Not even the most blinkered antiquarian could have been unaware of the parallels between recent events [in the Franco-Prussion War] and King Henry’s expedition to France”
Despite Calverts careful interpretation, the late nineteenth century showed a solidifying of Henry’s reputation as a moral, virtuous patriot. Heroic productions, influenced by the martial mood of the Boer war, decked stages on both sides of the Atlantic, and inbedded the nature of Henry as “the kind of leader a country needs” in the mind of audiences across the western world.
Speech after speech was sent spinning across the boundary, and one was constantly inclined to shout “Well played sir! Well played indeed.”
People applauded Henry as he shouted “that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day”, and sympathised with him as he cried “what hath a king that privates have not too, save ceremony”. They wished they were amongst the crowd to welcome him back “at Hampton pier”, and watched with awe and amusement as Katherine fell into the welcoming arms of the ideal man, generally marveling at the lessons the play teaches of “godliness, honour, loyalty, courage, cheerfulness and perseverance.”
During the first world war directors who stage Henry V were surprised to note that despite trying to present Henry in a heroic way, audiences rarely sympathised with him as a character. This could have something to do with the media attention surrounding the battles in Europe. Audiences were suddenly aware of the true horrors of war, and a king who urged “Now lords for France, the enterprise whereof shall be to you, like us, as glorious”, and “Men in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here”, seems opportunistic, hypocritical and unsympathetic.
This feeling continued throughout the twentieth century, and actors taking the title role seemed more and more keen to emphasise this Machievellian quality. Richard Burton, in a production in 1955, was described as “a cunning warrior, stocky and astute, unafraid of harshness or of curling the royal lip. The gallery gets no smiles from him, and the soldiery none but the scantest commiseration”. Audiences became more and more aware of Henry as a man
who loves his men and yet is always willing to sacrigfice them; a man who at one moment can weep over the death of one of his lords and upon the next instantly order the throats cut of prisoners taken in war… a man who can woo woo willingly and humbly at one moment and strike a hard bargain on his defeated future in-laws in the next.
One could argue, at this stage, that directors have gone too far in deconstructing Henry’s character. They no longer present us with an ambiguous figure, vulnerable to our own interpretations and subsequent judgements. In his production, in 1986, Michael Bogdanov presented us with a truly unpatriotic image of Henry and his people. For him the history plays were “plays for today, the lessons of history unlearnt”, and his image of English soldiers shouting “here we go”, and carrying banners proclaiming “Fuck the Frogs” with Henry at their head, led one critic to write “It was the first version I’ve ever seen where you wanted the French to win”. In turn Nicholas Hytner, in 2003, turned Henry, played by Adrian Lester, from a charismatic enthusiast, into a power-hungry invader. When he learnt of Bardolph’s treachery he calmly shot him in the head, a moment which was, according to one reviewer, “too realistic for comfort”.
Perhaps, however, it is a generalisation to say that it is purely the environment which dictates whether Henry is viewed as “this star of England” or a “vain, giddy, shallow, humourous youth”. A production today could bring out either theme successfully, and so we must question what, in the text, can lead us in one direction or the other.
Henry V is nothing to do with social history, nothing to do with the state of England, it’s to do with idealism and heroism.
It is interesting to note that the productions which show Henry as a heroic leader are rarely the entire text. When the full version is used the image of Henry is often tarnished by some of his experiences, whereas a cut script can remove episodes such as the execution of the French soldiers, “Every soldier kill his prisoners”, and Henry’s brutal words up to the Governor or Harfleur, “Mowing like grass your fresh fair virgins and your flowering infants”, to show Henry is a less negative light. The film versions, directed my Olivier and then later Brannagh, both use this technique, removing the French soldier execution, and showing Henry looking emotionally shaken by every immoral act he may be forced to commit. These versions both succeed, consequently, in presenting Henry as an action hero, assisted by stirring music and cheering crowds. In the following argument I shall explore the entire folio text, examining Henry as a moral character based on its entirety.
It is undeniable that Henry shows heroic qualities throughout the piece. At the most basic level he leads a hugely outnumbered army against that of the French, “That’s five to one, besides they are all fresh” and succeeds in achieving victory. Now it is certainly an exageration to claim the French lost “Full fifteen hundred, besides common men”, compared with “but five-and-twenty” on the English side, but in including these numbers Shakespeare seems to be emphasising the miraculous quality of the victory. With this in mind one can begin to question what part Henry had to play in this victory.
He is, above all else, an orator. In no other Shakespeare play is one character so prominent in terms of percentage of lines, and a large proportion of what he says is in the form of speeches, and these speeches are, with one notable exception, performed publicly. How he delivers these speeches is up to the discretion of the director or actor, but considering the rhetorical skill Henry uses, “Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George”, “The fewer men, the greater share of honour”, “It is so strange, that through the truth of stands as gross as black on white my eye will scarcely see it”, it would seem that they would be delivered with skill and vocal dexterity. When I saw a production in Abingdon several years ago it was the Cripin’s day speech which showed Henry’s oratory abilities. He would begin normally, “Who’s he that wishes so”, and then slowed his speech and dropped his volume to almost whisper confidentially to Westmoreland, “But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive”, from then he grew in stature and volume to shout “Rather proclaim it…”. He moved subtly and obviously through tones and volumes, from a hushed warm “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” to a proclamation that people shall regret they were not there “to fight with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day”.
He even manages to motivate and inspire when condemning traitors to death. In a recent production the actor playing Henry wept on the line “May it be possible that foreign hire, could, out of thee, extract one spark of evil”, and then rose to a state of livid anger on “O, how hast thou with jealousy infected the sweetness of affiance!”, before turning to his assembled lords and silent audience, “thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot to mark the full fraught man”. In my recent production Henry became physically violent with the traitors after the tears of “my eye will scarcely see it”, leaving the audience moved by his emotion.
It is difficult to question the morality of so motivational a speaker. In perhaps his crowning moment (no pun intended) when he urges “Once more unto the breech dear friends” he is at once able to include his entire audience, “and you good yeomen, show us the mettle of your pasture”. Through his language we see the positive effects his words have on his followers, “I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips”, before he bellows, “The game’s afoot! Follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry ‘God for Harry England and Saint George’”.
[the King] climbed upon a great mass of fallen masonry and stood their quivering, virile, sword in hand, a thing of force and strength, panting to regain his breath. He radiated power.
One almost expects him to shout “They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom”, and we almost want him to, and often have to restrain ourselves from shouting “Hell yeah!” when he finishes.
But what do we see of Henry outside of this public persona which shows him in a positive light. The pages of Henry V are bare of much humanitarian action, and what we do see seems to be the result of the public performance he puts on. Pistol refers to him as “the lovely bully”, he is “the mirror of all Christian kings” and Canterbury points out that “The breath no sooner left his father’s body but that his wildness, mortified in him, seemed to die too.” The traitors in act two scene two plan his murder, but then as soon as discovered protest that they are delighted to have been discovered, “Never did faithful subjects more rejoice at the discovery of most dangerous treason”.
The only time we do seem Henry alone with his thoughts is during his soliloquy in act four scene one, in which he states the hardships of being a king, “We must bear all. O hard condition.” In most productions he becomes decidedly melancholy at this point, almost crying over “What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more of mortal griefs than do thy worshipers?”, and becoming angry and animated over “O, be sick, great greatness, and bid thy ceremony give thee cure.” Shakespeare offers him immensely dense, yet colourful language, “thrice-gorgeous ceremony”, “tide of pomp”, “crammed with distressful bread” for an actor to load with emotion and convince an audience of his fragile emotional state. If played suitably submissively, the speech can almost redeem him in the eyes of an audience. Even a Henry shown murdering Bardolph and shouting obsenities at Harfleur could abtain an audiences forgiveness after convincing them that life as a king is fraught with difficult decision, doubt, fear and betrayal, and that life as a “slave” is infinitely preferable.
The slave, a member of the country’s peace,
Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
If a production, therefore, is shown with these moments, and void of episodes which some patriotic stagings might remove, the character of Henry comes across as strong yet vulnerable, possessing both “grace and fair regard” and the ability to “assume the port of Mars”. He is an inspirational leader, “Well have we done, thrice valiant countrymen. But alls not done, yet keep the French the field”, who also shows tenderness, “There is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distill it out; for our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers, which is both healthful, and good husbandry”, “and sincerity, “Take me, then take me, take a soldier, take a king”. He seems, in every way, the hero history remembers.
Henry is the ruler and the ruler is the sun giving off light and heat for the realm to prosper. He understands his people and their needs. He does not violate their rights for he is their protector. He is exalted himself because he raises his people up.
Mr Brown’s words, however, suggest that all he has seen is such a cut script. Would he to witness the entirety of what Shakespeare intended us to experience, his opinions of Henry might be somewhat different. The text of Henry V is littered with examples of Henry as a brutal manipulator of people and situations. Initially we see him embark on a war which is dubious to say the least. In his paper, “Henry V’s Claim to France: Valid or Invalid”, Cedric Watts seems to imply that the opening scene between Canterbury and Ely, in which they discuss the possibility of Henry’s new bill depriving them of certain lands, implies that they find, though Watts almost implies “fabricate”, justification for Henry’s war, purely to keep his mind from the aforementioned bill.
Ely This would drink deep.
Canterbury T’would drink the cup and all.
It is certainly true that Henry’s reasons for war seem a little sparse, as though he is desperately seeking a just cause, and in the end having to fall back upon wounded pride.
Tell the pleasant prince this mock of his
Hath turned his balls to gun-stones, and his soul
Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them.
Whether Henry is aware or not of the invalidity of his offense is not made clear in the text, though different productions add moments to highlight the fact. In one production Henry followed his own line “May I with right and conscience make this claim?” with fervent nodding to Canterbury, implying that as long as Canterbury agrees, then progress can be made. In my production earlier this year Henry was revealed at the end of act one scene one as listening into Ely and Canterbury’s conversation. The implication then was that he was aware of the fallacy of the argument and therefore his subsequent, “Now lords for France”, is unnecessarily aggressive.
The next instance we have of Henry’s moral un-worth is when he confronts the traitors. He plays with them, asking whether “we should enlarge that man committed yesterday who railed against our person”, and then reveals to them his own knowledge in an arguable overly-sadistic manner, “How now gentlemen, what read you in those papers that you lose so much complextion?”. In some productions Henry can become very violent with the traitors, displaying his own brutality. In a recent production in Liverpool the actor playing Henry threw Scroop backward on “Seem they grave and learned… well-so-didst-thou!”. In my production Henry appeared to break down in tears after “my eye will scarcely see it”. At this point Exeter and Westmoreland, uncomfortable with the situation serupticiously left the stage, and Henry, now alone with the traitors, physically attacked them, giving a personal beating to Scroop which brutally included forcing him into a chair, hitting him around the face, and then throwing him to the ground. At the end of his apparent emotion Henry is able to dismiss the traitors, “Get you hence, miserable wretches, to your death.” and then move instantly on to the next “item on the agenda”, “Now lords for France.” Such a lack of emotion and compassion is hardly endearing, and we feel, for the first time, we are witnessing a role rather than the reality of Henry.
As the play continues we see more examples of Henry’s “harsh reality”. His words to the Governor of Harfleur do not remind an audience of a “gallant youth”. He warns, “What’s it to me, if you yourself are cause. If your pure maidens fall into the hand of hot and forcing violation”. Some production, mine included, highlight the atrocity of the words. In my production Henry delivered his speech and then the Chorus entered and crossed out some of the lines from Henry’s speech, as though the performance we had just witnessed was a rehearsal. He vetoed “Naked infants spitted upon pikes” and “their most reverend heads dashed to the walls”, while Henry stood looking disappointed at the censorship.
As the play develops we see him ordering the execution of his former friend Bardolph. Despite Brannagh’s attempt to rescue the situation by showing a close-up view of a tearful Henry ordering “we would have all such offenders so cut off”, the swiftness of his decision does not endear him to the audience. Olivier cut the scene altogether, suggesting that it is too incriminating to remain. In some productions, including Nicholas Hytner’s and my own, Henry plays a very active role in the execution, shooting Bardolph in the head and breaking his neck respectively. His subsequent line is then delivered in a very matter-of-fact style to the horror of his surrounding officers.
It is difficult to appreciate how a role can display such variety of character. Henry moves from virtuous to barbaric quickly and efficiently as the situation dictates, and in so doing reveals his own part in the intrinsic theatrics of Henry V, that of the lead actor in his own play. A Play of which he is also the director.
What does stand out, in the absence of such a close glimpse of Henry’s personal characteristics, is his ability to adopt whatever public persona the situation requires. Whatever public style he needs to adopt to cope properly with a situation, he adopts completely and successfully, and when the situation changes he changes to meet a new circumstance.
Of course all the characters are actors, and the Olivier version of Henry V takes pains to show this, moving a film camera through the back stage area, showing us the actors putting on their garb. In the 1964 production at Stratford, directed by John Barton the entire cast of characters, some forty-six French, English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish, were played by a cast of fifteen. This again sufficed to show the idea of actors playing the roles. It would have been even plainer in the days of Shakespeare as the women would have been played by men; all the actors would have been greeted by a round of applause following their first entrance, and would have bowed before beginning to “speak [their] lines trippingly on the tongue”. All of these things would now, perhaps, be classified as Brechtian alienation techniques, and help separate us from becoming too involved in the action.
In the play four actors on stage all wore all black, and an actor moved smoothly through characters simply by the adoption of a different small coloured prop, it could be a purple tie, a white flower or a gold necklace.
It would be interesting to use this method in Henry V, with each actor playing four or five roles, and showing the change by changing from wearing a crown (Henry) to holding a leek (Fluellen). It would further enforce the notion of play and players.
But once we move beyond this we question which of the characters are actors and players themselves. At the most basic of levels Henry is guilty of disguise, which is “the lowest form of character representation”. In act four, scene one he dons Erpingham’s coat, and thus, using what the Reduced Shakespeare Company, in their satire of Shakespeare’s work, call “Elizabethan plot device number thirty seven”, becomes unrecognisable. He moves about his camp, “walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent”, talking with his men.
Henry I am a gentleman of a company.
Pistol Trail’st thou the puissant pike?
Henry Even so. What are you?
Pistol As good a man as the Emperor.
Henry Then you are better than the king.
Pistol The King’s a bawcock and a heart of gold.
He also observes a conversation between Gower and Fluellen, “There’s much care and valour in this Welshman”, and becomes embroiled in a fight with Williams, “Let it be a quarrel between us”. It is strange that when Hamlet takes on a form of disguise in the shape of feigned madness, it is to distance himself from his contemporaries, however Henry is keen to interact with his men, to learn their opinions, and only by playing “Harry le Roy”, or “Harry Le Roy” as Pistol would have him, or even “Harry Leroy” as Nicholas Hytner would have us believe, is he able to gain their confidence, and subsequently hear both good and bad things spoken about himself: “I love the lovely bully.”, “I will never trust his word after”. In other parts of the play he shows meticulous use of rhetorical devices, “Seem men dutiful? Why so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned? Why so didst thou. Seem they religious? Why so didst thou.”, in much the same way a politician, public speaker or actor might, and in his wooing scene he adopts prose as his method of communication rather than verse speak, in a similar way as to when he spoke to Williams, Grey and Court, suggesting the adoption of a different role.
In another production I have read about, the director took a “Truman Show” attitude to the players. The character of Henry was the only character not portrayed both as character and actor. The others walked forward during the Prologue, dressed casually, i.e. not in costume and when the Chorus called for “the warlike Harry” the King appeared in full regalia, to be inspected by the other actors, before, and on the line “turning the accomplishment of many years, into an hour glass” they left to prepare themselves. Throughout the play actors doubled and trebled up roles, changing character often on stage, and talking amongst themselves during the change wile the King remained unaware.
Following Freud’s famous paper on Hamlet, in which he claimed that Hamlet himself displays the hall marks of an Oedipal complex, directors and actors have become increasingly keen on demonstrating the psychological make up of characters. Plays which offer us, as actors, scope for mental turmoil are very popular. Women long to play Blanche DuBois and her failing mental state, “I don’t want realism”, and men look to Miller and long for Willy Lowman, and his warped view of reality.
Audiences are no longer contented with being shown a character in the throws of psychological upheaval. A character weeping and wailing on stage is now a waste of time and often an unwelcome infringement on our ears… unless we understand each and every nuance which has led to their unfortunate situation.
Is Henry constantly playing a role? In the Prologue we are introduced to the “warlike Harry”, who “like himself assumes the port of Mars.” The word “like” is important, and it often brushed over. It suggests an imitation, a marginally erroneous representation, or an act. In more recent productions directors have chosen actors playing Henry to deliver his famous “Upon the king” soliloquy in a very different way to his other addresses. This damning description of the misunderstandings of monarchy leaves us feeling sympathetic to Henry, and we wonder why? In the 1937, The Old Vic saw Laurence Olivier’s first portrayal of Henry, directed by Tyrone Guthrie. They tried to draw parallels between the play and the current political situation, namely that the year before King Edward VIII had abdicated to marry an American divorcee, and his younger brother, George, was rushed, with a surprised look on his face, to the throne. Henry V was not supposed to be King. His father, Henry Bolingbroke, was exiled by Richard II, then returned, amassed an army, and captured Richard, seized the throne, and had the previous monarch murdered.
In the production which I am currently directing we see Henry as a young man who appears to thee world a good king although “the courses of his youth promised it not”.
Exeter You’ll find a difference… between the promise of his greener days and these he masters now.
Though what becomes apparent throughout the play is that far from being the confident, heroic and patriotic character we see shouting “Will you yield and this avoid, or guiltless in defence be thus destroyed” at the Governor of Harfleur, he is small, scheming and clever. He carries with him a book which contains his plans, and he treats life like a chess game, with every move planned meticulously. He manipulates media and audience to ensure that history remembers him as a great leader. He plays the part of a hero, though, when the cameras are off him, is quite content to execute his former friend Bardolph, “We would have all such offenders so cut off”, physically attack Lord Scroop “… gave the no reason to do treason, unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.”, and ordering the execution of the French prisoners of war.
All of this is so that what people see on their televisions and read in their newspapers, shows him as a patriot and “as magnanimous a man as Agamemnon” (interestingly enough a man prepared to sacrifice his own daughter to succeed). When, in act four scene one, it is revealed that Williams, Bates and Grey do not think highly of him, he gets angry, shouts at them, and then, in the wake, falls down, rips off the disguise he is wearing, symbolically removing the mask he has worn, and almost cries his soliloquy as a man finally revealed for what he is.
“Henry V” shows us a character acting in much the way that we all have a habit of doing. When Shakespeare presents us with a man covering his face with his hand and becoming instantly unrecognisable, we are asked to willingly suspend our disbelief, and, at times, find this difficult. When we are presented with a man, covering his true psychological identity with layer upon layer of complex subtleties, we accept it willingly in this age of mental awareness, and understand Henry as a player at the most natural level.
“Henry VI: Part 1” William Shakespeare: The New Penguin Shakespeare, 1996
“Henry V” C. T. Allmand: The Historical Association of London, 1968
“A New Reading of Henry V” Gerald Gould: The English Review 128, pg 42., 1919
Quoted in: “The Making of the National Poet” Dobson: pg. 203
“The Times”: 2nd October 1789.
“Shakespeare in the Rockies”, Levette J. Davidson: From Shakespeare Quarterly, 1953
“Charles Calvert’s Henry V”, Richard Foulkes: From Shakespeare Survey, 1989, pg. 30
“The Saturday Review”: 24th February 1900, pg. 234
“Director’s Notebook” Michael Kahn, 1969
“The Production” Don Homfray: Fenwick, pg. 20
“Ghosts and Greasepaint: A Story of the Days that Were” W. Macqueen-Pope p.g. 101: Robert Hale & Co. 1951.
“Shakespeare’s Once and Future King, Henry V” Paul Brown: LLI Shakespeare’s History Plays, 2002
“Henry V, War Criminal” John Sutherland & Cedric Watts: Oxford University Press, 1999
“The Ironies of Success in Politics: An Introduction to Shakespeare’s Henry V” Ian Johnston
EVANS, Simon: Directors Notebook, re. Machinal 2003
ARMAND, Louis: The Dramatic Effects of The Play-Within-a-Play
O’CONNOR, John: Shakespearean Afterlives
O’CONNOR, John: Shakespearean Afterlives
KAHN, Michael: Basic Freud
SUTHRLAND & WATTS: Henry V, War Criminal