Henry V [Mass Market Paperback]

It's almost essential to read Henry IV Part II, before coming to Henry V, but doing so is well worth it. Between the two books, you watch Prince Hal rise from young roustabout to King. As Henry IV passes, he tells his son, among other things, "Therefore, my Harry/Be it thy course to busy giddy minds/With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,/May waste the memory of the former days." And, Hal becomes King, leaves his merry making friends behind and engages in war with France to tranquilize his populace. As he wages war, Shakespeare treats the reader to what war and rulers are truly like as Henry tells the Governor of Harfleur that if he does not surrender, he will not be able to control his soldiers, and all the women of Harfleur will be raped, no matter their age.

All of Henry V is not grim, however. Henry IV Parts I and II and Henry V feature one of Shakespeare's most well-known comedic characters, Falstaff, a character so loved by Queen Elizabeth I that it is believed Shakespeare revived him at her insistence for the comedy The Mary Wives of Windsor. Wherever Falstaff is, there will generally be merriment. See how he comes to his end in Henry V, a tremendous work of literature.

"Henry V" combines strident jingoism, weak comedy, structural instability, and some of the dullest blank verse in the Shakespearean canon.

It also presents us with a windy, suffocatingly self-satisfied protagonist who bears little resemblance to the saucy, shifting Prince Hal of the "Henry IV" plays. I found it a pain reading "Henry V", except when the king was offstage, when it was even more annoying.

Gentle readers, when I came to read this play, I didn't do so to write a review like this. I studied "Henry V" in college, and under my professor's guiding care found myself impressed with the ambiguity of his reading. Over the years, Henry's speeches before Harfleur and Agincourt have remained in my mind as they have in many others. Writing a review of the gripping if plot-thin "Henry IV Part 2", I called it a bridge between two better plays. So the more I read "Henry V", the more unhappy I was of it not coming up to anything close to what I remembered.

Our play begins with a pair of bishops talking about a pending threat against their churchly holdings that is never resolved or even referenced again. When we first meet Henry, it is to watch him sit passively and be lectured at length about some recondite thing called "the Salique Law." The Henry IV plays had a number of comic supporting players, so "Henry V" raises the merriment by killing them off, and switching the humor to a speech-impaired Welshman who rambles on about the Roman art of warfare.

After watching Henry threaten French women with rape and warn his victims not to be "guilty in defense," he woos the French princess Katharine with some rather unconvincing and labored lovetalk. When she asks if she could love an enemy of France, Henry replies "I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it." This is the sort of smug sanctimoniousness that typifies Henry V's approach to his reign. Shakespeare presents it and everything else about Henry as if he were a mirror of Christian royalty, undercutting the supposed ambiguity so many modern critics speak of.

Act II features a threat on Henry which is resolved when he hands papers to his would-be attackers, thus foiling their plans. Thrilling. Act III features a long scene of two women speaking French, which Shakespeare uses as an excuse to throw in some dirty words. Naughty Will! Act IV, by far the best act in the play, gives us Agincourt and Henry's famous "we happy few" soliloquy which is the play's best moment, but the subsequent battle is rendered in anticlimactic bits and pieces.

The play works only as a finale to a set of much better preceding plays. You need some closure from the storyline of the Richard II/Henry IV "Henriad" cycle, of a throne in unstable jeopardy, and this provides that closure. As a man of action, Henry V stands in marked contrast against the king who began the Henriad cycle, Richard II, lazy and disposed to be preferential. Henry V is a man of action who would sooner kill a friend than fail to accomplish some statecraft.

If you find such a figure admirable, "Henry V" may be a play for you. He sat heavy in my guts, though, and I'm glad to let him go.

Shakespeare's rendering of Henry V's invasion of France culminating in the battle of Agincourt is a patriotic ode intended to rouse feelings of loyalty to the crown. His Henry is the consummate leader who inspires his vastly outnumbered army to one of the greatest military triumphs in English history. The play makes effective use of a chorus to open each scene and Shakespeare through that device directly addresses the audience to set up the action and to very pointedly ask for their suspension of disbelief to envision such vast numbers of participants and the grandeur of the battle setting enclosed within the stage area.

The French are portrayed as overconfident in their own military strength as well as being guilty of underestimating the resolve of Henry and his army. There are many poignant scenes but I am always particularly taken with the how Shakespeare has Henry moving anonymously among his troops on the eve of battle.

While the play may be propagandistic it is one of my favorite of the History plays and is an enjoyable read every time I pick it up.

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