Henry V
Henry V, chronicle play in five acts by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1599 and published in 1600 in a corrupt quarto edition. The text in the First Folio of 1623, printed seemingly from an authorial manuscript, is substantially longer and more reliable. Henry V is the last in a sequence of four plays (the others being Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2). Known collectively as the “second tetralogy,” the plays depict major events in English history of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The group of plays is often referred to as “the Henriad,” named for Prince Hal, who is central to the events in both parts of Henry IV and is the title character in Henry V.
The main source of the play was Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577), but Shakespeare may also have been influenced by an earlier play about King Henry V called The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth.
Plot
The depiction of the character of Henry V dominates the play throughout, from his nervous watch before the Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415), when he walks disguised among his fearful soldiers and prays for victory, to his courtship of the French princess Katharine (Catherine of Valois), which is romantic and tender despite the marriage’s having been arranged by the duke of Burgundy.
Henry plans and begins his French campaign (Prologue, Acts I–III)
A chorus (a narrator who addresses the audience) introduces the play. In keeping with his father Henry IV’s advice (in Henry IV, Part 2) to seek foreign quarrels, Henry V, formerly Prince Hal, resolves to subjugate France and retake the lands in France previously held by England. His political and military advisers conclude that he has a rightful claim to the French crown and encourage him to follow the military exploits of his royal ancestors. Ambassadors from the dauphin, or heir apparent to the French throne (here, the son of Charles VI), arrive with a gift of tennis balls, intended as an insult to Henry. The action of the first two acts of the play culminates in Henry’s campaign in France with a ragtag army.
Henry and his forces lay siege to the French port of Harfleur. He is offered the hand of princess Katharine in marriage but is not dissuaded from his offensive against Harfleur. To spur his troops to battle, Henry delivers a famous speech that begins:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
Harfleur surrenders to Henry. However, Henry’s army is greatly diminished, and he plans to proceed up the coast to Calais instead of advancing on Paris.
The Battle of Agincourt and Treaty of Troyes (Acts IV–V, Epilogue)
The Battle of Agincourt took place on October 25, the feast day of St. Crispin, who is the patron saint of shoemakers, along with his brother St. Crispinian. In his famous speech, Henry V predicts that the feast day will be forever commemorated as the anniversary of the English victory. The battle was a decisive outcome in favor of the English in the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453).
Henry’s troops are outnumbered by the French at the Battle of Agincourt; however, the English army gains an advantage by way of the terrain of the battlefield and is victorious despite the numerical superiority of the French. Shakespeare hedges the patriotic fantasy of English greatness in Henry V with hesitations and qualifications about the validity of the myth of glorious nationhood offered by the Agincourt story.
The king’s speech to his troops before battle on St. Crispin’s Day is particularly famous for its evocation of a brotherhood in arms, but Shakespeare has placed it in a context full of ironies and challenging contrasts—the glory of remembrance in return for bloodshed on a battlefield. The best-known excerpt from the speech:
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;
Although almost all the fighting occurs offstage, the recruits, professional soldiers, dukes, and princes are shown preparing for defeat or victory. Comic figures abound, notably the Welsh captain, Fluellen, and some of Henry’s former companions, notably Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol, who is now married to Mistress Quickly (part of Falstaff’s entourage in other Shakespeare plays, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor). Falstaff, however, dies offstage in Act II without actually appearing in the play, perhaps because Shakespeare felt his boisterous presence would detract from the more serious themes.
After the French defeat, Henry woos Katherine in a romantic interlude conducted partly in English and partly in French. She consents to marry him, and the English and the French negotiate a peace treaty (the Treaty of Troyes, although it is not named as such in the play). In the end the chorus reminds the audience that England was to be plunged into civil war during the reign of Henry V’s son, Henry VI.
For a discussion of this play within the context of Shakespeare’s entire corpus, see William Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s plays and poems.