King Henry V

By William Shakespeare

Written at the end of the life of Elizabeth I, Henry V is an inspirational, gripping play that struck a chord in a time of uncertainty.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated throughout by Sir John Gilbert, and includes an introduction by Ned Halley.

First staged in 1599, Shakespeare's history of Henry V's remarkable victory over the French at Agincourt and the subsequent peace between the two nations is also a study of war and kingship. From his wild youth, Henry comes to embody all of the kingly virtues: courage, justice, integrity and honour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Aug 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781509831678

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

Book preview

Contents

INTRODUCTION

KING HENRY THE FIFTH

PROLOGUE

ACT I

SCENE I

SCENE II

ACT II

PROLOGUE

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

ACT III

PROLOGUE

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE V

SCENE VI

SCENE VII

ACT IV

PROLOGUE

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE V

SCENE VI

SCENE VII

SCENE VIII

ACT V

PROLOGUE

SCENE I

SCENE II

EPILOGUE

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

Shakespeare liked history. More than one in three of his plays owe their storylines to the lives of real people, from the Roman upstart Coriolanus in the fifth century BC to Henry VIII, whose eventful reign ended just a few years before Shakespeare’s birth. The Bard, who borrowed the plots, in whole or part, of all his plays from earlier sources, factual or fictional, knew historical dramas about British sovereigns went down particularly well with audiences. Today’s popular obsession with royal affairs – their loves and marriages as well as their intrigues and wars – is the perpetuation of a very old custom indeed.

The Chorus that opens Act I (and every other act) of Henry V, grandly proclaims the play’s vaunting intent to depict the magnificence of its central figure, the King, and his achievements:

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!

The address quickly moves on to apologizing for the playwright’s impertinence in trying to convey the glories of the monarch in a mere theatre. He seeks pardon for the players that they should dare

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?

This prologue fulfils the dual function of setting the exciting theme of the play and of reassuring the ruling class that the utmost loyalty to the Crown will be observed throughout. It’s a wise precaution. In Shakespeare’s own lifetime, his works were staged not just in London theatres such as the Curtain and the Globe, but in the principal royal palace of the city, Whitehall. Queen Elizabeth I and from 1603 her successor King James I almost certainly joined the courtly audiences gathered in the palace’s Banqueting Hall for performances. There is no sure evidence that the Queen saw Henry V – it was written late in her reign, in 1599, when she was somewhat withdrawn from public life and in declining health – but she would have approved heartily of its theme. Henry V, who died in 1422, was remembered among the most glorious of medieval monarchs, a strong, unifying ruler at home and a courageous champion of England’s interests abroad. He and the Virgin Queen had much in common.

The play makes plenty of reference to the connections. Much is made of King Henry’s Welshness. He was a Plantagenet, but born at Monmouth. Elizabeth was the last Tudor, a Welsh dynasty founded by soldier Owen Tudor, who fought at Agincourt and later married Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois. Their grandson became Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, and grandfather of Elizabeth.

In the play, Henry V is embarking on war with France in pursuit of the rightful claim he says he has on the French throne. He is denied it under the Salic Law, which barred succession to the crown of France by, or through, women. Edward III, Henry’s great grandfather, had claimed the throne of France through his mother Isabel, sister of French king Charles IV, after her brother’s death in 1328, but the throne was seized by Philip VI, the first Valois king of France. In 1337, determined to press his claim, Edward III invaded France, igniting the conflict we now know as the Hundred Years War. While Edward won spectacular battles including Crecy in 1346 and Poitiers in 1356, securing Normandy, he did not succeed in taking over the French crown before his death in 1377. When his later successor Henry V invaded France in 1415, he was merely continuing the same conflict, with the same avowed aim.

Had Salic Law pertained in England, Elizabeth would not have become Queen. This might have encouraged Shakespeare, as a loyal subject, to pen the Archbishop of Canterbury’s long disquisition on the matter in Act I Scene 2 of Henry V. The prelate tells the King the law was a thoroughly dubious piece of discrimination favoured in the ninth century by Charles the Great, better known now as Charlemagne, Christian conqueror of large parts of Europe and prototype Holy Roman Emperor. This zealous king of the Franks, says the Archbishop, subscribed to a convention laid down by the first of all Frankish kings, Pharamond (probably a mythical figure), who had ruled over the German lands between the rivers Elbe and Sala until he died back in 426, and held ‘in disdain the German women/ For some dishonest manners of their life’. He had consequently imposed the ‘Salique’ law to ensure no female would succeed him, ever. French dynasties, says Canterbury, subsequently co-opted this irrelevant impost in their own illegitimate interests. The Archbishop finally rules Salic Law a heresy, quoting no less an authority than the Old Testament on the matter:

For in the book of Numbers is it writ,

When the man dies, let the inheritance

Descend unto the daughter.

If it seems curious that the King should consult the clergy about his claim on the French throne, in effect seeking permission to wage war, it’s worth knowing that at this time, the church was vastly rich and wielded power in state matters. Churchmen and statesmen were interchangeable. This of course is the Pre-Reformation Catholic Church, a very much more political entity than the Anglican church of Shakespeare’s time. So significant is the role of the church that Shakespeare opens the play with a scene between two senior clerics scheming to encourage the King to go to war, partly because it might distract him from one of his policies at home, namely reform of the church. This, they fear, would extend to depriving it of much of its wealth (exactly what Henry VIII was to do 120 years later). Canterbury warns his colleague the Bishop of Ely (one of the richest of all England’s sees) that the bill in parliament

If it pass against us,

We lose the better half of our possession:

For all the temporal lands which men devout

By testament have given to the church

Would they strip from us

Henry V did have plans to dispossess the church, and had to contend with the powerful reform movement the Lollards, who believed in the word of the scriptures over the doctrine of the Catholic church, and were not immune from stirring up dangerous civil unrest. These were the last years of the Great Schism, in which the unity of the Roman church was torn apart when the French, then in political control of Rome, refused to accept the election of an Italian pope in 1378 and appointed their own French pontiff, based in Avignon. The nations of the western world divided over which pope to follow, and the church as a whole exposed itself to ridicule and doubt by claiming that two or even three direct descendants of St Peter, diametrically opposed to each other’s views, could be representing the deity on Earth at the same time. It is among Henry V’s less-recognised achievements that he steered the nation through this crisis, controlling the Lollard uprising as well as the turbulent church.

But Henry V is principally a play about the war. With his claim on the French throne unanimously backed by the church and his court, including his own brothers the dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, the King is ready to meet the ambassadors of the Dauphin of France. Note that it is the Dauphin, Louis, who is represented. History records that his father, King Charles VI, was insane at this time. Louis was de facto ruler but Shakespeare, who writes the king into the play, tactfully avoids mentioning this – perhaps because Charles VI was a direct ancestor of Queen Elizabeth.

In the masterly diplomatic conclusion to Act I Scene II, the tension is duly wound up as the Dauphin’s envoy conveys his master’s insults to the king by offering him a treasure chest as a peace token which turns out to contain nothing more than tennis balls. It is true that Henry V, then only about 28, was known as a keen sportsman, but he was a battle-hardened soldier too, and in response to this jest (which might well have some historical basis) he gives the ambassador a chilling warning:

And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his

Hath turn’d his balls to gun-stones; and his soul

Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance

That shall fly with them: for many a thousand widows

Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands;

Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;

And some are yet ungotten and unborn

That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.

We are ready for war. Just as at the outset of Act I, the Chorus returns to set the scene, telling us ‘Now all the youth of England are on fire’ in anticipation of hostilities, but warning, too, of a fiendish French plot to assassinate the King as he embarks at Southampton. Three treacherous English noblemen have been bribed, we are told, to commit the deed. This crime was indeed planned in July 1415, but it was not inspired by the French. The chief conspirator, the Earl of Cambridge, was plotting the murder because he believed his brother-in-law Edmund Mortimer, a descendant of Edward III, had a better claim on the throne. Mortimer had heard of the plot from Cambridge and told King Henry, who had the participants promptly arrested and executed. The dramatic confrontation between the king and the conspirators at Southampton is drama pure and simple.

The opening scene of Act II, preceding the king’s exciting set-to with the doomed plotters, is the first of the play’s rather unexpected diversions into knockabout comedy. We are introduced, in a London street, to the soldiery who will embark with Henry for the French war, in the persons of Pistol, Nym and Bardolph. All are former servants of Sir John Falstaff, the comic companion of the dissolute Prince Hal, as Henry V then was, in the preceding Henry IV plays. But poor Sir John we discover, is dead (in spite of a promise in Henry IV Part II that Falstaff, hugely popular with Elizabethan audiences, would be back), and this perhaps serves to demonstrate that any connection between the Prince of the past and the King of the day is now at an end.

And so to France where we meet King Charles, his Dauphin and their commanders. The Dauphin is confident of victory, dismissing Henry as ‘a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,’ but his father, portrayed entirely in possession of his wits, warns of the lessons of history:

Witness our too much memorable shame

When Cressy battle fatally was struck,

And all our princes captiv’d by the hand

Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales

The playwright has the benefit of hindsight. The tactical disaster that was to befall the French at Agincourt – an enormous army of willful, aristocratic, heavily armoured knights stuck in mud and picked off by arrows fired a great distance by a small corps of highly disciplined longbowmen – had been played out with very close symmetry seventy years previously, at Crecy.

The war proper begins with Act III at the walls of Harfleur, and King Henry’s immortal address to his troops:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage

Here is Shakespeare at his stirring best, and here, too, he departs from the true history of events. In the play, Harfleur, then the main seaport of Normandy, rapidly surrenders. In truth, the siege lasted a

Reviews for King Henry V

[booksbooks11 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a wonderful way to present Shakespeare. An audio book with added commentary explaining the more difficult language, all the historical context and how the people of Shakespeare's day would have reacted to each part. Absolutely fabulous, I can't wait to get into the other ones they've published.

[tysonadams · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It just doesn't get any better than this!!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked Shakespeare's "Henry V" a lot.... it has a few great speeches and the action moves along nicely. The play picks up shortly after Henry V ascends to the throne of England and follows him to France for the Battle of Agincourt. The play skips around from place to place a bit, which might be a bit jarring if not for the chorus smoothing over the rough edges. I understand this was one of Shakepeare's later historical plays -- fit in to cover the period between others -- and it shows as the writing is pretty tight and the story well-paced.

[alanwpowers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have argued, with support from a couple of my senior Shakespeareans at SAA, that Henry V is the comedy Shakespeare promised at the end of 2 Henry 4, epilog: "to continue the story, with Sir John [Falstaff] in it. But after the actor who played Falstaff disappeared (Will Kemp--probably to tour Germany), Shakespeare created a very different kind of comedy, a reconciliation of conflicting nationalities in the usual comic resolution, however preposterous: marriage. And in a thoroughly modern (even modernist) touch, the spirit of comic reconciliation pervades the play through its linguistic playfulness. This is Shakespeare's only play using national accents: French, Welsh, Scottish, Irish and of course English. I would speculate that the "Great Britain" only enshrined around a century later (1705?) was initiated under James I, and here in Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth, previewed. The comic interlude of Fluellen and Jamy, etc, features the strong Scottish and Welsh accent, where for instance Fluellen says, "Alexander the Pig." He is corrected, "Don't you mean Alexander the Great?" F, "The great, or the pig, are all one reckonings..."Later in the play, the King "claims kin" with F's despised Welsh minority; "For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman" (4.7.105). And Fluellen may speak English "funny," but he is an excellent soldier, and very knowledgeable about the history of warfare, especially Roman. Well, all this is available in Fran Teague, Acting Funny in Shakespeare, which I heartily recommend with self-interest.

[lieslmayerson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Are you allowed to not like anything by Shakespeare? So many great, enjoyable Shakespeare reads, but this is not one of them in my opinion. Definitely offers value from a literary and historical perspective, but I honestly would choose many other of his works above this.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The best of this play is the spurring to action of a few against many. The underdog plays well (although the whole divine right of kings stuff pales for the modern reader).The king seems to have no relation whatever to the boy he once was. Only Pistol and Bardolph serve to remind us of those days.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful rhetoric, good characterization, I believe this writer will have a successful career! The portrait of the king is a wonderful presentation about the good things of one man rule. I seem to have watched it more than I read it, but still five times, and ready to do it again. My favourite speech is "Upon the King...". Aside from the pageant-style Henry VIII, Shakespeare is ready to move on to more personal drama, and this is his last historical play.Internl evidence places this play in the period of late May, 1599.

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare recreates a famous battle on an Elizabethan stage with great speeches, a fascinating and very realistic look at the common soldiery, and a chorus that begs the audience to use its imagination.

[tiffanyak_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a play I chose to read for my Play Analysis paper for my Intro. to Drama class. The language is extremely powerful and memorable, the characters are compelling, and the play itself is exceptional. I definitely highly recommend it for anyone with any interest at all in drama. It is, without question, one of the greatest examples of the genre ever written. As to the edition itself, I found it to be greatly helpful in understanding the action in the play. It has a layout which places each page of the play opposite a page of notes, definitions, explanations, and other things needed to understand that page more thoroughly. While I didn't always need it, I was certainly glad to have it whenever I ran into a turn of language that was unfamiliar, and I definitely appreciated the scene-by-scene summaries. Really, if you want to or need to read Shakespeare, an edition such as this is really the way to go, especially until you get more accustomed to it.

[bertiemch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My favorite Shakespeare play about Henry' V's victory at Agincourt. Henry is a complicated character who appears innocent but is actually a master manipulator. Great speeches including the famous "we happy few, we band of brothers" one.

[composingcomposer · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I actually really enjoy Shakespeare. Especially King Lear (of the few I've read so far) I just didn't like Henry V as a character, which severely stunted my ability to enjoy the play. Only the Saint Crispin's Day Speech stopped me from giving this just one star.

I'm not altogether certain that I'm understanding the historical context, but it seems to me that Henry's war does not have just cause. Simply because he has a doubtful claim to France's throne, and the prince of France--the Dauphin--insulted him? My dislike of Henry's war, and therefore Henry himself may be helped along by the fact that the responsibility of Joan of Arc's unfair death seems to be evenly divided between him and Charles VII, the king of France whom Joan served.

I'm not a pacifist, but I agree with J.R.R. Tolkien; "War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." (Somewhere, and I cannot for the life of me remember where, I read sort of summary of Tolkien's feelings on war; that he felt that war was evil, but sometimes necessary to protect the good things in life)

I think the reason that Henry's first speech bugs me is because he is manipulating his countrymen into fighting an unjustified war. Henry started this war because he wanted to be king of France as well as England, and because the Dauphin insulted him. This means that the English are trying to take over a country, while the French are defending their homeland. When I'm presented with this scenario I will almost always side with the defenders, rather than the attackers. I think that the French had a reason to fight; to protect their homeland, but I don't think the English did, and Henry whipping them into a bloodthirsty frenzy to be sure that they wouldn't show mercy was wrong. Returning to the Tolkien theme, sometimes showing pity can save your world, as with Bilbo sparing Gollum.

Henry has ethos because he is a figure of authority. He is the king. One thing that I think gives the speech extra pathos and ethos, and it may be the only time that I see logos in it, is when Henry does appeal to them not to let the fallen Englishmen have fallen in vain. If they lost the war then those people would have died for nothing. This is the way that I feel about the Vietnam War. America pulled out just when we could've won. Of course I am looking back on it, without having lived through it, so maybe I shouldn't be one to judge what the right decision was at the time.

It's not just Henry V that I dislike though. The Archbishop of Canterbury urged Henry into this war, and might very well have been responsible for Joan of Arc's false heresy sentence and death. And the French Dauphin. Regardless of how Henry was in his youth, it was wrong of him to insult him, especially since Henry was in a position of power so that he could start a war over an insult.

So I guess the two main reasons why I don't like the speech or Henry is because of my feelings about the reasons for the start of the war, and because of the feeling of manipulation.

This speech is more rousing by far than the previous one. Henry made this speech when he was outmatched, cold, sick, hungry, desperate and afraid... and so this speech had a ring of truth to it. Henry was asking his men to fight for their lives. I actually felt inspired by this speech. I do thing that Henry had some character growth in act IV. He faced his own guilt in his discussion with Williams. He defended himself, which I found annoying, but then when he was alone he had an eloquent soliloquy that I felt truly showed that, despite his defending his own actions, showed that he had taken some of what Williams said to heart.

The Saint Crispin's Day Speech is really interpretable, however, so I'm going to compare four different interpetations, and how the different recitations affected me. I like to listen to the plays while following along, and in the fully casted AudioGo, Arkangel recording, the actor spoke quietly, as though the speech was personal, mainly for Gloster, Bedford, Exeter, Westmoreland and the other officers. The result of this was that when Montjoy came, I felt Henry should have given in to save his men's lives. Of the three film-versions of the speech I watched on Youtube, Tom Hiddleston's performance most closely echoed that of the audiobook. He seemed to be speaking mainly to his high officers, but he had a lot more feeling in his words than the actor in the recording. He had a lot of sadness in his voice, like he was preparing to die, and coming from him, it didn't seem so unreasonable that he would not accept the French request for his ransom. Lawrence Olivier actually seemed to be addressing all his men, but to me at least, he didn't seem to have a lot of emotion, so I didn't find his version of the speech very compelling, though I did like it better than the audiobook. He was at a disadvantage to the other film versions, though, because Lawrence Olivier's version of the speech was the only one that didn't have music accompanying it. It's incredible, what a good soundtrack can do to add or bring emotion. The last version I'll look at is Kenneth Branagh's. This version was my favorite (once I got over the fact that Gilderoy Lockhart was wearing bright red and blue livery) but the majority of the comments on Youtube seem to disagree with me, prefering Olivier's version. I liked this version because I felt that, played by Branagh, King Henry was addressing his entire army, but at the same time, trying just as hard to give himself courage. Branagh had the most emotional performance of all of them. I could hear his courage, and his desperation. The music, by Patrick Doyle, added to the emotion, it sounded hopeful almost to the point of triumph, yet without undermining the feeling of urgency. With Branagh, not only did I not feel that Henry should have handed himself over, I actually felt that if he had tried, his troops wouldn't have let him do so, and I liked that about this performance. Though I do prefer all of the the film versions to the audio, it is obnoxious to me that all three of them cut out parts of the speech, especially the newer Branagh and Hiddleston versions.

Henry's war was still unjust, but now, because he had truly faced the hardships of war, and heard the complaints of some of his people, and, just maybe, started to take some of the blame for himself, I felt much more inspired. The reasons for the war were unfair, but the reasons for that one battle were acceptable.

As with the last speech, this one's main components are pathos and ethos, but there is quite a bit of logos to the speech, and the three elements are balanced much better than before. Henry has more ethos than he did before, because, not only is he king, but he too is about to enter a battle he doesn't expect to win. This gives him much more credibility. Instead of simply ordering his men to go into battle, he is going with them. With pathos Henry brings hope to a situation that seemed hopeless. "If we are mark'd to die, we are enow/To do our country loss; and if to live,/The fewer men the greter share of honour." Henry also gives them the desire to tell their children stories about this day; "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." There is also logic in this speech, because if they fight they will probably die, but if they don't fight the certainly would, after all, they were described as many being sick, and the French were blocking them from going somewhere to rest.

I think that my preference of this speech can be traced to the desperate situation that Henry's men face. This is the kind of speech I would expect to hear from the defenders, rather than the attackers. But then, right now the French are attacking. Henry is still to blame for the whole situation, but this time, he and his men are defending something--their lives. I did not find this speech to be manipulating, because this time, Henry's men know exactly what they are up against.

I still don't like Henry, or the war he started, but I do like the Saint Crispin's Day Speech.


PS. This review is made up of patched together answers I made in discussion posts for an online class. The questions for the discussion posts were mostly regarding Henry's two motivational speeches in Act III. Scene I, and IV. Scene III.

[publiusdb-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just finished Henry V...worth the read.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I hadn't read Shakespeare since school when I decided to give this, one of his historical plays, a chance. At first I struggled to get into it, but then, by using the voices of the characters from the TV show 'A Game of Thrones', I found that I could make it all more dramatic and interesting, and from that point on it was plain sailing.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’ve loved Shakespeare’s work for a long time, but I’ve always struggled with his Histories. I enjoy seeing them performed live, but when I read them it’s easy for me to get lost in a sea of soldiers and forget who is who. This play is preceded by Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, and the last two feature our illustrious title character, Henry V.This particular play rises above the other histories in my opinion because it’s more about the transformation of one man than about war. Obviously there is war and a bloody one at that, but it’s also about Henry (Prince Harry) coming to terms with his responsibility and leadership. He must grow up and leave the boy from the Henry IV plays behind. The lives of so many men are in his hands and without his leadership all will be lost. This is fully realized in one of the most famous monologues in the English canon. We’ve heard the “band of brothers” line thrown around for years, but when you hear the full speech, on the cusp of battle, it’s incredibly moving and powerful. Here’s one small bit… “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; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”Think about what he is actually saying there. This huge moment in history, the Battle of Agincourt, is so important that the men who weren’t here will wish they were. They won’t consider themselves real men because they were unable to fight in this battle. What an incredible thing to say to your men before rushing in to battle! I also really love the scene with the French princess, Katharine, and Henry at the end of the play. It’s one of the only moments in a very serious story that is a bit light and witty. BOTTOM LINE: It is a classic for good reason. While I struggle with Shakespearean histories, others love them. I don’t think it’s the best place to start with his work, but it’s certainly an essential piece. I think I will probably enjoy it more with each re-read as the language and action becomes even clearer. Also, I would highly recommend the 1989 film version starring and directed by Kenneth Branagh. I watched it after finishing the book and it was really excellent. I have always been impressed with Branagh’s Shakespearean films. I particularly love his version of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. 

[jmcgarry2011 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I finished this edition today. This edition has the text on the right side, and the explanation on the left side. I saw this at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN. They used most of the text, which some the essays have said is unusual. The stage was bare, except for occasional tables and chairs. It was performed in a "wooden O" on stage. I think this fits in with Shakespeare's original productions. The book also had the translations of the French scenes, which definitely helped. I could follow a little bit, but not entirely. When I read the book, I could really understand what Katherine was saying, which made it even more of comic relief. I also couldn't help but think of all the times the English and the French fought over the years, especially here in America, but that now that's gone. There's the Chunnel connecting England and France, and next year's Tour de France will start in England. Amazing how times change.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Overall, I found this an exciting play with some of Shakespeare's most rousing speeches. On the minus side, it is a tad long and some of the scenes (such as Princess Katherine learning English) could have been eliminated or shortened to make for a tighter play.

[jhudsui_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Is this normal for his historical plays? The actual historical action is only briefly outlined and the majority of the play is devoted to the antics of a pack of buffoonish rogues / camp followers? Also this particular one seems to be dedicated to lionizing a guy for invading a foreign country in a war of conquest.

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not very interesting and uses obsolete language as in all Shakespeare's books/plays. This one recounts a battle between England and France. Not recommended.

[eglinton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bombast, stirring speeches, dubious English adventurism in France, the camaraderie of “we happy few”: one sees how the simple, direct valour and honour of this Henry embodies so much of the English character and self-assurance. The Chorus has some memorable lines too, as does the Archbishop of Canterbury, seeming to scheme at the outset, but then dropped from this uncharacteristically straightforward plot. I’m still not clear though, despite the Archbishop’s long attempt at explanation, whether Henry’s claims in France were indeed “with right and conscience” valid or not. No matter now; legend and a heroic leader do the trick.