Where do we sit with King Henry V? Valiant or a villain? Action hero or antihero? MVP or SOB? The answer, in Marion Potts’ new production for Bell Shakespeare, is all of the above.
I THINK THE KING IS BUT A MAN
The Henry we meet in this instalment of Shakespeare’s Henriad tetralogy is Prince Hal 2.0. Since we saw him in the Boar’s Head Tavern with Falstaff, King Henry is now all grown up, more complicated than ever, and “cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion”.
On the one hand, King Henry achieves the unachievable, leading the English army to victory over the French at Azincourt with miraculously minor losses. He’s a leader. A succeeder. A stonkingly good speaker. He’s the all-conquering warrior dressed in underdog’s clothing.
On the other hand, Henry’s warmongering is morally questionable at best. Having been advised by his father King Henry IV in the prequel to “busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels”, Henry leans on the church to sanction his war and then lays the blame with the French Dauphin. Later, our warlike Harry is described as “the mirror of all Christian kings”, and yet his threats against civilians at Harfleur are hellish, while his execution of prisoners of war at Azincourt is criminal.
Yes, even by Shakespeare’s standards, Henry is an especially nuanced and often contradictory character.
What we need, then, when discussing Henry, that soldier, that king, is a word that encapsulates the full span of humanity in a few snappy syllables. True, Shakespeare is credited with inventing or introducing over 1,700 words to the English language including “changeful” and “multitudinous”—and those come close to what we’re describing—but neither word completely captures the sheer spectrum of human experience that we see packed into the character of King Henry V.
A KINGDOM FOR A STAGE
According to novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” In Henry—both the protagonist and the play itself—Shakespeare holds multiple and shifting ideas in mind while retaining the ability to be wildly entertaining and universally appealing.
Of course, the question of whether Henry is a hero (or otherwise) depends on whether you view the play as a chest-thumping, flag-waving patriotic party, or if you see it as a critique of war. But again, Shakespeare defies binaries and deflects dichotomies, and again the answer is: it’s complicated.
In his book, On Shakespeare, John Bell tells us that Henry V, Shakespeare’s most famous war play, is “neither anti- nor pro-war but about war in all its aspects”. This is the full story of war — the gory and the glory. Humanity v humanity, and all that it entails, crammed within the wooden O of Shakespeare’s stage.
Henry V is a play that’s mired in, well, the mire of the human condition. Deep in the sludge and slurry of us. In this production, set designer Anna Tregloan conjures this internal mudscape from literal, visceral mud, so that the cast are simultaneously slogging across the human psyche while they’re trudging “the vasty fields of France”.
ONCE MORE UNTO THE SPEECH
If there really is an indisputable hero in Henry 5, then that hero is Shakespeare’s language. From soul-stirring rhetoric to lofty poetry, and from free-flowing prose to bawdy banter, there’s something for everyone in this bilingual retelling of Henry 5.
The play contains not one, not two, but three highly recitable, always recognisable speeches from our king.
The first is the famous “Once more unto the breach” speech, delivered during the siege at Harfleur. This is on-brand Harry. Harry rallying the troops. And yet he sounds dangerously like a divine-ruler-turned-despot at this point in Marion Potts’ production.
The second is a soliloquy delivered on the eve of battle. Here, responsibility is weighing heavily on Henry as he expands on Shakespeare’s “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” theme last seen in Henry IV Part 2:
“Upon the king! Let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the king!”
The third, of course, is Henry’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, delivered at the battle of Azincourt, when our soldier king urges his troops onwards; onwards with the promise of that classic human desire—immortality:
“This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered —
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”
Often a hero, sometimes a villain. At Azincourt, our Henry might be outnumbered and outclassed, but he’s never out of words.
Felicity McLean is an author and writer. felicitymclean.com
