Henry V

Henry V:

Synopsis:

King Henry IV has died and his son Prince Hal reigns. The war with France is taking place and all England rises up to back the King. At the city of Harfleur, the King and his forces encounter stiff resistance and King Hal rally's his forces with the patriotic rallying speech "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more..." England is united under Henry's leadership and win Harfleur. He then goes on to win the Battle of Agincourt and the French King surrenders.
He offers Henry the hand of his daughter, Catherine of Valois, in marriage so uniting England and France. After he marries Katherine, peace rules, and they have a son. However, after King Hal dies and his son becomes Henry VI, war again looms on the horizon.

Analysis:

Shakespeare begins Henry V with the entrance of the chorus, which he uses to describe the situation and introduce the characters. He then asks the audience to be imaginative and creates a parallel scenario in their minds where the play will have the ideal setting.

The chorus leads us trough the life of Henry V. We know from the chorus about his reign, his thoughts, the conflict with France and about his marriage to the French princess.

When we read Shakespeare’s history plays we can see there are moments of comicality in them and those make the audience forget the tension of the main story and laugh.

This is done to make people feel that as life is both tragic and comic people think that the play is a trustful representation of life and feel that the author has achieved his aims.

As an example of how the chorus works when act IV begins, the chorus talks about a trip over the English troops and battlefield caused when the king of England does not accept the king of France’s daughter Caterine, although England was not in the best position at the time. The presence of the king is essential to encourage and take optimism to the troops. The king plays a very important part bringing comfort and hope to the troops in the battlefield to defend the kingdom and the king himself. The chorus also informs about the end of the war and has his last appearance in the epilogue when they tell the story and make the final remarks which focus on glorifying the king for his great achievements and thanking the audience for accepting the story and for their imagination. In the final part, the chorus makes a prediction about what the future of the kingdom will be:

This star of England: Fortune made his sword;
By which the world's best garden be achieved,
And of it left his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed:
Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake,
In your fair minds let this acceptance take.

(V, 2, 3360)

This is not the best prediction to England as it then suffered a lot of trouble but we can see how the chorus plays an important role in spreading a specific message to the audience. The chorus is very significant in the way he uses language and in the way he manipulates the audience, specially knowing that Shakespeare’s objectives were to describe the past events of the English history and to open the way to the trustful and most important dynasty of the English History and to Elizabeth I.

The chorus speech continuously maintain the organisation and the purposes presented in the prologue. He constantly creates the conditions to the construction of the king providing the audience with the needed information to face the lack of theatrical devices. The purpose of the chorus’s speech is to persuade the audience and to represent the king in the prologue as a very positive and glorious image of the king and the facts whereas in the epilogue the structure is created to present the opposite image of the king and the idea of destruction, of the end of an era and the critical coming of Henry VI.

The speeches Henry V make are clearly addressed to convince his people to do things, his speech is constructed on metaphors, the use of irony, words with double meaning or puns. One of the most important speeches of Henry V is the one he makes disguised as a soldier on the night before the battle of Harfleur. He meets his men and talks with some of them about the situation in the camp. He does so to know whether he can count on his troops for the following battle, to know how they feel about the conflict. But he doesn’t only talk about the conflict, he holds a conversation with two soldiers and although at the beginning he talks about the problems of the conflict he soon changes the subject and talks about him, the king. The soldiers have a very critical opinion about the king’s attitude, especially because, they say, he does not know what a war is because he is not with them. The king then stars talking to persuade his men at an equal level of argumentation about the fact that king Henry V is a different king. He talks about a king who would never abandon his men and who is willing to fight by their side. He has a difficult task, convincing the soldiers about the king of England as somebody who worries about his men and, on the other hand, to encourage them to defend their kingdom and their king. Once the men leave the king, he thinks about what he has heard and in his soliloquy he talks about the reason that separates ordinary men from kingship and the conclusion is that the only difference between ordinary men and the king is the ceremony, the institutional duty because without that “the king is but a man”. In his speech he uses metaphors, his tone is assertive and persuasive and excuses and justifies the king for his actions remembering the audience that the king does not posses any king of magical power to perform his duty because again, and in fact, “the king is but a man”.

No; nor it is not meet he should. For, though I

speak it to you, I think the king is but a man, as I

am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the

element shows to him as it doth to me; all his

senses have but human conditions: his ceremonies

laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and

though his affections are higher mounted than ours,

yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like

wing. Therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we

do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish

as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess

him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing