Discuss the dramatic purposes of the chorus speeches in Henry V
Discuss the dramatic purposes of the chorus speeches in Henry V
The Chorus, or Prologue, appears at the beginning of every act to introduce the action that follows, serving as a commentator as the action of the play progresses. Shakespeare frequently makes use of epilogues (as in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest), but the recurring Chorus is atypical for him. .
The role of the Chorus in the Shakespeare's play, Henry V, is significant. Due to the subject matter that the play deals with, it is hard to present in the way that it deserves. The Chorus helps the audience follow the play by helping them to picture things as they were through the use of imagery. It uses descriptive language in describing events that take place in the play. The Chorus also helps in making the plot of the play flow together better by filling the time lapses that occur between acts due to the fact that the event being depicted in only a few hours actually occurred over several years, leaving some gaps between events. It also explains what happens in an act beforehand because the scenes switch around from place to place, and it can get confusing. The most important function of the Chorus is that it encourages the audience to be patient and reminds them to use their imagination to envision the events that occur in the play, to really imagine the royal courts of England and France, and to really imagine the battle scenes with all the horses and men.
The Chorus serves a different purpose in every act, but its general role is to fire the audience's imagination with strong descriptive language that helps to overcome the visual limitations of the stage.
Henry V is unusual in employing a narrator-like Chorus, who introduces each act by supplying us with undramatized narrative details and/or setting the scene for what we are about to see. In recent years several critics have described the Chorus as representing, as it were, the "official" or "authorized" version of events and have claimed that the dramatized scenes that he introduces do not always corroborate his introductions. Such a dramatic structure - the Chorus telling us one thing, the scene showing us something else - might explain something of the fierce critical contention of interpretations this play ...
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Henry V is unusual in employing a narrator-like Chorus, who introduces each act by supplying us with undramatized narrative details and/or setting the scene for what we are about to see. In recent years several critics have described the Chorus as representing, as it were, the "official" or "authorized" version of events and have claimed that the dramatized scenes that he introduces do not always corroborate his introductions. Such a dramatic structure - the Chorus telling us one thing, the scene showing us something else - might explain something of the fierce critical contention of interpretations this play has incited. Whatever the case, the play's opening speech by the Chorus, "O for a Muse of fire!" is one of the most famous and celebrated speeches of a play with a number of famous speeches to its credit.
The chorus in act 1 steps forward and announces that we are about to watch a story that will include huge fields, grand battles, and fighting kings. The Chorus notes, however, that we will have to use our imaginations to make the story come to life: we must imagine that the small wooden stage is actually the fields of France and that the few actors who will appear on the stage are actually the huge armies that fight to the death in those fields.
At the start of Act I, the Chorus's specific purpose is to apologize for the limitations of the play that is to follow. The Chorus's comments emphasize the fact that the play is a performance that requires the audience's mental cooperation to succeed. From the outset, the play suggests the impossibility of presenting the events as they really were, as the Chorus vainly wishes for "[a] kingdom for a stage, princes to act, / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene" (I.Prologue.3-4). But even as he (on Shakespeare's stage, a single actor would have played the Chorus) apologizes for the fact that his stage cannot show the full reality of events, the Chorus uses striking language to help the audience picture that reality for themselves: "Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them, / Printing their proud hoofs i'th' receiving earth" (I.Prologue.26-27).
In Act 2 the chorus introduces the second act, telling us that all of England is fired up and arming for the war, and King Henry is almost ready to invade France.
The Chorus's introductory speech, which broadens the audience's perspective by presenting a big-picture view of the entire country in preparation for war, employs urgent and active language to heighten the sense that great deeds are afoot. A picture emerges of a country of heroes, ablaze with anticipation and activity: "Now all the youth of England are on fire, / ... / They sell the pasture now to buy the horse" (II.Prologue.1-5). Yet the individual soldiers-to-be that we encounter in Act II, scene i are much less awe-inspiring than those the Chorus describes. They speak in prose rather than verse, and they seem anything but heroic. The rhyming couplets with which Shakespeare ends important speeches are also absent in the speech of these commoners. However, the conflicts of the commoners often mirror those of the royals: Nim and Pistol argue over the rights to Mistress Quickly just as the kings argue over the rights to France.
The chorus in act 3 describes the magnificence with which King Henry sails from England to France. We learn that Henry lands with a large fleet of warships at Harfleur, a port city on the northern coast of France. There, the English army attacks the city with terrifying force. The alarmed King Charles offers King Henry a compromise: he will not give him the crown of France, but he will give him some small dukedoms-that is, small sub-regions within France-as well as the hand of his daughter, Catherine, in marriage. But Henry rejects the offer, and the siege continues. The chorus apologises for the fact that there is only one small stage to act on, but asks you to use your imagination for King Henry sailing form England to France with a huge army.
Act 4's chorus describes the scene in the French and English camps the night before the battle: the quiet night, the burning watch fires, the clank of the knights being suited up in their armour. In the French camp, the overly confident officers have already decided how to divide up the loot of the English, for they outnumber the English by five to one. In the English camp, the soldiers all believe that they will die the next morning, but they wait patiently for their fate. During the night, King Henry goes out among his soldiers, visiting all of them, calling them brothers and cheering them up. This visit raises morale greatly, for every soldier is pleased to see, as the Chorus puts it, "[a] little touch of Harry in the night" (IV.Prologue.47). The chorus once again apologises for the lack of space as it cannot show fields of soldiers getting ready for battle.
The chorus in act 5 relates that King Henry has returned to the port city of Calais in France and, from there, has sailed back to England. Obviously the stage cannot show the sea so apologises for forcing you to use your imagination. The women and children of England are overjoyed to have their men returned to them, and everyone is also glad to see King Henry. When Henry returns to London, the people flock to see him and to celebrate. But Henry is humble and forbids a triumphal procession to celebrate his victory. Henry returns to France again, and the Chorus orders the audience to return its imagination to France, with the understanding that some time has passed.
The Chorus appears for the last time to deliver the Epilogue. This very brief speech mentions the birth of Catherine and Henry's son, King Henry VI of England, who went on to lose France and bring England into war. With a final plea for the audience's tolerance of the play, the Chorus brings the play to a close.
The Epilogue, like Pistol's news from home, strikes an unexpectedly somber note: it reminds us that Henry and Catherine's son did not, in fact, do what they had hoped by uniting the two kingdoms. Henry V, though the ideal king, was not influential in a historical sense-he looks to overturn history, but instead history overturns him. As always, the Chorus points out the difference between a play about a brief period in English history, within which Henry V is a highly successful protagonist of potentially dubious moral character, and the full scope of that history, a context within which Henry proved largely ineffective.
Rebecca Cheetham Ms.Pomeroy 10 Mercury
