32- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – HENRY V – BBC –
1979
He is the perfect king
in Shakespeare’s plays who reigns from 1413 to 1422, hence nine years.
Shakespeare invested him in three previous plays, Richard II, 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry
IV. But in these plays he is a kid and then a teenager playing it hooky in the
taverns of London.
But that time is now finished as we know from his rebuke to Falstaff on his coronation
day at the end of 2 Henry IV. The man has changed and his most important
achievement is the battle of Agincourt on
October 25, 1415, the day that celebrates Saint Crispin that Shakespeare also
calls Crispian who was put to death on October 25, 285. Note how the superstitious
people of Shakespeare’s time can jubilate on the fact that 285 produces 15 by
adding the three digits of the date. Hence 1415 is a miracle date that brings
God down on Henry’s side to the point that the battle only kills twenty-five
people on the English side, dixit Shakespeare, twenty-five to honor October 25,
Saint Crispin’s day.
This English king who
has the intention to unify England
and France by marrying the
King of France’s daughter will fail in that respect since his son will only be six
years old when he dies in the Château of Vincennes in France on 1422.
Note though how they all are cousins or uncles. In other words these two crowns
are systematically inbreeding. There is little clean blood and new blood in
their descendants. Shakespeare seems to consider this as normal and even a sign
of closeness, hence a justification for unifying the two crowns and of course
the two nations that are seen and defined as being born under the kings of this
period. The War of Roses is like a nation-forming civil war, a war between
brothers and cousins, uncles and nephews. That’s one of the results of this
intense inbreeding. So Henry V marries his cousin. And their imposing the One Hundred
Year War onto the French will enable the French to become a nation at the same
time.
That’s the end of the
play and the courtship of Henry to Katharine is both awkward and funny how
Henry is behaving like a soldier and wants the courtship to be a battle and
Katharine to yield to his might, and at the same time how Katharine is
well-behaved and French-educated and she has to flee, fly away and flutter around,
and she swiftly parry his assault, deflect his attack, block and avert his
advance, counter and rebuff his intention, and finally repel and repulse his
vanity to take as a conquest what should be received as a gift or a present. Luckily
her father King Charles VI arrives and he can finally give his daughter to
Henry and Henry can finally receive Katharine. The love words of Henry are
vastly contorted by the linguistic game of both, Katharine trying to speak some
English and Henry attempting the impossible task of speaking some French.
The whole action of the play
is one battle or nearly, the war leading to that battle, Agincourt,
and it is thus entirely dominated by military questions. It contrasts the
English army led by Henry V and the French army led by the Dauphin in the name
of his aging father Charles VI. Imagine the French nobles drinking wine in the
morning before the battle and boasting that they are going to defeat the
English the way they gulp their wine. On the other side the English are austere
and very serious in their concentration on God and his necessary help. The
English are humble in many ways and the French are vain, as vain as peacocks
who will end up plucked like chickens before roasting or broiling.
In a very clear sign of
defeat Montjoy, the French herald, appears three times. The second time he had
said he would not come again, and the third time he comes to concede the day is
Henry’s, hence the defeat. Three is always a sign of a disturbance, a bad news,
a catastrophe. But the catastrophe of one side is the victory of the other. And
he will come a fourth time with the body counts that will settle the bad news
and bring up a good news. First the French body count:
There are but sixteen
hundred mercenaries;
The rest are princes,
barons, lords, knights, squires,
And gentlemen of blood
and quality.” (Act IV,
Scene viii)
And then the English body count:
Sir Richard Ketly, Davy
Gam, esquire:
None else of name; and
of all other men
But five and twenty.” (Act IV, Scene viii)
But the strong point is the night before the battle. On the
French side they revel and are bored of waiting. On the English side they try
to rest and concentrate on their divine mission. The king though tries
something delicate: he hides himself under some cloak and goes around to check
on his men. Security is correct every single time he comes up in the night. He
finally sits with a group of soldiers and one of them, Williams, gets into an
argument with the King, not knowing who he is, because Williams is not as
respectful as he should be and Henry overreacts. But this leads to a deep and
sad reflection of the king. He sees his place as the depositary of all the
tasks and actions of the people but he also considers that the soul of these
people is their own and they have to look after it themselves, as he says to
the soldiers in the night.
And then alone he gets onto a long reflection of the fate of
a king, shifting from prose to verse to let us know he is reaching out to the sky,
to God, to the truth of life he definitely considers as the truth of God.
“HENRY V: Upon the king! Let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay
on the king!
We must bear all. O hard
condition,
Twin-born with greatness,
subject to the breath
Of every fool, whose sense no
more can feel
But his own wringing! What
infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that
private men enjoy!
[…]
I am a king that find thee,
and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre
and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown
imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold
and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore
the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the
tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore
of this world,
No, not all these,
thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed
majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the
wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and
vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with
distressful bread;
[…]
In other words
Shakespeare considers this king as the best, the true king of England and he
sets in his own mouth the ideal of kingship he, Shakespeare, is advocating. Yet
Henry IV’s misappropriating the crown is there in Henry V’s mind as an inerasable
crime or stain that can only bring mishap and some fateful accident, just like the
death of the Duke of York in the battle which will be put on his bill one way
or another since he is a Lancaster and the house of York is his rival. The bad
news is always wrapped up in some sweet meat and turns it sour or sickening. The
king will die young leaving an infant, or a child, on the throne and a war
raging in France,
not to speak of the persistent rivalry between the two roses.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:31 AM