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Thoughts on Henry V
I recently reread Shakespeare's Henry V. As with all the best stories, it has grown with me; coming to it a different man, I see different qualities within it. Three main observations this time.
1) I did not recall I.i. as being such naked politicking. And it's more relevant today than ever. One could easily cast it in modern terms.
CEO A: Congress is saying that our industry has too much money, and they're trying to nationalize us.
CEO B: Damn Commies! What does the President think about it.
CEO A: He could go either way on this. But I think I've worked out a way to get him solidly on our side. First, I've had my lawyers work out a casus belli for that war he's been wanting to have.
CEO B: I dunno, isn't that a little thin?
CEO A: Hey, we're the experts here, people will trust us. Second, we offer up a bribe of $BIGNUM to 'help the war effort', all patriotic-like.
CEO B: (whistles) That's a lot of money.
CEO A: Yeah, but it's just a one-time payment. If it gets him to leave our *business* intact, it's a bargain for us. It'll pay for itself in no time.
2) My goodness, Hal is a total moral coward. Brave enough in physical terms, but terrified of responsibility. First he tells the clergy that the moral responsibility for the war is theirs (which they readily accept). Next, he tells the French Herald that the Dauphin's insults caused the war (patently untrue). In Southhampton, he manipulates the traitors into effectively pronouncing their own sentences, so he doesn't have to feel guilty about it. At Harfleur, he tells the town that, if they don't surrender, he won't be responsible for the rapine and slaughter that will follow.
And, of course, in his disguised wanderings the night before Agincourt, he argues vehemently that the King is not responsible for the deaths of his soldiers.
Even in victory, he can't bring himself to take credit, but leaves it all up to God.
3) I see a message in this play which I never saw before: Trust no one.
In practically every scene, people say things which are clearly untrue. I'm not just talking about outright lies, either. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and malapropisms are at least as prominent. And those which are lies come in every shade, from polite white lies all the way to high treason.
Even the Prologue is not exempt. He spends his whole second speech talking about "Now let us go to Southampton. Look, here we are in Southampton. Southhampton, Southampton, Southampton!" And the curtain rises on... London. At first I thought this a careless error on Will's part (or his editors'), but looking back, I saw how it fit into the general theme.
The matter of the Agincourt prisoners is also of interest here. Three scene-lets pass in quick succession. In the first, Hal says (approximately) "The French are getting reinforcements, so tell everyone to kill their prisoners." Then, we see soldiers discussing the slaughter of the boys at the baggage cart, and claiming that *that* caused Hal to order the prisoners slain. Then the scene shifts back again to Hal, who clearly has *just now* heard about the slaughter of the boys. To confuse matters further, he then asks how many prisoners were taken, with an implication (to me, at least) that they weren't executed after all!
The soaring rhetoric that the play is famous for is no less full of misspeaking. As already mentioned, Hal's speech to the French Herald in I.ii. is, at base, a lie. When he tells "we happy few" that whoever fights with him "shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,/ This day shall gentle his condition" he is again lying, as the post-battle scene with Pistol clearly demonstrates. Even when the words sound sweet, don't trust them.
No significant character in the play is without notable errors or lies. No one can be fully trusted. Perhaps God can, but he doesn't actually say anything in the play; his earthly representatives don't seem especially trustworthy.
1) I did not recall I.i. as being such naked politicking. And it's more relevant today than ever. One could easily cast it in modern terms.
CEO A: Congress is saying that our industry has too much money, and they're trying to nationalize us.
CEO B: Damn Commies! What does the President think about it.
CEO A: He could go either way on this. But I think I've worked out a way to get him solidly on our side. First, I've had my lawyers work out a casus belli for that war he's been wanting to have.
CEO B: I dunno, isn't that a little thin?
CEO A: Hey, we're the experts here, people will trust us. Second, we offer up a bribe of $BIGNUM to 'help the war effort', all patriotic-like.
CEO B: (whistles) That's a lot of money.
CEO A: Yeah, but it's just a one-time payment. If it gets him to leave our *business* intact, it's a bargain for us. It'll pay for itself in no time.
2) My goodness, Hal is a total moral coward. Brave enough in physical terms, but terrified of responsibility. First he tells the clergy that the moral responsibility for the war is theirs (which they readily accept). Next, he tells the French Herald that the Dauphin's insults caused the war (patently untrue). In Southhampton, he manipulates the traitors into effectively pronouncing their own sentences, so he doesn't have to feel guilty about it. At Harfleur, he tells the town that, if they don't surrender, he won't be responsible for the rapine and slaughter that will follow.
And, of course, in his disguised wanderings the night before Agincourt, he argues vehemently that the King is not responsible for the deaths of his soldiers.
Even in victory, he can't bring himself to take credit, but leaves it all up to God.
3) I see a message in this play which I never saw before: Trust no one.
In practically every scene, people say things which are clearly untrue. I'm not just talking about outright lies, either. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and malapropisms are at least as prominent. And those which are lies come in every shade, from polite white lies all the way to high treason.
Even the Prologue is not exempt. He spends his whole second speech talking about "Now let us go to Southampton. Look, here we are in Southampton. Southhampton, Southampton, Southampton!" And the curtain rises on... London. At first I thought this a careless error on Will's part (or his editors'), but looking back, I saw how it fit into the general theme.
The matter of the Agincourt prisoners is also of interest here. Three scene-lets pass in quick succession. In the first, Hal says (approximately) "The French are getting reinforcements, so tell everyone to kill their prisoners." Then, we see soldiers discussing the slaughter of the boys at the baggage cart, and claiming that *that* caused Hal to order the prisoners slain. Then the scene shifts back again to Hal, who clearly has *just now* heard about the slaughter of the boys. To confuse matters further, he then asks how many prisoners were taken, with an implication (to me, at least) that they weren't executed after all!
The soaring rhetoric that the play is famous for is no less full of misspeaking. As already mentioned, Hal's speech to the French Herald in I.ii. is, at base, a lie. When he tells "we happy few" that whoever fights with him "shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,/ This day shall gentle his condition" he is again lying, as the post-battle scene with Pistol clearly demonstrates. Even when the words sound sweet, don't trust them.
No significant character in the play is without notable errors or lies. No one can be fully trusted. Perhaps God can, but he doesn't actually say anything in the play; his earthly representatives don't seem especially trustworthy.