| Henry V: Remembering Agincourt
, Forgetting Falstaff Shakespeare’s Henry V was first printed in 1600 and was probably performed in 1599. It dramatizes events described in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (published in 1587). The play was also influenced by an earlier historical work, Edward Hall’s Union of the two Noble Houses of York and Lancaster (1542). Holinshed had absorbed most of this into his own account, but there are signs that Shakespeare read Hall’s original. There seem to have been a number of earlier Elizabethan plays about Henry V, but the (somewhat mangled) text of only one has survived, the anonymous Famous Victories of King Henry the Fifth. This has several features in common with both parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V and may have been a source for Shakespeare’s treatment of Henry’s career. Shakespeare took what was available to him from the history books, sometimes to the extent of virtually paraphrasing whole speeches, but he selected and rearranged material. He simplified the events of Henry’s reign, foreshortening the negotiations before the expedition of France, and hurrying |
| Henry V was the son of a usurper, and the guilt of his father’s
deposition of Richard II returns to his mind on the eve of Agincourt, but his
own reign was remarkable for its relative lack of civil disruption.
Shakespeare’s play includes the one notable plot against the King, but
makes it a matter of personal treachery: he
does not even mention the conspirators’ plan to install the Earl of March in
the throne (in the event March refused to countenance the plot and told Henry
about it). It is surprising, given
the popularity of the Henry IV plays,
that no reference is made to any irony of this story:
Cambridge’s son was Richard of York, whose claim to the throne was to
provide the dynastic justification of the Wars of the Roses.
In Holinshed’s account, Henry interrogates the conspirators privately,
then arraigns them in public; the trick played on them in Henry
V is Shakespeare’s invention. Holinshed
makes it clear that Henry, for all his virtues, was not without ‘policy’—a
sometimes cynical appreciation of practical politics.
The march from Harfleur to Calais was in fact a retreat represented as an
expedition. On his march, as on a
later campaign not dramatized by Shakespeare, Henry was anxious that his army
should not mistreat the inhabitants of the countryside or loot as they went
along, but for practical reasons as much as goodness of heart: a well-disposed population would be an asset, especially as
he wanted the country for himself. Henry’s
command during the battle of Agincourt to kill the French prisoners was (says
Holinshead) ‘contrary to his accustomed gentleness’ but it was also a
necessary tactic at that point in the battle—not simply an angry response to
the enemy’s attack on ‘the boys and the baggage.’ The order of the battle and the King’s tactics are described
in detail by Holinshed, so that Henry’s military astuteness is given as much
prominence as his personal bravery: some
of this attention to the conduct of war is focused in the play through the
character of Fluellen. At the same
time, Holinshed makes much of Henry’s insistence that the victory is God’s
work, not his. After the battle
Henry orders that the Te deum should
be sung, together with the psalm ‘Non nobis domine . . .’—‘Not to us, o
Lord, but to thy name let glory be given.’
Perhaps we should remember that when a King who claims to be appointed by
God says something of this sort, it is as much a reminder of his own power as a
gesture of humility. The numbers of
dead at Agincourt in Holinshed’s account are four English nobles, ‘Davy Gam,
esquire,’ and 25 of other ranks, while the French slain are numbered at
10,000---although the historian also notes another estimate that puts the
English casualties at 500 or 600. Shakespeare
goes for the more extravagant, miraculous figures for what was in any case a
remarkable victory. Henry V emerges from Holinshed as a pragmatic King, anxious not to alienate potential supporters, modest and god-fearing as much from a sense of efficiency as through Christian virtue, and above all successful. In Holinshed’s summing-up, Henry was ‘a pattern in princehood, a lode-star of honor, and mirror of magnificence,’ but there is enough in what has gone before to show how realistic Henry’s politics had been. In Shakespeare’s play it seems at first as though in some respects the figure has been simplified: the Chorus encourages spectators to watch an epic, heroic tale; the rivalry between the shallow, boastful Dauphin and Henry is played up; the compression of events after Agincourt suggests that this victory led directly to triumph, concord and an ideal marriage—then the Chorus reinforces the wonder of this by reminding us that all was lost in the reign of Henry’s son, ‘in infant bands made king.’ The material is there for an unthinking splendid patriotic celebration—event the Welsh, Scots and Irish are united in the French expedition. Some notable productions of the play, including Olivier’s 1944 film, have achieved precisely this effect, but there are elements of Shakespeare’s work that undermine it. As well as adapting historical events for the stage, Shakespeare carries forward a fictional and romantic narrative: the prodigal son who turns into an exemplary King. And in doing this it brings out the degree to which Henry has chosen to cut himself off from old acquaintance. If we were to look for a subtitle for Henry V it might be, ‘Remembering Agincourt—Forgetting Falstaff.’ The tavern companions of Prince Hal fade as the play progresses: Falstaff is dead, Bardolf is hanged (a victim of that astute order against looting) and Pistol stagers home to England, a lone survivor. New, more respectable commoners replace these in Henry’s life, although his relationship with the men of his army is hardly an easy one. On the night before the battle he is hard put to justify the war in moral terms, and even the stirring speeches for which the play is usually remembered arise out of a need to summon up the spirits that otherwise might be absent in his ranks. In the opening scene there is nothing easy about the decision to go to war, however popular it might be with his council, and it is shown that Henry describes vividly the worst that can happen to civilians in wartime. Even in the comedy of the wooing at the end of the play, Henry is put on the spot when the Princess asks ‘Is it possible that I should love the enemy of France?’ |
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He that shall live this day, and see old age |
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And
Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, |
Henry V
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