Focus on "Henry V":

Navigating Digital Text, Performance, & Historical Resources

 Main Menu Overview by Sujata Iyengar and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin 'Henry V' : A Guide to Early Printed Editions by Daniel Yabut “with rough and all-unable pen…” : Source Study and Historiography in Shakespeare’s 'Henry V'  by Mikaela LaFave Pistol and Monsieur Le Fer: An Anglo-French Encounter by Charlène Cruxent Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, IRCL, UMR5186 CNRS Making & Unmaking National Identity: Race & Ethnicity in Shakespeare’s 'Henry V'  by Nora Galland 'Henry V' Onstage: From the Falklands War to Brexit (1986-2018) by Janice Valls-Russell The Problematic Reception of 'Henry V' in France: A Case Study by Florence March “For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings”: Henry’s Popular Afterlives by Philip Gilreath “On your imaginary forces work”: How 'Henry V'’s Chorus Changes the Play Text during Olivier’s Film by Julia Koslowsky A Guide to Teaching 'Henry V' and its Sources by Hayden Benson Study Questions Key Scenes and Speeches from 'Henry V' Back Matter

Speeches in Henry V (title?)

29603
King Henry V’s speeches provide popular culture with both extractable lines and rhetorical templates for the rousing, pre-battle speech of the underdog: his words—the words of an invasive force temporarily put on the defensive—are deployed in successive media at climactic or pre-climactic narrative moments in order to boost flagging morale and lead to the embodiment of some sort of heroism through martial action. The variegated uses of Henry’s rhetoric of consolidation demonstrate the extent to which Henry V’s words have been subsumed, internalized (as Shakespeare’s prologue suggests it might) and reiteratively sent out again (once more!) to fill some sort of narrative or thematic gap. Henry V’s interest in legitimizing rhetoric, in reenactment and revision—and the fraught national and masculine identity produced by these rhetorical invocations—continues to play out through the following popular culture appropriations, which extend the original play’s interest in a patterning of consolidation and dispersal, and the way identity is compelled by reiterative rhetorical performances. The uncertain division between heroism and warmongering illustrated in the following popular culture citations only emphasizes the ambivalence with which Shakespeare’s play treats Henry’s militaristic enterprise.

During the midbattle “once more” speech in Act III of Henry V, the eponymous king exhorts his followers to dissimulate a warlike aspect, to “disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage” in order to prove their legitimacy as sons of Britain, and by extension assist Henry in proving the legitimacy of his claim to the French throne (3.1.9). 

Two acts later, preceding the battle of Agincourt, Henry proclaims that participation in his enterprise will bind his followers to him, negating birth and station. He states: “he today that sheds his blood with me/shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile/this day shall gentle his condition” (4.3.63-65). The first speech urges the adoption of a nostalgic, fantastical heroism, while the second absorbs Henry’s diverse constituents into his own body and blood. Both speeches, in addition to their drawing together of past and future traditions via ritual and repetition, are interested in the rehearsal and consolidation of identity, of legitimacy obtained through unified, martial action. Henry appropriates—rhetorically and physically—his followers to his own design, as he gestures toward their inclusion in a shared identity as sons of Britain. 

This page references: