Focus on "Henry V":

Navigating Digital Text, Performance, & Historical Resources

Cutting the Chorus

Page Two Audio File

Figure 1 | Figure 2 | Figure 3 | Figure 4 | Figure 5 | Figure 6

Of the lines spoken by the Chorus, Olivier’s film leaves out many lines of text in each act and cuts the Act 5 prologue entirely from the script. Of the two hundred thirty lines spoken by the Chorus in the play, only one hundred thirty of the Chorus’s lines make it into the finished film (see Figures 1-6 and Appendix). Of those lines, only half a line of text (2.Cho.31a) is repeated in the whole film, bringing the total count to one hundred twenty-nine and a half lines. Olivier cut almost one hundred lines of the text that act as the audience’s explanatory notes and exposition.

Good filmmakers know when to make cuts for sake of story when adapting books or plays for the screen, and Olivier is no exception to this rule. When Henry V is translated to the screen – and within the film itself, to the period setting of Henry’s reign – the need for a character to set the scene for the audience is almost entirely eliminated. For instance, Olivier wisely cuts the mention of King Henry VI in the play’s epilogue because it is not relevant to the story he wants to tell. It would only cause confusion in the audience. Shakespeare’s reason for referencing Henry VI in the epilogue is arguably to tie Henry V to his three Henry VI plays. Because he was not making a series of movies based on the histories, Olivier had no need to include such a reference. Instead, Olivier’s film starts and ends with Henry V and focuses on showing him to be a strong king. Olivier cannot show Henry’s strength if he lets the Chorus talk about how Henry VI “lost France and made [Henry V’s] England bleed,” especially in a propaganda film meant to inspire soldiers (5.Epi.12). Most of the lines Olivier cuts are simply exposition unnecessary to the film’s plot.

Olivier’s cinematic technique involving the Chorus, played by Leslie Banks, first occurs in the prologue to the play. Before the Chorus comes out to start the play for the Globe audience, the film audience is made aware that the film’s narrative perspective is a production of Henry V at the Globe Theatre in England. Olivier’s choice to set the film in Elizabethan London is significant because it allowed his English audience to revisit the Golden Age of their war-torn and bombed homeland. This Golden Age London was now foreign to Olivier’s audience. The film’s nostalgic tone draws viewers into the story, the Chorus itself functioning as a nostalgic device of theatre. The Chorus as a dramatic persona is Greek in origin and already an archaic device by Shakespeare’s time; even Shakespeare himself barely used choruses in his dramas. If used at all, an Early Modern drama would include a chorus in a prologue and an epilogue. In Olivier’s film world of Shakespeare’s Globe, the Chorus of the play is the audience’s window into the production. While remaining part of the cast, he is also one of us, to use a colloquial phrase. If the world of the play is imagination, the Chorus is the bridge between imagination and reality. He reconciles history and fantasy, as do the Greek epics, as seen through his invocation to the “muse of fire” in the first line of the play (Pro.1). 

Henry V’s Chorus functions like the choruses in Greek dramas in the way that it provides exposition for the audience, so the titular characters do not have to do so. In this way, the Chorus acts more like a technical framework for the production by bookending the text with exposition. The character is isolated and set apart from the rest of the cast and does not interact with the other characters: in Shakespeare’s text its job is to impart knowledge and understanding of the scenes to the audience through prologues and epilogues and to encourage audience members to think critically about what they are watching. 

Figure 1 (Prologue) 



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35		OLIVIER’S CHORUS (CUT TEXT)

O, for a muse of fire that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and
fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?




On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.


Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth,
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our
kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’ accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass; for the which supply,
Admit me chorus to this history,
Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.		SHAKESPEARE’S CHORUS (UNCUT TEXT)

O, for a muse of fire that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and
fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O pardon, since a crookèd figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth,
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our
kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’ accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass; for the which supply,
Admit me chorus to this history,
Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.

The first two Chorus monologues within the film are given to members of the Globe’s audience, with the exception of one line of dialogue in the initial prologue. The Chorus, somewhat rhetorically, asks if

this cockpit [can] hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt? (Pro.12-15)

Bank’s Chorus trades the next three lines of the prologue for a simple shake of the head as he “approaches the camera, takes a long dramatic pause, and appeals directly to his contemporary viewer.” Banks breaks the fourth wall and looks directly at the camera. He then says, “On your imaginary forces work,” before returning to address the rest of the theatre (Pro.19). Between this line and lines 12-15, Olivier cuts:

O pardon, since a crookèd figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great account (Pro. 16-18)

which then lead into, “On your imaginary forces work” (Pro.19). 

By eliminating these three lines from the film, Olivier subverts the meaning of the Folio text. The Chorus of that text lets the audience know that the actors are the key to unlocking the story of Henry V and that they as a company will inspire the audience’s imaginations. Instead of taking responsibility for communicating the play to the crowd, including the viewers of the film, Olivier’s Chorus skips over line 18. This turns the line “on your imaginary forces work” into an imperative sentence (Pro.19). The Chorus shifts the responsibility of audience experience from the players to the spectators and calls for those beyond the camera lens to imagine. In order to gain access to the story of Henry V, the mind must be used. Olivier’s Globe performance in the film is not a play that can be watched idly. The viewers of the film are invited to “[s]uppose within the girdle of [the Globe’s] walls / Are now confined two mighty monarchies:” (Pro.20-21) England and France. When the players “talk of horses,” they invite the audience to “see them / Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth” (Pro.27-28). Olivier makes it more than clear through his Chorus that the audience must do the imagining. This technique is sly since he transitions to the period setting of Henry V’s plot later on in the film. Even slyer is Olivier’s use of the Chorus as a seemingly neutral storyteller.

The film Chorus seems objective in the eyes of the audience because, in general, the Chorus’s job is to help the audience transition to the next setting. In the prologue to Act 3, Shakespeare’s Chorus tells the viewers to “leave [their] England” behind and “work [their] thoughts, and therein see a siege” at the gates of Harfleur in France (3.Cho.20; 26). No physical transition occurs onstage, with the exception of potential set or props in this scene. The audience has only the Chorus’s words to help place the following scenes in France. Peter Donaldson writes that the play’s prologue “initiates a double perspective on the action” and “signals a discrepancy between self and role that guides our perception of the king’s performative and self-divided character [and] … authorizes the ‘imaginations’ of the spectators.” The Chorus enters as neutral but in reality is the audience’s guide into propaganda for a victorious England. The viewers of the film, in contrast, are both aware they are watching a film and are invested in filling out the rest of the stage using their imaginations. Thankfully, Olivier’s magic does not wait long to pervade the film’s audience. 

The film Chorus uses technical magic to create a sense of its objectivity through stage performance, voiceovers, and a psychedelic green screen moment reminiscent of the floating head of the pseudonymous Wizard of Oz. Olivier struggled, however, with the initial placement of the Chorus within the film. In his memoir On Acting, he muses about

What sort of man … Shakespeare’s Chorus [was] to be, narrating and commenting his way through the play, showing his frustration that the Globe audience weren’t in France? Get rid of him altogether? Have him as a voice-over, appearing at the end to wrap up the show? Ah! No voice-over, but if the Chorus at the end, why not at the beginning as well, where Shakespeare put him? And in the Globe, as Shakespeare had him. 

While Olivier did not turn his film’s epilogue into a voiceover, he did make great use of the cinematic technique. Of the ten times that the Chorus speaks in the film, five are full voiceovers, two are partial voiceovers, and three speeches occur on the stage of the Globe. (Olivier uses voiceovers with only three characters in the entire film: the Chorus, Falstaff, and Henry the night before his St. Crispin’s Day speech.) Audiences may tend to recall the Chorus’s speeches in the Globe at the beginning and end, which bookend the cinematic action of the rest of the film. The other speeches are memorable, but the voiceovers blend seamlessly with the dramatic action of the film’s events. One of the two partial voiceovers occurs when we switch from the Globe to Southampton when Henry leaves for France. The switch in setting is immediately believable because of the Chorus’s words and actions. The audience experiences “a definite sensation of starting over—or indeed starting from the top” of the production. This is the real play. Because the jump to a historical setting from the playhouse is treated seriously, the audience has no trouble believing it. The second partial voiceover involves a green screen projection of the Chorus hovering over the English army sailing for France.

The Henry of the play text is known for his dual nature of bloodthirsty warrior and gentle king, though Olivier’s textual cuts diminish this duality, leaving only half of it. Other than the aforementioned cut lines (Pro.16-18) from the initial prologue, the speech has only one other cut. The Chorus commands his audience, “Into a thousand parts divide one man, / And make imaginary puissance,” meaning that the spectators of the performance must make the mental leap themselves to see Henry as multifaceted, complex, and powerful from the start (Pro.25-26). In his essay on the dual nature of Henry as a king, Norman Rabkin compares Henry to the two-dimensional optical illusion that either looks like a rabbit or a duck depending on how one looks at it. He uses this illustration of a rabbit-duck to show that we see varying sides of the king’s character at different times throughout the play. Sometimes, Henry is inspirational and warm, as in his St. Crispin’s Day speech. Other times, he is ruthless and cold, as when he orders the executions of French soldiers and of men he once regarded as brothers. As with the rabbit-duck illusion, we are only able to see one side of Henry at a time. By cutting lines 25-26 in the prologue, Olivier removes this rabbit-duck Henry from the film. Donaldson notes that Olivier “soften[s] the presentation of specifically male forms of ruthlessness” by omitting Henry’s threats, his orders to kill French soldiers, and his ordered executions. The effect of these kinds of cuts is to make Henry appear warmer and more nurturing to his subjects and seem like a more holistic and perfect king. This is entirely on purpose. Olivier’s Henry is not meant to be divided “into a thousand parts” and be both nurturer and murderer (Pro.25). The Chorus lets us know from the beginning of the film that we must hold Henry in the highest regard as we let our minds imagine the scene before us. 

The play text encourages Henry’s duality, but the film and its script – an abridged version of the play text – operate as war propaganda. Olivier did not include these harsher scenes involving Henry because they cast a negative light on England. Olivier’s Henry V “celebrate[s] hope and potentiality” in a time of international crisis and is “most often … seen as some sort of nationalistic war cry” thanks to the reception of the film. The rabbit-duck nature of Henry in the text, however, is not always communicated by adaptations. Olivier uses the Chorus to show only one side of the nature Shakespeare originally recorded. If we view the Chorus as a mirror for Henry, as Derek Royal suggests in his essay on the Chorus in Olivier’s and Branagh’s films, we must recognize that the mirror is distorted. We are never caught between the rabbit-duck King Henry in the film because Henry is England. He is the person whom we want to win and who does not show a dark side. Because of the absence of Henry’s duality in the film, the Chorus unfortunately functions less as a mirror for Henry and more as an unreliable narrator, a biased guide to the story. The film Chorus, and even the Chorus of the play text, is not as objective as it seems.

Figure 2 (Act 2 Prologue)



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40		OLIVIER’S CHORUS (CUT TEXT)

Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armorers, and honor’s thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,
Following the mirror of all Christian kings
With wingèd heels, as English Mercurys.
For now sits Expectation in the air
And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point,
With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets
Promised to Harry and his followers.
The French, advised by good intelligence
Of this most dreadful preparation,
Shake in their fear, and with pale policy
Seek to divert the English purposes.















Linger your patience on, and we’ll digest
Th’ abuse of distance, force a play.

The King is set from London, and the scene
Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton.
There is the playhouse now, there must you sit,
And thence to France shall we convey you safe
And bring you back, charming the narrow seas
To give you gentle pass; for, if we may,
We’ll not offend one stomach with our play.
But, till the King come forth, and not till then,
Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.		SHAKESPEARE’S CHORUS (UNCUT TEXT)

Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armorers, and honor’s thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,
Following the mirror of all Christian kings
With wingèd heels, as English Mercurys.
For now sits Expectation in the air
And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point,
With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets
Promised to Harry and his followers.
The French, advised by good intelligence
Of this most dreadful preparation,
Shake in their fear, and with pale policy
Seek to divert the English purposes.
O England, model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What might’st thou do, that honor would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural!
But see, thy fault France hath in thee found out,
A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills
With treacherous crowns, and three corrupted men–
One, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, and the second,
Henry, Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,
Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland—
Have, for the gilt of France (O guilt indeed!),
Confirmed conspiracy with fearful France,
And by their hands this grace of kings must die,
If hell and treason hold their promises,
Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton.
Linger your patience on, and we’ll digest
Th’ abuse of distance, force a play.
The sum is paid, the traitors are agreed,
The King is set from London, and the scene
Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton.
There is the playhouse now, there must you sit,
And thence to France shall we convey you safe
And bring you back, charming the narrow seas
To give you gentle pass; for, if we may,
We’ll not offend one stomach with our play.
But, till the King come forth, and not till then,
Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.

The cuts from the prologues of Acts 2 and 3 of Henry V are a bit more complicated than other cuts from the film. Olivier’s script takes both prologues, splits lines apart, and splices them together. Fourteen and a half lines are cut entirely from Act 2’s forty-two-line prologue. The lines cut from Act 2 focus on the “treacherous crowns, and […] corrupted men” of English nobility, a subject Olivier avoids wherever he can in his script in order to elevate England to the highest possible level in the eyes of the people (2.Cho.22). His treatment of treachery follows his treatment of the rabbit-duck Henry: only the best parts of England are allowed to remain.

The first lines from the Act 2 prologue occur within the Globe, but we do not stay there for long. The Chorus transitions us from Act 1 to the Boar’s Head Inn with a fairly general speech. His lines about Henry leaving London for Southampton to sail to France are cut and moved to after Act 2, Scene 1. This verbal transition to Southampton is also where Olivier shifts from the Globe to England and France. The Chorus pulls a scenery curtain across the stage and the camera moves us into the landscape. The playhouse is now in Southampton and we have moved with it, but this time the Chorus’s words pull the audience into a newer, more realistic landscape (2.Cho.36). The final lines from the Act 2 prologue are used once the English are on their way to France, so the audience knows who the French are and that they are planning against England’s impending attack just before we meet them for the first time (2.Cho.11-15).

When the Chorus draws the stage curtain, the film departs from the linear play text and moves the exposition to different places. The nature of a character such as the Chorus is so dependent on providing this exposition that the most natural place to put it is at the top of each act. If the Chorus entered the stage as often as Banks does into the film, it would become more of a distraction than anything truly helpful to the production since Banks speaks twice as many times in Olivier’s script as the Chorus does in the text, even though Banks’s monologues are shorter. The Chorus functions better in Olivier’s film and is able to fit more smoothly into the narrative because he is not confined to the beginning of each act.

Lines 11-15 of the Act 2 prologue nicely illustrate the way in which Olivier integrates Banks’s Chorus into the film. Olivier places the Chorus’s introduction of the French right before Act 2, Scene 4, when the French court takes the stage for the first time. The film audience does not have to remember who these people are because it has not had three scenes in between the expository Act 2 prologue and the scene in the French court. The film Chorus offers information at more convenient times not only because of cuts such as these, but also because Oliver has the option to turn some of the Chorus’s speeches into voiceovers. Lines 11-15 are uttered as the English fleet crosses the channel to France and shifts the scene to the French palace and court.

Figure 3 (Act 3 Prologue)



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35


 		OLIVIER’S CHORUS (CUT TEXT)



                                   Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed king at Dover pier
Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus
fanning.
Play with your fancies and in them behold,
Upon the hempen tackle, shipboys climbing.
Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give
To sounds confused. Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th’ invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing,

Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!

And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,

For who is he whose chin is but enriched
With one appearing hair that will not follow
These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.





                              and the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
Alarum, and chambers go off.
And down goes all before them. Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with your mind.		SHAKESPEARE’S CHORUS (UNCUT TEXT)

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed king at Dover pier
Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus
fanning.
Play with your fancies and in them behold,
Upon the hempen tackle, shipboys climbing.
Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give
To sounds confused. Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th’ invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing,
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!
Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,
And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,
Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance,
For who is he whose chin is but enriched
With one appearing hair that will not follow
These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
Suppose th’ Ambassador from the French comes
back,
Tells Harry that the King doth offer him
Katherine his daughter and with her, to dowry,
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.
The offer likes not, and the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
Alarum, and chambers go off.
And down goes all before them. Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with your mind.

Act 3 cuts ten lines entirely from its thirty-seven-line prologue, though it jumps around in a manner similar to its analogue in Act 2. The only significant lines cut from the prologue involve the king of France offering Henry marriage to Katherine along with some land, an offer which Henry refuses (3.Cho.29-34). Since we as the audience have not met Katherine yet, Olivier’s choice to leave these lines out is smart. The first Act 3 speech is the first full voiceover the Chorus has in the film and encourages the audience to “still be kind, / And eke out [the players’] performance with [its] mind” (3.Cho.36-37). This speech is quickly followed by a voiceover from the character Falstaff, which actually comes from Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV, the immediate precursor to Henry V.

The cuts in Act 3 signal an important authoritative shift for the Chorus in the minds of the audience. The second usage of lines from the Act 3 prologue occurs as the English are on their way to France. The Chorus appears first as a floating projection that slowly moves away from the camera and fades into the background of the shot, finishing the scene as a voiceover. This moment stands out cinematically, just as in the moment when the Chorus transitions the film from the Globe to England. Olivier is able to imply strongly that some of the most important moments in the film – and at the very least, those involving the Chorus – happen when the setting drastically changes from the stage to England, from England to France, and from the wedding of Henry and Katherine back to the Globe stage. By involving the Chorus in key transitions such as these, Olivier cements the Chorus as a voice of authority in the film. As the play’s narrator, the Chorus is responsible for driving the story forward. The film’s viewers, Olivier hopes, will never think for a moment that the Chorus functions as propaganda for both England and Henry because they completely trust the information provided by the Chorus. But this Chorus is unreliable; it is following Olivier’s agenda in shepherding the audience through the film’s events.

The next two Chorus speeches transpire during the battle at Harfleur before and after Henry’s famed “once more unto the breach” charge to his men (3.1.1). Here the Chorus’s voiceovers are reminiscent of wartime television or radio announcers, whose monologues have been placed over war footage for purposes of news or propaganda. Through the Chorus’s enthusiastic bursts of dialogue, Olivier ties the film to his own war-torn time period, offering exposition where he cannot fully show the scope of the siege through filming constraints. Though the medium of film mostly gives Olivier freedom to operate however he wants to within the text, he chooses to include lines such as 3.Cho.26-28 and 3.Cho.34b-36a because he cannot show multiple full-scale battles, as Branagh would do years later with his own Henry V film. 

Figure 4 (Act 4 Prologue)



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 		OLIVIER’S CHORUS (CUT TEXT)

Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of
night,
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other’s umbered face;
Steed threatens steed in high and boastful neighs
Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents
The armorers, accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation.
The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,
And, the third hour of drowsy morning named,
Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,
The confident and overlusty French
Do the low-rated English play at dice
And chide the cripple, tardy-gaited night,
Who like a foul and ugly witch doth limp
So tediously away. The poor condemnèd English,
Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires
Sit patiently and inly ruminate
The morning’s danger; and their gesture sad,
Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats,
Presenteth them unto the gazing moon
So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold
The royal captain of this ruined band
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,
Let him cry, “Praise and glory on his head!”
For forth he goes and visits all his host,
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.








A largesse universal, like the sun,
His liberal eye doth give to everyone,
Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all
Behold, as may unworthiness define,
A little touch of Harry in the night.

 		SHAKESPEARE’S CHORUS (UNCUT TEXT)

Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of
night,
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other’s umbered face;
Steed threatens steed in high and boastful neighs
Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents
The armorers, accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation.
The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,
And, the third hour of drowsy morning named,
Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,
The confident and overlusty French
Do the low-rated English play at dice
And chide the cripple, tardy-gaited night,
Who like a foul and ugly witch doth limp
So tediously away. The poor condemnèd English,
Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires
Sit patiently and inly ruminate
The morning’s danger; and their gesture sad,
Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats,
Presenteth them unto the gazing moon
So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold
The royal captain of this ruined band
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,
Let him cry, “Praise and glory on his head!”
For forth he goes and visits all his host,
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.
Upon his royal face there is no note
How dread an army hath enrounded him,
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of color
Unto the weary and all-watchèd night,
But freshly looks and overbears attaint
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty,
That every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.
A largesse universal, like the sun,
His liberal eye doth give to everyone,
Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all
Behold, as may unworthiness define,
A little touch of Harry in the night.
And so our scene must to the battle fly,
Where, O for pity, we shall much disgrace,
With four or five most vile and ragged foils
Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous,
The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,
Minding true things by what their mock’ries be.

In Act 4 of the film, Olivier introduces a tonal shift to show the burden of war upon King Henry. Ten lines are cut from the Act 4 prologue, though they do not have much bearing on the overall effect of the passage. The Chorus speaks as the English army marches and then again as they await the next day’s battle during the night. The lines cut from Act 4 focus on Henry’s sureness, his

cheerful semblance and sweet majesty,
That every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks (4.Cho.41-43).

The textual Henry is not afraid of the battle to come, but Olivier wisely leaves these lines out of the Chorus’s speech to show Henry’s night-long struggle with the impending battle and the weight of his men’s lives on his shoulders. As Shakespeare writes in 2 Henry IV, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” (2H4, 3.1.31).These lines concerning an unafraid Henry were originally included in the script but did not make the final cut. The film feels much more serious during this scene, beginning with the Chorus’s voiceover. Tonally, the film shifts from the lightness embodied by the rest of the film to heavier high stakes and Henry’s worry for his men. Dark colors are used in lighting and costuming to illustrate this change until the sun’s rays peek over the horizon towards the end of Henry’s voiceover. Because Olivier immediately follows Henry’s internal battle with the St. Crispin’s Day speech, the effect of the voiceovers of the Chorus and Henry in this scene juxtapose the bright inspiration of the St. Crispin’s Day speech with the dark possibility of defeat. England rallies around Henry, and from this point in the film until the end, the Chorus does not appear. Olivier leaves the story in Henry’s hands until the play transitions back to the Globe stage.

Figure 5 (Act 5 Prologue)



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5




10




15




20




25




30




35




40




45

 		SHAKEPEARE’S CHORUS (UNCUT TEXT)

Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story
That I may prompt them; and of such as have,
I humbly pray them to admit th’ excuse
Of time, of numbers, and due course of things,
Which cannot in their huge and proper life
Be here presented. Now we bear the King
Toward Calais. Grant him there. There seen,
Heave him away upon your wingèd thoughts
Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach
Pales in the flood with men, wives, and boys,
Whose shouts and claps outvoice the deep-mouthed
sea,
Which, like a mighty whiffler ’fore the King
Seems to prepare his way. So let him land,
And solemnly see him set on to London.
So swift a pace hath thought that even now
You may imagine him upon Blackheath,
Where that his lords desire him to have borne
His bruisèd helmet and his bended sword
Before him through the city. He forbids it,
Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride,
Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent
Quite from himself, to God. But now behold,
In the quick forge and workinghouse of thought,
How London doth pour out her citizens.
The Mayor and all his brethren in best sort,
Like to the senators of th’ antique Rome,
With the plebeians swarming at their heels,
Go forth and fetch their conqu’ring Caesar in—
As, by a lower but by loving likelihood
Were now the general of our gracious empress,
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broachèd on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him! Much more, and much more
cause,
Did they this Harry. Now in London place him
(As yet the lamentation of the French
Invites the King of England’s stay at home;
The Emperor’s coming in behalf of France
To order peace between them) and omit
All the occurrences, whatever chanced,
Till Harry’s back return again to France.
There must we bring him, and myself have played
The interim, by remembering you ’tis past.
Then brook abridgment, and your eyes advance
After your thoughts, straight back again to France.

Olivier’s hope for verisimilitude within his film permeates the film’s ending through his exclusion of the Act 5 prologue, which is cut entirely from the film. No longer “cribb’d and confin’d in the Globe’s wooden O” or by a biased choral narration, the audience experiences Henry’s triumph and peacemaking with anticipation and unbroken concentration. Olivier’s decision to remove the Chorus from Act 5 cements the Chorus’s role of helping the audience disappear into Henry V. In the play, the Act 5 prologue indicates a greater passage of time than suggested by the film. In the time between the end of Act 4 and Act 5, Scene 1, Henry goes back to England and then returns to France to woo Katherine and make peace with the king of France. In Olivier’s version, the exclusion of the prologue collapses time so that the audience recognizes Henry, and therefore England, as immediately strong and victorious in his conquest of France. Because Olivier often uses the Chorus to authoritatively transition the audience from place to place in the film, another argument for his exclusion of the Act 5 prologue is that Olivier had no need to ferry Henry back and forth across the channel when he could simply march to the French court straight from his victory. The omission of the Chorus in Act 5 paints Henry as a self-made hero, building on the textual Chorus’s treatment of Henry as a heroic figure. Shakespeare’s Chorus continually “helps to mythologize Henry by turning him into an epic hero,” which can be seen in line 29 when the Chorus calls Henry “conqu’ring Caesar” (5.Pro.29), an appropriate allusion to his conquering of France and return to his homeland. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, Olivier strategically allows the end of the film to operate fully off the stage of the Globe, so to speak, and play out without any external exposition from the battle through the wedding of Henry and Katherine. 

Figure 6 (Act 5 Epilogue)



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5




10


 		OLIVIER’S CHORUS (CUT TEXT)

Thus far with rough and all-unable pen
Our bending author hath pursued the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
Small time, but in that small most greatly lived
This star of England. Fortune made his sword,






                                                     And for their sake,
In your fair minds let this acceptance take.		SHAKESPEARE’S CHORUS (UNCUT TEXT)

Thus far with rough and all-unable pen
Our bending author hath pursued the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
Small time, but in that small most greatly lived
This star of England. Fortune made his sword,
By which the world’s best garden he achieved
And of it left his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned King
Of France and England, did this king succeed,
Whose state so many had the managing
That they lost France and made his England bleed,
Which oft our stage hath shown. And for their sake,
In your fair minds let this acceptance take.

Though the Chorus initially disappears to create verisimilitude, Olivier brings the Chorus back for a final epilogue to show the film’s viewers that they disappeared into the narrative without realizing they did so. As mentioned earlier, Olivier deliberated on where to place the Chorus, to potentially “have him as a voice-over, appearing at the end to wrap up the show;” but if Olivier decided to include “the Chorus at the end [of the play], why not at the beginning as well, where Shakespeare put him?” His choice to bring back the Chorus for an epilogue bookends the production and completes the narrative circle by bringing the audience back to where it began. Olivier cuts about half of the lines of the short epilogue from the text. These cuts include the lines about the continuation of the play cycle and how Henry VI eventually undid all that Henry V achieved during the events of this play. Hirsh notes “that this final speech … alludes to grim military and political events [and] takes the form of a sonnet,” which is “incongruous and ironic because at the time most sonnets were love poems.” Olivier’s cuts certainly change the text since the film cuts out the possibility of the story ever continuing, but they also allow for a happy ending worthy of a sonnet. The film ends with an English victory and marriage between England and France, which is certainly the uplifting ending desired by Olivier.
 

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