And, Kate, when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France, and you are mine. (176-82)

He gets the deserved response: “I cannot tell wat is dat,” and the plain soldier is forced to attempt “false French.” Yet now they speak more freely, and as Harry’s blood “begins to flatter” him that he is loved, he speaks lightly of his father’s ambition, which had held him in prayer before battle:

Now beshrew my father’s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars when he got me, therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that when I come to woo ladies, I fright them. (233-37)

Too much should not be made of this reference; it shows a relaxation of mind, not a conscious change of attitude. Soon, against the “custom” of France, they kiss, and are silent together. And then, gently and with an intimate, relaxing jest, Harry acknowledges what has been given and taken, and understood without words:

You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French Council... (288-91)

The stage fills again, the relaxed mood being sustained by Burgundy’s heavy teasing of the bridegroom. The latter still insists on receiving the cities of the bride’s dowry and the title of Inheritor of France, but with a general “Amen,” the contesting sides stand solemnly side by side in agreement. As the focus thus widens fully again, and steadies, there is another silence as Harry kisses Kate before them all, as his “sovereign Queen.” But the view is also acute and questioning. Shakespeare has not attempted to show a love match, or a union in which the audience may be easily confident; and now the bride’s mother reminds them frankly of:

... fell jealousy.
Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage.
(375-76)

The long wooing scene—far more elaborate than at first seems to be required by the dramatic context—has served to show afresh and with an intermittent intensity the need for an honest heart, and the danger and embarrassment of relying on words alone; and, in the kiss, it suggested an inward understanding, peace, affection, unity that may be a greater solvent, a more powerful reorganizing power, than words or battles: the silence of the kiss is a shared silence in which the audience instinctively participates and must make its own judgment.

Representatives of two societies take up, with remembrances of past action and hopes and prayers for the future, their final positions of concord; and Harry, speaking formally within the wide picture, closes the play with a further pointer to the heart of all matters:

... we’ll take your oath,
And all the peers‘, for surety of our leagues.
Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me,
And may our oaths well kept and prosp’rous be!a(383-86)

Shakespeare has finished his long series of history plays by presenting a group of people standing together: behind appearances and oaths there is need for an “honest heart”; within the wide range the audience is invited to search for signs of inward peace, good faith, affection, trust, of that which “never changes, but keeps his course truly.” When the stage empties and the Chorus announces the end of the action, he also speaks of later times when all France was lost and England bled again. If this play has received its intended “acceptance,” it will not be destructive or irrelevant to remind the audience that the final, peaceful grouping was neither fully honest nor fully permanent.

Henry the Fifth is a hero-centered historical pageant that presents a clear narrative and varied characters. In that, it differs from Shakespeare’s earlier histories, with their concern with political necessity or “commodity,” with rebellion, power and conscience, and with God’s providence. But it was not an easy, or routine, declension from a more serious drama. The play tries to relate the personal, instinctive and affectionate truth of human relationships, exemplified in the meeting of Kate and Harry, with warfare, politics and national rivalries; and it has effected this in the wide range of characters that is such an important aid to the full acceptance of this play. Mistress Quickly’s account of Falstaff’s death, Fluellen’s incongruous loyalty and familiarity with his king, Williams’ defense of his honest heart, Pistol’s recognition of the end of his campaign, and Kate and Harry’s kiss, all represent the necessary element of human understanding, as eloquent as Burgundy’s general evocation of the virtues of peace. The audience’s involvement in these moments is of a different nature from its involvement in the narrative of war and politics, and is of pervasive, because unthinking, importance in the reception of the play as a whole.

—JOHN RUSSELL BROWN
University of Michigan

[Dramatis Personae

Chorus

King Henry the Fifth

Dukes of Gloucester and Bedford, brothers of the King

Duke of Exeter, uncle of the King

Duke of York, cousin of the King

Earls of Salisbury, Westmoreland, Warwick, and Cambridge

Archbishop of Canterbury

Bishop of Ely

Lord Scroop

Sir Thomas Grey

Sir Thomas Erpingham

Gower, Fluellen, Macmorris, Jamy, officers in the English army

John Bates, Alexander Court, Michael Williams, soldiers in the English army

Pistol, Nym, Bardolph

Boy

An English Herald

Charles the Sixth, King of France

Lewis, the Dauphin

Dukes of Burgundy, Orleans, Bourbon, and Bretagne

The Constable of France

Rambures and Grandpré, French lords

Governor of Harfleur

Montjoy, a French herald

Ambassadors to King Henry

Isabel, Queen of France

Katherine, daughter of the French King and Queen

Alice, an attendant to Katherine

Hostess Quickly of an Eastcheap tavern, married to Pistol

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers and Attendants

 

 

Scene: England; France]

The Life of Henry the Fifth

Enter Prologue.

O for a Muse of fire,°b that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention:°
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling° scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,°
Assume the port of Mars,° and at his heels
(Leashed in, like hounds) should famine, sword, and
fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles° all,
The flat unraised spiritso that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold° to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O° the very casques°
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon—since a crooked figure° may
Attest in little place a million;

1 Prologue

1 fire (1) most airy (sublime) of the four elements (2) warlike nature (cf. line 6 below and 2 Prologue 1)

2 invention imaginative creation

4 swelling stately

5 like himself (1) incomparable (2) worthy of himself

6 port of Mars bearing of the god of war

8 gentles gentlefolk

9 flat unraised spirits i.e., dull, uninspired actors and playwright

10 scaffold stage (technical term)

13 wooden O small wooden circle; i.e., the theater of the King’s Men (at the first performance, this was probably the Curtain)

13 very casques i.e., helmets, even without the men who wore them

15 crooked figure i.e., a nought, that could change 100,000 into 1,000,000

And let us, ciphers° to this great accompt,°
On your imaginary° forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high, uprearèd and abutting fronts°
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.°
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man
And make imaginary puissance.°
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud° hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth;
For ‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them° here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’ accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass; for the which supply,°
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who, Prologue-like, your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play. Exit.

17 ciphers nothings

17 accompt (1) sum total (2) story

18 imaginary imaginative

21 fronts frontiers

21-22 high ... asunder i.e., the cliffs of Dover and Calais, on opposite sides of the English Channel

25 puissance armed force (a trisyllable)

27 proud spirited

29 them i.e., thoughts (?), kings (?)

31 for the which supply to help you in which

ACT 1

Scene 1. [London. An antechamber in the King’s palace.]

Enter the two Bishops [the Archbishop] of Canterbury and [the Bishop of Ely.

Canterbury. My lord, I’ll tell you, that self° bill is urged

Which in th’ eleventh year of the last king’s reign°
Was like,° and had indeed against us passed
But that the scambling° and unquiet time
Did push it out of farther question.

Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?

Canterbury. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,

We lose the better half of our possession;
For all the temporal° lands which men devout
By testament have given to the Church
Would they strip from us; being valued thus—
As much as would maintain, to the King’s honor,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires,
And to relief of lazars,° and weak age
Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,

1.1.1 self same

2 eleventh ...