Another type of imagery the Chorus uses to venerate King Henry and the English army is comparison with characters from Roman mythology. They compare King “Harry” to “Mars,” the Roman God of war. They are comparing the King to the best warrior of Roman Mythology; there is no possible greater praise. Mars was also often symbolised by fire, which links back to the Chorus’s use of fiery imagery to portray bravery and courage.
The English population are depicted as “English Mercuries.” Mercury was the Roman messenger God, famed for his speed and reliability, by contrasting the English to this God is also remarkable praise.
Because it is clearly impossible to bring a whole war onstage, Shakespeare uses the Chorus to get the audience to picture the mighty war. However, he does not get the Chorus to merely paint the picture, he uses them to idealise the idea of conflict so that the audience’s ideas are built up strongly, and they are expecting a play about glorified combat. The Chorus asks the audience to imagine great things onstage, for example they ask the audience to visualize horses with “proud hoofs”, they are not just hoofs, but “Proud hoofs” showing the emphasis on magnificence.
When asking the viewers to use their imagination, the chorus frequently exaggerates in their description of the events, to the point of lying. One illustration of this is at the start of Act 2, when the Chorus’s lies about the French lead the audience to question his reliability. He suggests, “The French…Shake in their fear, and with pale policy seek to divert the English purposes”, yet in the same Act, in Act 2 scene 4, the audiences discovers that the French are not trembling in fear, but are confident of their victory over the English. The Dauphin says “’tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems” implying that the French do not consider the English as even a small threat to their crown, and the Dauphin is simply suggesting they increase their defences as a precautionary action. The French are not afraid of the English army and consider Henry to be weak, and unthreatening. This implies that the Chorus is used in the play to show the use of propaganda as a tool to increase moral.
The Chorus are extremely biased toward the English, and their glorification of war is not only undermined in the instance mentioned above. After almost every Chorus speech, there is a scene that directly contradicts what they are saying. For example after the prologue, the audience witnesses a scene between Canterbury and Ely, who are planning on fooling “warlike Harry” into starting a war. They are abusing their position as ministers of God to avoid paying taxes. This also suggests that “Th’ accomplishment of many years” is not all down to Henrys great kingship, were some of these accomplishments merely schemes fashioned by the church? This does not cohere with the Chorus’s idea of “proud monarchies” and in fact shows a monarchy full of corruption and exploitation. Although Henry does manage to force Canterbury to accept all moral retribution if the war is against God’s wishes, “The sin is upon my head”, the church still succeed in manipulating him into declaring war on the French.
The Chorus of Act 2 suggests that England is “a model to thy inward greatness” suggesting its internal strength is mighty and impenetrable and the population are content and are willing to follow the king to their deaths. However, Act 2 scene 1 is a scene between Bardolph, Nym, Pistol, Hostess and Boy. Again, like Act 1 scene 1, it totally challenges the Chorus’s idealisation of the British and their reactions to the war. This event reveals the mutinous side of Britain’s “inward greatness”, Bardolph, Nym and Pistol are planning to go off to war and steal from the corpses. Again a total contradiction to what the Chorus has to say.
One other reason for Shakespeare’s inclusion of the character of the Chorus is to tie in with one of the main themes of the play; the theme of, as one critic put it “Public and private”, or, in other words the theme of how the characters react and speak when in different social situations.
By talking directly to the audience using lines such as “Gently to hear and kindly to judge our play” and “On this unworthy scaffold,” Shakespeare is bringing the audiences attention to the fact that they are watching a play, a performance.
All of the Chorus’s speeches are written in verse. This style not only makes the speeches sound more revered and fantastical, but also is indicative of the style of speech used when a character is putting on a performance. An example of this is whenever Henry is in court and is making a public appearance he speaks in verse. Henry speaks the speech beginning Once more unto the breach, dear friends” to the soldiers before they go into battle. It is written in verse to show he is presenting himself in a slightly unnatural way. When Henry actually seems to be performing, however, in Act 4 scene 1, and he dresses up as a soldier, Shakespeare uses prose. The fact that he talks to the soldiers in prose suggests that during this scene, he is not in fact performing, and is in fact closer to his true self than anywhere else in the play. The Chorus, who refers to him solely as “Harry”, supports this idea. Henry, before being King was known as Harry, but as soon as he became King, he was forced to drop the habits that made him “Harry”, such as drinking in taverns, and act in a nobler manor. The chorus refers to this scene as “a little touch of Harry in the night” suggesting that Henry acts in a way that is more natural to him, and this is a moment when Henry’s performance stops.
The idea of verse being used to indicate performance can also be identified in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The characters of the mechanicals speak in prose until they hold a play for the Duke of Athens, when they speak in verse. All the court scenes are spoken in verse, and spells cast by the faeries are spoken in tetramic verse.
The character of Puck also addresses the audience, at the end of the play, in a similar way to the Chorus oh Henry V. Both appear to seek approval for the play. The Chorus says “In your fair minds let this acceptance take,” Puck says “If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended: That you have but slumbered here…Give your hands if we be friends”
I believe Shakespeare was not idealising war in Henry V. The chorus’s over-exaggerated views of perfect, heroic warfare often become ridiculous, for example, when the Chorus says the French “shake in their fear.” Also the fact that Shakespeare undermines all of their main speeches with the structure of the play indicates that the Chorus’s views are to be taken with a pinch of salt and are not really to be trusted. Certain productions of Henry V do glorify war, for example Laurence Olivier’s production in the 1940’s painted a beautiful, majestic picture of war, However after analysing the role of the Chorus in the play, I do not believe this play is a glorification of warfare. Henry’s leadership is romanticised in the play considerably more than the idea of warfare. Productions such as Kenneth Brannagh’s creation paint a far more realistic view of war, as a bloody, filthy affair. This is more what I feel the subtext of the play is. War is not really idealised in this play, it can be taken as being glorified, but because of Shakespeare’s use of the structure of the play, and the Chorus’s propaganda fabrications, the character of the Chorus does not in any way add to this glorification.
