give us a remarkable sense for the ordinary person’s angle on things. Studs Terkel’s The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (The New Press, repr. 2004) is a fine instance of oral history that addresses the experience of the men and women who participated in World War II.

[22] “Havoc!” was a call issued by a military commander for his troops to engage in pillaging. King Henry is all but making this war cry before the battle if his troops hear what he is saying to Harfleur’s exhausted defenders. Nearly everything he mentions as licit in the context of “Havoc!” would be a war crime today: deliberate targeting violence toward civilians and civilian structures; use of rape as a tool of war; stealing and other crimes, etc.

[23] As for the role Katherine de Valois in later English history, see “Catherine of Valois, Queen Consort of England.” Englishmonarchs.co.uk. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[24] Populations of France and England in medieval times. Figures vary across several demographics sites.

[25] The French Herald, Montjoy, was essentially a courier and spokesman/agent for Charles VI. On the French nobility generally, see “Nobility and Titles in France.” Heraldica.org. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[26] According to Geoffrey Bullough’s sourcework, the inspiration for King Henry’s nighttime visit to his troops may have been an episode involving Germanicus in the Annals of Tacitus. See Annals II.12. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 9/2/2024. Bullough, Geoffrey, editor. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. IV. Later English History Plays: King John, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1966, first pub. 1962. See pp. 362-63. Bullough’s edition of the Annals references the location differently.

[27] Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Trans. John Florio, 1603. Book 2, Ch. 1. “Of the Inconstancie of Our Actions.” The quotes occur at the beginning of the essay. Luminarium, Renascence Editions. Accessed 9/1/2024.

[28] In Laurence Olivier’s 1946 film production of Henry V, the irascible Captain Fluellen practically shouts this otherwise sage advice, which renders it ridiculous and worse than useless.

[29] With regard to key matters pertaining to the treatment of soldiers, see “Medieval and early modern soldiers.” National Archives, UK. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[30] Henry V’s view may not quite add up to a “divine right theory of kingship,” but something of that sort, at least in partial or inchoate form, is common among monarchs. In more recent times, a good example of fully developed “divine right theory” would be King James I’s True Law of Free Monarchy and Basilikon Doron. Both texts available through EEBO/U-Mich.

[31] The introspectiveness of Richard II and Macbeth leaps immediately to mind.

[32] Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. Aka The First Part of Henry the Fourth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 629-95. See 668-70, 3.2.29-91)

[33] Shakespeare, William. ibid. See 669, 3.2.63.

[34] Shakespeare, William. ibid. See 636, 1.2.188-90, 192.

[35] It is commonly noted that during the Middle Ages, a person’s identity was spoken about mainly in terms of his or her social ties and obligations. Today, we tend to think of personal identity as formed as much by forces inherent within the individual as by any external influences.

[36] On the development of this theory, see Ernest Kantorowicz’s 1959 book, The King’s Two Bodies: a Study in Medieval Political Theology. With regard to Thomas More’s Utopia, his narrator, in the book’s final chapter (titled “Of the Religions of the Utopians”) questions Raphael Hythloday’s enthusiasm for the communistic utopian society he visited on the grounds that such a society must lack “splendor” and “majesty,” which he calls “the true ornaments of a nation.” See More, Thomas. Utopia. Ed. Henry Morley. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 2/18/2024.

[37] See, for example, Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Arthurian long poem Idylls of the King. A king is to seek “glory gained, and evermore to gain.” The Camelot Project. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[38] See Agincourt Castle image in the article “Can we follow Henry’s route today?” Agincourt600.com. Accessed 9/2/2024. See also the YouTube documentary video “Secrets of Agincourt.”

[39] See Britannica’s entry “The Battle of Agincourt.” This source gives the English losses at perhaps 400 men, not 25 as Shakespeare has the total. For the French losses, the source gives the figure of 6,000, “many of whom were noblemen.” Accessed 9/2/2024.

[40] See Psalm 115, Geneva Bible. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[41] The Norton editors point out the relevant date and circumstances in footnote 7 on 848.

[42] On Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and his rebellion against Elizabeth I, see “Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex.” Royal Museums Greenwich. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[43] See “Saint David’s Day.” Museum.wales. Accessed 9/2/2024.

[44] Henry V present edition, see 837, 4.3.57-59.

[45] The peace process involved the Treaty of Troyes (1421; Britannica.com) and then the Treaty of Amiens (1423; Wikipedia.org). But both Henry V and Charles VI died in 1422, and then it’s on to the events that would see the French win the Hundred Years’ War, and the English, under Henry VI, lose the French territories that they had won at Agincourt.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s History Plays