'O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention'
The opening Chorus
Shakespeare · Histories
Henry V
c. 1599
History — the last play of the second tetralogy
The last of the Henriad and probably one of the first plays staged at the new Globe. The reformed prince, now king, is provoked by a mocking gift from the Dauphin, claims the French crown, takes Harfleur and wins Agincourt against enormous odds on St Crispin's Day, 1415, and ends by wooing the French princess in broken French. A Chorus opens each act apologising for the inadequacy of the stage, which is also an advertisement for what the imagination can do inside a wooden O.
How to spot them
- ▸Agincourt, 25 October 1415 — St Crispin's Day
- ▸A Chorus who apologises for cramming the fields of France into a wooden O
- ▸A mocking gift of tennis balls from the Dauphin
- ▸A king walking in disguise among his soldiers the night before the battle
- ▸A wooing scene conducted half in French
Scenes, characters & lines
'Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O ...?'
The Chorus on the limits of the Elizabethan stage
'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead'
Before Harfleur
'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'
The St Crispin's Day speech, answering a wish for more men from home
'The game's afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry — God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'
The end of the Harfleur speech
A gift of tennis balls is sent as an insult, and answered with a threat about gun-stones
The Dauphin's mockery in Act 1
A king borrows a cloak and walks among his own soldiers the night before a battle, arguing about the justice of the war
The encounter with Williams, Bates and Court
The death of a fat knight, reported by his hostess: 'a' babbled of green fields'
Falstaff dies offstage, despite the promise at the end of the previous play
Key ideas
- The Chorus keeps insisting on the gap between the event and the theatre, which is both an apology and a boast
- The play can be staged as patriotic epic or as a study of a cold and calculating war leader; the text supports both, and the killing of the French prisoners is the hinge
Quick-fire facts
- •Agincourt was fought on 25 October 1415, the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian
- •The Chorus's 'wooden O' is usually taken to refer to the Globe, opened in 1599, though the Curtain has also been proposed
- •The first quarto of 1600 is a short, memorially reconstructed text with no Chorus; the Folio of 1623 gives the full play
- •Falstaff does not appear, though the epilogue to Part 2 had promised he would; his death is reported by Mistress Quickly in Act 2
- •Laurence Olivier's 1944 film, made during the Second World War and dedicated to the commandos and airborne troops, cut the darker material; Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film restored much of it
- •The Welsh captain Fluellen makes Pistol eat a leek after Pistol mocks the national emblem on St David's Day
- •The king woos Katherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI; their son becomes Henry VI
- •The comic 'four captains' scene gives an Englishman, a Welshman, a Scot and an Irishman — Gower, Fluellen, Jamy and Macmorris — arguing the art of war
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Sources
- Folger Shakespeare Library — Henry V
- T. W. Craik (ed.) — King Henry V (The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)