Dusty:

Act I of Henry V is pretty short and straightforward. Unlike the Henry IV plays, it has a single setting, Henry’s court, and introduces us only to one set of characters, the courtiers and the king’s ecclesiastical/legal consultants. It’s not until Act 2 that we will meet the remnants of the tavern world and the surviving rebels/conspirators.

That’s not quite right: the first “character” we meet is called “Prologue,” though he calls himself “Chorus to this history.” He gets a famous speech (“O for a muse of fire . . .”) that addresses the audience as proud and patriotic Englishmen and women (who all know what “Agincourt” means) and as occupants of an Elizabethan theatre, with scaffold, cockpit, and the “wooden O” of the Globe. Why did Shakespeare think it appropriate to provide a prologue to the play? It was not his common practice, though there is a Chorus in Romeo and Juliet (1595) and that curious Epilogue in 2 Henry 4. Are there any others in the early plays? Maybe it’s a way of acknowledging that he is retelling a story that’s already very familiar to his audience, maybe inviting them to distance themselves from it a bit, and be prepared to reconsider what they think they know. The audience is invited to participate by “piecing out our imperfections with your thoughts.” It’s interesting that Henry is introduced familiarly as “warlike Harry” — as if he is everybody’s favorite king – who “assumes the port of Mars.” Does that assumes make us think about the actor who portrays him, or about Henry, who may or may not be Mars-like, but dresses like him? Interesting too that we don’t get patriotic bombast about plucky England and dastardly France, but “two mighty monarchies,” equal adversaries, perhaps with equal claims to rule France.

1.1 is a deft introduction to the plot. Not only does Shakespeare use it to remind the audience about Henry’s wild youth, but also to assure us that he is now thoroughly reformed. He also neatly lays out how and why it is in the church’s own interest for the bishops to provide the king with the legal advice he wants to hear, and how they plan to grease the royal palm with a subsidy. There’s always a backstory.

In the beginning of 1.2 the bishops do most of the talking, presenting their interpretation of the Salic Law — that it only applies east of the Rhine. Canterbury needs more than 60 lines to explain his ruling, and he provides more genealogical detail than the audience is likely to be able to follow, and maybe more than the king cares to hear. (I can imagine the king nodding off, or showing impatience.) The king just wants to hear the conclusion, and he gets what he wants. Interesting that most of Canterbury’s speech is devoted to the succession of French kings. We hear only a little bit about the fact that Henry’s claims to France derive from his great-grandfather, but nobody takes the trouble to spell out that Edward III’s mother was the daughter of the king of France. Does this serve inadvertently to raise a question about the strength of Henry’s claim? Is it odd that the famous English victory at Crecy, under the forces led by Henry’s great-uncle, Edward the Black Prince, is described as a “tragedy” that the Black Prince “played”?

We also hear about the danger of a Scots invasion — so much for the advice from Henry IV that his son should busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels: Henry V realizes that before he sails for France he has to guard his rear.

In the latter part of 1.2 the French ambassador, who has not got the memo about Henry’s reformation and still assumes he is Hal, rejects the English claim to “some certain dukedoms,” and presents the insulting tennis balls. (Henry had already staked a larger claim — to “France and all her almost kingly dukedoms.” All?). Henry keeps his cool — maybe he knew what was coming — and tells the ambassador to tell the dauphin that “I will keep my state,/ Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness.” He also promises a bloody war. I’m not sure what the English audience would make of Henry’s reference to England as a “poor seat” and his declaration that an Englishman’s proper “home” is in France, especially if they remembered the famous lines from Richard II uttered by John of Gaunt (Henry’s grandfather) about “this sceptred isle, this other Eden.”

Michael:

Chorus, as it happens, is not just the prologue to the play, but to each act, and directs the audience to each place of the play’s action. And he directs the audience’s imagination at each appearance. It is an interesting innovation, maybe prompted by the wide range of the play’s action. We did have (or will have in Sh’s career) Time between the third and fourth acts of Winter’s Tale, but Chorus is more insistent, more directive.

The language of the play seems to me more direct and more emphatic than the earlier two plays. The “O for a muse of fire” speech is splendid poetry and wonderful in its engagement with the imaginative necessities of stagecraft. It’s as if Bottom has been shifted into a new, smarter, and higher register.

I like the delicacy of the Archbishop’s distinction of the king’s “true titles to some certain dukedoms” in France and what follows, “And generally to the crown and seat of France.” Not exactly the same thing perhaps. King Harry displaces the moral onus onto the Archbishop in speaking of the “many now in health” who will bleed and die according to what the Archbishop will judge and say. Some 18 lines are devoted to Harry’s insistence that it will be the Archbishop’s moral responsibility for the war, and not, presumably, his. And this is repeated after the Salic law speech when Harry asks if he can “with right and conscience make this claim,” and is assured “the sin upon my head, dread sovereign” on the dismissal of Salic law. But I can’t help but wonder what an Elizabethan audience would have made of the exposition of the law. In fact, none of it is really necessary to the main point, that Edward III, Harry’s grandfather, won France by force of arms because he felt he inherited it from his mother. Salic law, therefore, has nothing to do with France, in the bishops’ opinions, and the long exposition by the A of C is just learned gibberish. Harry might be bored, but he might also be pretending to be giving it rapt attention, as if he understands it and prizes its intricate learning. But of course it’s all nonsense. And then there are those damned Scots, but the A of C has an answer for that as well in his description of the bees, which doesn’t seem to add up exactly until he says, just divide England’s forces in four and take just a quarter to France. And Harry ends up concluding, “France being ours we’ll bend it to our awe, Or break it all in pieces.” (Did we hear something like this fifty years ago?)

The episode with the Dauphin’s tennis balls provides another opportunity to displace responsibility for the war: he’ll be to blame for the jest that will set on Harry’s invasion. And it does reinforce the main point about Harry’s reformation.

Michael:

Act 2 brings back the Chorus and proclaims the excitement of preparations for war and calling Harry “the mirror of all Christian kings.” But the prologue also forecasts the treachery of the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope, who must be related to the executed Archbishop of York, and Thomas Grey. And he ends with the little joke that in the play we can cross the Channel without getting seasick.

Then back to the tavern world, though we don’t seem to be in a tavern at the moment. The bad blood between Nim and Pistol may mirror the treason among the political characters. Or maybe the enmity between the two kingdoms in their conflict over the hostess. Pistol may also relate to the warlike spirit that now seems unleashed. And his language still makes him seem related to Marlowe or the heightened rhetoric of other playwrights (though Marlowe of course was six or seven years dead by now).

Scene 3 deals with the treachery, Harry showing himself firm about its punishment, mainly because the traitors have taken gold from France with intention of assassinating him. They are apparently the last of the northern rebels associated with Northumberland and the Mortimers, though this point is not made. Harry treats it rather as a divinely directed event that further ratifies his kingship. And ends with “No king of England if not king of France.”

The audience may yearn for Falstaff (though we may have had enough), but the next scene gives us his deathbed. The hostess’s account is wonderfully confused, but may express something of Falstaff’s better side. But at least it saves us from more jokes about his girth.

2.4, maybe surprisingly, brings on the French royal court, and the king speaks with more apprehension of the approaching English than the Dauphin, who maintains his sense of a light and frivolous English king. The Constable gives a character of Harry more in keeping with what the earlier scenes have portrayed. The King remembers the disaster of Crecy and the power of Edward the Black Prince with some high language about that time. When Exeter comes in with the demand of the English king, it’s almost comically straightforward: renounce the throne and give the crown to Harry, and here, presumably, is a copy of the Salic law discussion, not picked from worm holes of long vanished days — though how could it be anything else, given what we heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury? Surprisingly, Charles responds that we’ll think about it and let you know tomorrow. I think we would expect more immediate defiance, but maybe the mild response is to suggest that the French realize they have a doubtful claim.

Dusty:

You’re quite right that Chorus appears before each act. And the Chorus introducing Acts 2 and 3 acts again as a kind of introducer, telling us what we are going to see. But does the audience really need the introduction? It strikes me that an attentive audience, if it paid close and patient attention, could figure out what is happening by listening to the dialogue. Is it possible that Shakespeare had some reason to doubt the capacity of his audience, and so felt he needed to provide the help of the Chorus? Maybe the Chorus functions as a way of showing off a good dramatist’s power of scene painting, of calling up entire worlds by means of mere words. I found myself thinking of Edgar telling the blinded Gloucester what he claims to see as he looks down at the beach from the cliffs of Dover. But it also assigns the audience to “work, work your thoughts.” By means of the imagination, the audience can “see” what the dramatist invites him to see.

I wonder whether, given the hints in the epilogue to 2 Henry 4, the first audiences felt cheated when they realized that the death of Falstaff was not going to be enacted but only reported. It’s a wonderfully gentle report of Falstaff’s final minutes, in which the old liar and pretender is stripped of all his powers. At the end he is just someone babbling about green fields. Yes, it’s comical that Quickly doesn’t seem to realize that he’s perhaps mumbling the 23rd psalm, and that her account of checking the approach of death is frank and bawdy about where she put her hand. Notable that once she finishes her report, Falstaff’s old pals Nym and Pistol don’t spend any time grieving or remembering. They’re thinking about themselves: Falstaff is dead but “we will live.”

Dusty:

3.1 contains one of Henry’s famous rallying speeches, but its indifference to death seems shocking, especially since he is ready to “close up” the breach in the walls of Harfleur “with our English dead”! Why not urge his men to break through the wall, or, if they fail, to make sure that they kill so many defenders that the breach is plugged with dead French bodies? Is there perhaps a link between this speech and the immediately preceding speech by the Chorus: Henry urges his men to see themselves as Achillean warriors. He inspires them by painting a picture of what he “sees” when he imagines what they will do.

3.2 nicely undercuts Henry’s rhetoric: the common soldiers (Falstaff’s friends) are looking for purely personal gain. After the stage is briefly empty, Gower and Fluellen arrive. Gower is English, Fluellen a Welshman, and they soon engage in dispute about military tactics (mining) with the Irishman MacMorris and the Scot Jamy. So we have all the “British” nations represented, and they are anything but united. (Interesting that Henry leads four different nations, but seems focused only on “England.”) Presumably the scene allows for some comedy, based on accent. Maybe Fluellen is played by the same actor who played Glendower.

In 3.3 we get more of Henry’s bellicose rhetoric, as he threatens rape and pillage, demanding that the French surrender. I think this has given him a bad press in recent criticism. Rightfully so: why does he need three times to imagine the violation by his men of “fresh virgins” (14), “pure maidens” (20), and “daughters” (35)?

3.4, by contrast, gives us a glimpse of one of those daughters, at her English lesson. More rather simplistic comedy, based on French pronunciation and mispronunciation, and on the bawdy exchange whereby innocent English words — “foot” and “gown” — have naughty French equivalents.

3.5 sets up the French as contemptuous of the English, as they send an embassy to the English, asking surrender. But do we here conclude that the French are more polite in this matter than the bloody English are? (Or is their politesse just a cover for equally brutal thinking?) Are we to assume, by the way, that high-born French women don’t know any English but the French dukes speak it like the natives? I wonder whether a director would have them speak in heavy French accents.

I found 3.6 hard to follow, maybe just as Fluellen can only “partly understand your meaning.” The key points seem to be that Bardolph is to be hanged for theft, but that Fluellen doesn’t quite understand, and doesn’t realize that Pistol is just as guilty. Now, in a surprising turn, Henry forbids plunder. Does that mean that his bloody language before Harfleur was just talk? Montjoy, the French messenger, now enters to deliver a relatively gentle demand for ransom, and Henry declines.

3.7 seems to trivialize the French. The Dauphin, who has been urging the French king to war, is now full of praise of himself and his horse. Is he a French version of Hotspur, or a parody of him? Maybe he’s also a French version of Falstaff, all talk and no action. As the scene goes on, we see that the French leaders are all full of confidence. This is designed to set up the forthcoming battle between the powerful French army and the outnumbered English. And in this scene it turns out that the French leaders not only speak colloquial English: they also can make jokes about English proverbs. Maybe they all did junior year abroad.

Michael:
I think there’s a definite subversive strain in the play, evident at various moments, e.g., the archbishop’s speech on Salic law, and what you mention about the king’s highly rhetorical battle speeches, like the rallying speech before Harfleur and Harry’s 3.3 speech to the governor of the town threatening the destruction of the city and the violation of “fresh fair virgins” and the “flowering infants” and at the end the “mad mothers” howling like the women in the mystery plays over Herod’s “blood-hunting slaughtermen.” If Harfleur’s gates are not opened, its destruction will be their own fault.

The chorus prologues seem to want to develop the scene painting elements of the dramaturgy to a higher degree than usual, maybe because of the “epic” nature of the narrative. The closing of the third act prologue even has shouts and cannons going off. This would certainly raise the level of excitement in the theater.

The scene with Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol seems to parody the king’s speech, but the boy undercuts the apparently fake courage of the lowlifes. He’d rather be in an alehouse in London, and his comments on each suggests their interests, which is mainly just plunder. More subversion?

Gower, Fluellen, Jamy, and McMorris may be there as a nod to the breadth of British nationality — perhaps an allusion to the situation at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Irish wars and a Scottish king in the wings. But the jokes, such as they are, must lie in their accents. And the language lesson in the scene that follows brings more jokes with French. Has Sh or his company been taking French lessons?

I like the idea that the French nobility have been off on an Erasmus program and learned good English. Given the previous two scenes, I agree the actors must have been affecting some sort of French accent, and they toss in the odd French phrase for color. Their opinions of the English army are such that you can almost hear the groundlings grinding their teeth and muttering “bloody French.”

Is there a “joke” in Bardolph’s having stolen a “pax” from a church and to be hanged for it? What, after all, has Harry stolen from France? Pistol refers to “pax of little price” and objects that he should be hanged for this. I too find the rest of the discourse hard to untangle. Then Harry wants to get to Calais because his army is in bad shape. And he jokes that the French air has made him a braggart. And he gives a tip to Montjoy — is this an insult? Then another “bloody French” scene. (Brexit has a long history.) Lots of bragging about armor and Bourbon’s horse, and when he exits the others turn their jokes on him.

Michael:

With the chorus leading off Act 4, we get more effective scene painting. Does “A little touch of Harry in the night” seem a bit much? The scene that follows is, for me, the most memorable in the play. After the encounter with Pistol, then Fluellen and Gower, he meets with three quite ordinary English soldiers with entirely ordinary names, John Bates, Alexander Court, and Michael Williams, all the more striking after the tavern names and the “British” names. These guys have entirely realistic opinions and fears, and Harry’s responses seem rather commonplace, at least initially. Bates says the king may show as much courage as he wants, but surely he’d rather be in the Thames up to his neck than here. The dialogue seems wonderfully realistic, and Bates and Williams bat back and forth their sense of what it might mean that the king’s cause is “just.” Williams’ vision of the resurrection on the last day portrays a vivid sense of the horror of battle, and his conclusion, “I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument.” This is never really answered. The king gives a long and reasonably persuasive speech, perhaps in reality an essay, on why the king is not morally responsible for the state of his soldiers at their death. And Bates agrees. But Harry incautiously mentions his vow that he would not be ransomed, which seems unlikely, and Williams asserts this is pretty hollow, since the dead cannot object if he is ransomed. Harry’s vow that he’ll never trust the king if this happens is, unintentionally, a pretty good joke, and Williams, even not knowing who is vowing this, laughs at it, irritating the king. So they exchange gloves with the idea of late redeeming the challenge. Williams seems to have the better of the argument, and Harry sounds a bit petulant. This brings on another long, essay-
like speech about the only difference between a king and everybody else is “ceremony.” This persuades Harry, but would probably not persuade Williams. The scene ends with Harry saying what he has done to redeem Richard’s death, an almshouse with five hundred old men who ask pardon for Richard’s death and two chantries where masses are offered for Richard’s soul. But even this, he worries, isn’t enough since “my penitence comes after ill, imploring pardon.” Of course he himself is not guilty, but his penitence doesn’t cancel his father’s sin.

Then another “bloody French” scene in which they mock the English. In 4.3 Warwick is incautious enough to wish they had one ten-thousanth of the men who aren’t working in England this day, and that sparks Harry’s Hotspur-like sense that having bad odds is more glorious and that, live or die, St. Crispin’s day will be a good name for this battle. Montjoy comes back with the helpful advice that Harry should remind his army of the need for penitence before death. Thanks, Montjoy.

4.4 is another filler sort of scene, Pistol and a captive French soldier that Pistol needs the boy to translate for, full of jokes from Pistol’s misunderstanding of the French. 4.5 has the French aware they are losing the battle. 4.6 has Exeter give a tender account of Suffolk’s death, then Harry gives the order to kill all the French prisoners, which suits Pistol, who has learned enough French to shout “coup la gorge.” But then we learn that the French have killed the boys keeping the luggage — including the boy who spoke French for Pistol? This then evolves into a comic comparison by Fluellen of Harry with Alexander the Pig, which a colleague of mine once joked as the basis for some critical argument he was reading, “For there is figures in all things.” Now Montjoy returns and asks that the French be allowed to gather their dead. When Harry says he doesn’t know if they have won the battle, Montjoy concedes it and they decide to call it “Agincourt.” And then Williams enters with Harry’s glove in his cap. For some reason, Harry give Williams’ glove to Fluellen, who is struck by Williams when he sees the glove. It’s all a bit murky; Fluellen thinks that Williams had the glove of Alenc,on. Harry confronts Williams, who makes a reasonable case that he didn’t know the man he had challenged was the king. Because the king came disguised and as a common man, Williams couldn’t have known it was the king, so the fault is the king’s, he reasonably explains to the king. The king gives him the glove filled with crowns. Fluellen tries to add twelve pence and the advice to keep out of quarrels, but Williams rejects that, but presumably keeps the king’s crowns. This, apparently, is supposed to satisfy us that Williams has been justly answered and compensated for his quarrel with the king. But since the king doesn’t need to be ransomed, the quarrel is moot. Harry, mirror of all Christian kings, piously attributes the victory to God and orders Non nobis and Te Deum be sung.

Dusty:

The Chorus before Act 4 gives us more scene painting. It reminded me of some of Homer’s scene painting in the Iliad, as translated by Pope. I think you are right that there is something about this play which resembles epic narrative. The Chorus also gives us some unalloyed (over the top?) praise of Harry’s “sweet majesty,“,“largess universal,” and “Liberal eye.” I presume there is a pun at line 50 on “foils” — both swords and the low characters.

The entire act is set on the battlefield, the first three scenes on the eve of the battle. 4.1 is quite long, as various characters encounter the king but do not recognize him. Fluellen, the scholar of the history of war, goes on about the “ceremonies of war,” a point that will come back later. Yes, the conversation between king and the three common Englishmen seems realistic at first, but then Henry goes into what you rightly call essayistic mode, and sounds a little pedantic, but not defensive. It’s noteworthy that Williams is not convinced. This gives way to Henry alone, and he speaks two soliloquies, one on how it’s only “ceremony” that separates a king from an ordinary man. I am reminded of Henry IV’s comparison of the sleepless king and the soundly-sleeping ordinary man. I thought too of Falstaff’s address to “honor.” The second soliloquy, in which Harry dwells on his father’s “fault,” suggests that for Harry and for Shakespeare the sins of Henry IV have not been thoroughly worked through.

It’s not clear to me why in 4.2 the French leaders first speak in French, then in English. Grandpré’s “description” of the English camp makes him sound like the Chorus.

In 4.3 we hear that the French outnumber the English 5 to 1. Doesn’t this make us wonder why Harry started the war? (Or at the outset were their forces roughly equal, only later reduced by sickness and casualties?) The famous speech about St. Crispin’s Day — which in the movie, as I recall, is made in the presence of common soldiers — is delivered not to to large numbers of ordinary soldiers but to a handful of Henry’s generals. Doesn’t that change the implications? It’s not ordinary Tommy who will be celebrated on St. Crispin’s Day but the army leaders. You’re right to suggest that Harry adopts Hotspur’s mode. There is only a fixed ‘amount’ of honor, and Harry doesn’t want to share it widely. Can this make him look good? Or is he desperately trying to convert a weakness into strength, necessity into a virtue, to make the best of a very bad business? The scene concludes with Harry refusing to pay ransom. We like that. But it also means that, with very long odds, he is ready to sacrifice the lives of his men.

Because the discrepancy between the numbers of soldiers on both sides seemed so great, I did a little Wikipedia ‘research.’ According to current consensus, the English were outnumbered, but by about 3 to 1, if you count all the French “armed servants.” Why should Shakespeare misrepresent it? Or did he rely on Elizabethan historians who got the numbers wrong? Or was just trying to (over-) emphasize the underdog role?

I assume 4.4 is included because Pistol, as a foil to Harry, asks for ransom, and when he gets it lets the French soldier go.

By 4.5, despite their huge advantage, the French are broken and on the run. Shakespeare doesn’t bother to explain how the English managed this. Contemporary historians of war, like John Keegan, seem to attribute it to the English longbows. Why doesn’t Shakespeare say more about them?

4.6 seemed Homeric to me, recalling the deaths of Nisus and his friend Euryalus. They are more than “brothers” — they seem almost like lovers. And as the scene ends Henry instructs his men to kill all their prisoners. This shocks modern sensibilities, and should have shocked Fluellen, who is a strict observer of the “laws of war.” I understand from my ‘research’ that traditionalists among Henry’s men thought his action very improper, but that historians of the time did not censure him for it. Why not? I have seen suggestions (from Keegan) that Henry had some good tactical reasons, but Shakespeare says nothing about them.

As for the French attack on “the boys and the luggage” (which has always been a part of the story), it’s interesting that it is reported after Harry’s order to kill the French prisoners. So it’s clear that Harry is not acting in response to the French unsporting murders. If anything, he appears to respond to the deaths of York and Suffolk.

In 4.7 Gower, who approves the killing of the prisoners, thinks Harry acted “worthily” and treats his order as an appropriate response to what the French did. Fluellen, who complains that the French action violated the “laws of war,” says nothing about Harry’s own violation. But he does go on with a long speech comparing Harry to Alexander the Pig: Alexander killed his friend Cleitus, and Harry “turned away” Falstaff. It’s an odd moment for this episode (from the end of 2 Henry 4) to be remembered. I wonder if it’s Fluellen’s oblique way of censuring Harry for violating the laws of war.

Montjoy’s request for a truce so they can bury their dead provides an opportunity for Harry to be magnanimous. Instead, he takes a moment to savor his victory and to name the battle. We then get more of Fluellen, who is the king’s “countryman” (is Shakespeare trying to make up for his rude treatment of Glendower?), and characteristically advises the king that Williams must be allowed to “keep his vow and his oath.” At this point Harry sets up a foolish, inappropriate, and dangerous joke which, you would think, could easily have ended in violence or death, despite Harry’s dispatching Warwick and Gloucester to “see there be no harm.” In 4.8 the joke is played out, without serious consequences, and the stout Williams is rewarded. And we now hear some numbers that are simply incredible, that the French have 10,000 dead and the English only 25. Who would believe that? Is it possible that Shakespeare’s audience, who knew the story of Agincourt, thought (because they read the chronicles, that those numbers were correct? Again, my ‘research’ tells me that the modern consensus is that there was indeed a great discrepancy, but it was on the order to 10 to 1 and not 400 to 1. Shakespeare makes the numbers miraculous. Maybe that’s why Henry with sudden piety declares that “God fought for us.” — as if the French were pagans or Turks.

Dusty:

The Chorus to Act 5 seems even more like an epic narrator taking over for a dramatist who has too many events to dramatize “in their huge and proper life.” His speech put me in mind of the late-17th-century genre of “instruction to a painter” poems. This is more of an instruction to a spectator, “prompting” him to see a series of scenes: Calais, the Channel crossing, the English beach, Blackheath, outside London walls, now in London, and then a return to France. (It is not the demands of drama that send Harry back to England, and then back again to France, but the demands of the historical story).

I wonder why we need 5.1, when Fluellen makes Pistol eat his leek. I suppose it’s designed as punishment for Pistol and an affirmation that the somewhat comic and eccentric Fluellen is one of Henry’s important supporters. But do we really care?

In the long 5.2, which runs 370 lines, Shakespeare wraps things up with a political marriage between England and France, but recasts it as a love match, and shifts the generic mode from history play to romantic comedy. But it’s a curious kind of Shakespearean romantic comedy, hardly a match of witty equals of the sort we see in Much Ado About Nothing or Merchant of Venice. At the beginning of their conversation Henry and Katherine swap lines, but starting with line 123 Henry gets long speeches and Katherine only gets one-liners — and they’re not zingers. After line 259, when she says Henry cannot kiss her, she does not speak again for the rest of the scene (more than 100 lines). It’s really Henry’s scene. And he kisses her at the end of it. Burgundy has arranged the meeting, and welcomes peace as if he is officiating at a wedding (which he is), asking if there be any “impediment” (to the return of peace). He has also presumably approved the negotiations for the articles of peace, so sending the parties to an off- stage “council” to discuss them is just a device on his part, and Shakespeare’s part, to get almost everybody off stage so that Henry can woo Katherine. Henry insists he is just a “plain soldier” with a “good heart,” but we already know, from the earlier parts of the play (where he is a master of rhetoric) and from the Henry IV plays, that he is a good deal more. Maybe he’s being disingenuous. But I think it’s more likely that he is quite deliberately playing the part of bluff soldier/lover. Here his task is not to rouse his men to battle but to persuade Katherine to love him. I think his pretense not to understand French may also be a ploy: it emerges that he seems to understand it pretty well.

The political negotiations are not examined too closely. It appears that Henry has agreed, in advance, to abandon his claim to certain French villages, and he also agreed not to demand the title of “king of France.” Instead, he regards the villages as part of Katherine’s dowry, and he accepts the title of “Héritier” [Heir]. It’s perhaps notable that the French term is not translated, so the English audience might not fully realize that Henry has deferred a key part of his original claim.

The epilogue, from the Chorus, takes the form of a sonnet, playing with the idea that a huge epic story of “mighty men” has been compressed into the “little room” of a five-act play. Did Donne, when he wrote “We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms” (“The Canonization”) have Shakespeare in mind, or was it common at the time to think of the sonnet as a little “room” (or stanza)? It’s not a summary of the action of the play so much as a look at what comes next in Henry’s story. Shakespeare in this play has only taken events “Thus far.” And it’s a bit odd that, at the end of a play about the greatest English victory in history, it is France which is described as “the world’s best garden.” What about “this other Eden”? And odd that the Chorus, looking ahead, reminds us that Harry would only rule for “Small time,” and that what Henry won his son and heir (or the regents) will lose, as the audience knows, since it has already seen the three Henry VI plays. It’s a bit of a downer for the Plantagenets, whose dynasty would end just 14 years after the death of Henry VI, but a compliment to the Tudors, who would take over with Henry VII. And of course it’s a compliment to the dramatist who has told their stories.

Michael:

After all the battle scenes, I guess the idea is for the play to end on a comic note, both comic in the sense of funny and comic in the generic sense as in a marriage. Fluellen and Pistol supply the former, though Pistol tells us that his Nell, the hostess, is dead, so he’ll turn bawd and take up, or return to, stealing. To our relief, he exits. The chorus has told us that after his triumphant return to London, Harry has gone back to France and the next scene is the second of his “back-return[s] again” to France. A part of the chorus’ role seems to be to keep track of the actual history. In the first part of the scene, the French court, king, queen, and Burgundy have no trouble speaking English, and everybody has cheered up after Agincourt. Burgundy details the need for peace to restore French agriculture and viticulture. Harry seems inclined to grant that, and the royal party will go off to work it out, leaving Harry and Catherine and the gentlewoman for the wooing scene.

Turns out Catherine understands some English, and Harry some French. So after the initial back and forth, Harry’s long denigration of his ability to woo cleverly and his own lack of physical attraction, Catherine simply points out that he has made war on France. What follows seems cleverly designed to be understood by the Globe audience, even if Catherine does not. When he advances a bit of conventional wooing, she protests his “faux” French, and he protests his conception was marred by his father’s political thoughts and that she should simply take him and assume he’ll improve with time. When pressed, she simply replies the obvious reality, it’s all up to her royal father, and he responds with equal realism, it will please him. So it will cutely end in kisses, first to the hand, then to the lips, even though this results in cross-cultural misunderstanding, but misunderstanding that supports the English perspective. So what seems to be negotiated in the rather cute wooing scene is the gap between the necessary political marriage and the sense that some emotional value must be present. Well, good luck with that, as the political personages return and ask how the wooing has gone. The joking between Burgundy and Harry doesn’t really answer that, and the reality of the ownership of French cities draws out the French king, who will give his daughter along with the cities. Harry is assured that this has all been worked out, that he’ll get the princess along with the cities.

The one issue is that Harry is to be named “heritier” or “haeres” of France. It seems this favors the English claim and the French have objected, though it’s not made crystal clear. But Harry says it should stand, and Charles should give Harry his daughter. So it’s all settled, and Harry can kiss her again as his “sovereign Queen,” and the trumpets can sound. It’s left to the French queen to reconcile the emotional and political dimensions of the marriage, and Harry can insist that the marriage day will coincide with the French magnates taking their oaths of allegiance, presumably to the royal marriage and to England. He’ll swear to Kate and they to him, and if all the oaths are kept, all will be well. Even with the cute wooing scene, it’s a political event. But then the epilogue suggests the ultimate ending will not be so glorious. Harry achieved “the worlds best garden” in France, but it all came apart when the feuding over the management of their infant son caused them to lose France and suffer civil war — again! So we’re back where we started with the Henry VI plays, Richard III, and the Tudor dynasty. What we’ve called the
subversive strain of the play seems to gain a foothold at the very end. Was Harry’s French war worth it? Was Williams right after all? Then there’s the current war in Ireland and Essex’s efforts on behalf of their “empress.”

Dusty:

As I read the ending, Henry succeeds in kissing Katherine’s hand at line 250, but she pulls back. He then says he will kiss her lips, but the response from her and from Alice suggests to me that they are firmly saying no, and that Henry’s further reply (“Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined . . .”) indicates that he does not press the matter at this point. Which allows the scene to continue to build until he finally does kiss her at line 354. As for what Henry has won (apart from a wife), does being named “Héritier de France” represent some kind of compromise, or it is everything that Henry went to war about? He is distinctly not
named “Roi de France”: the present King continues on his throne. It would be interesting to find out more about what contemporary audiences thought and said about the epilogue and its suggestion that all of this blood was spilt for a mere nine years of peace. I think modern productions probably omit the epilogue. Maybe Shakespeare found that the model of “history play” that he had developed just didn’t work for presenting “the life of Henry 5” — or rather, his life as king. He apparently did not want to end the play with the victory at Agincourt, which would have meant an action that moves from war prep through war to victory and peace. Or maybe he thought that an important part of the peace was the political marriage. But that could have been presented differently, as a purely political marriage. For some
reason Shakespeare, as I see it, wanted to introduce some quasi-romantic-comedy elements.

You seem to emphasize the “political” side of the marriage and downplay the “romantic” side. If you were directing the play, I can imagine how you might do this, but isn’t there an awful lot of “cute” back and forth between Henry and Katherine that you would have to have them play with a certain cool detachment? I don’t remember the ending of the Olivier movie, but I’m pretty sure it emphasized “cute.”

Michael:

I think the “cute” side of the final act and the wooing scenes are probably necessary on stage, and I think they have been emphasized in any performances I’ve seen. But I was struck by the way the political is still present toward the end of the scene and act. Since it’s mainly in the language and perhaps most evident in the text, it doesn’t have the emphasis of the “cute” or romantic elements. But it’s interesting that it’s still there, maybe part of that back-and-forth we’ve seen in what we’ve called the “subversive” moments in the play.

I’m not clear what Harry’s being named “heritier” rather than roi means exactly. Does it suggest that his son would inherit the title of king; if so, where does that leave the son of Charles? Or is it just a convenient fiction? In terms of the way things worked out, probably the latter. How long did the monarchs of England retain the title king or queen of France in their official style? (I just looked that up — wonderful what Google can do for instant “research” — and found it was George III, who dropped the title in 1800; it was eliminated officially in 1802. So it was just a legal fiction for almost 400 years.) So Queen Elizabeth was officially Queen of France, but I think we can assume that none of Shakespeare’s contemporaries were expecting to sail across the Channel make good on that. Did they then see the consequence of Agincourt, though glorious, was ultimately futile?