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A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Henry V"
A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Henry V"
A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Henry V"
Ebook60 pages48 minutes

A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Henry V"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Henry V," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Shakespeare for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Shakespeare for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 20, 2016
ISBN9781535824705
A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Henry V"

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    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Henry V" - Gale

    1

    Henry V

    William Shakespeare

    1599

    Introduction

    As a tribute to the king who won back the throne of France for England, William Shakespeare's Henry V may be narrow in scope, but it is great in majesty. This epic play was probably written sometime between March and early September in 1599. However, there is no record of a performance of Henry V before January 7, 1605, when it was presented at court by the King's Majesty's Players.

    The play is often referred to as a vehicle for inspiring patriotism, which well might have been the case in Shakespeare's time. Even in 1944, during the Second World War, the British actor Laurence Olivier directed a fresh version of Henry V, adapting the play to film to encourage British troops. In the drama, audiences watch the fictionalized character of King Henry V lead his troops across the English Channel to face a French army that is better equipped and at least five times larger in number. The battle at Agincourt is the central action of the play, and the results are astonishing.

    Most modern critics maintain that there is strong evidence that Shakespeare consulted both Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scot-lande, and Irelande (1577; 1587) and Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and York (2d ed., 1548) as sources for Henry V. Commentators note that such passages as Canterbury's speech explaining Salic law in act 1, scene 2 is a paraphrase in verse of Holinshed's narrative of this episode, with only slight variations from the original. On the other hand, Shakespeare makes no reference to many events that appear in Holinshed's and Hall's accounts of the reign of Henry V. In addition, the dramatist implies only a short passage of time between the battle at Agincourt and the achievement of a treaty with France, when in fact the two were separated by a period of nearly four years. A lost and anonymous play from the 1580s, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, survives only in a corrupt edition of 1598, so that it has proved difficult to determine the degree of Shakespeare's familiarity with this work. However, several critics have noticed parallels between Shakespeare's Henry V and The Famous Victories, including similarities in structure, the prominence in each of the Dauphin's gift of tennis balls to Henry, and the inclusion in both works of a wooing scene between Henry and Katherine.

    Henry V has been praised by many scholars as an energetic portrayal of one of England's most popular national heroes. While the central issue for critics has been the character of the king and whether he represents Shakespeare's ideal ruler, modern commentary has increasingly explored both Henry's positive and negative attributes. Although the personality of the king has attracted a significant amount of discussion, commentators have also shown renewed interest in Shakespeare's attitude toward patriotism and war, his use of language and imagery, the absence of Falstaff, a lovable rascal who played an important part in Shakespeare's Henry IV, and the play's epic elements, particularly Shakespeare's use of the Chorus.

    Plot Summary

    Act 1, Prologue

    Shakespeare opens his play Henry V with a Chorus (in most productions a single person), who announces that this grand play, with its wars and open fields, powerful characters and armies of men, is unfortunately confined to a small wooden stage. In order to capture the magnitude of the actions and circumstances surrounding the great figure of Henry V, the Chorus asks that the audience generously use its imagination to fill in the missing elements.

    Act 1, Scene 1

    The first scene opens in England, in the king's court. The first characters to appear are the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely, announcing, through their dialogue, that King Henry is planning on passing a bill that will take much of the church's wealth away. The king wants to use the excess money that the church enjoyed to finance a war and feed the poor. The powerful clergymen have hatched a plan

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