This ideal king is made honor-loving and daringly brave. If we are mark'd to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. IV, iii, 20-29. Henry's care to protect the French people is, also, an engaging feature. We give express charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing compell'd from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner (III, vi, 114-20). Shakespeare's glorification of the English nation suggests an ideal at one point that has not even yet been fully attained. In the latter part of III, ii, four officers, an English captain, a Welsh, a Scotch, and an Irish, appear side by side as loyal and efficient fellow-soldiers. This is Shakespeare's prophecy of a unified Great Britain. This portion of the play is not present in the Quarto, and it is probably an addition to Shakespeare's original text, since a long passage in I, ii, is very bitter toward the treacherous. Scotch, and the Chorus before Act V speaks of Ireland as in rebellion when the lines were penned. Henry's ardently religious nature is not allowed to impair his epic serenity. He confesses a sin-but it is his father's: Not to-day, O Lord, O, not to-day, think not upon the fault IV, i, 309-11. We have seen too many modern examples of the combining of piety and slaughter to feel sympathetic toward all the manifestations of Henry's bellicose religiosity; but his modest reply to the brave, pedantic Fluellen is engaging: Fluellen. All the water in Wye cannot wash your Majesty's Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that. God pless it and preserve it, as long as it pleases His grace, and His majesty too! K. Henry. Thanks, good my countryman. Fluellen. By Jeshu, I am your Majesty's countryman, I care not who know it. I will confess it to all the 'orld. I need not to be ashamed of your Majesty, praised be God, so long as your Majesty is an honest man. K. Henry. God keep me so! IV, vii, 111-21. The most original portions of the play, IV, i, and iii, are also the strongest and most successful. In the first of these scenes the King goes in disguise among the common soldiers, learning their sentiments and inspiring them with his own dauntless courage. This is the life-giving feature of the play. This incident also connects most closely with all Henry's past career. Through the half-concealed face of the disguised King, as he talks with the soldiers, gleam the features of the jesting Prince Hal of Eastcheap, able to "drink with any tinker in his own language." Shakespeare wisely lets the young King show a troubled spirit as he remembers how his father obtained the crown. Henry is admirable here, but not in an over-colored way. He is a hero, but he is also a living man. The genuinely democratic spirit of IV, iii, is finer still. Henry speaks for all: And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Ll. 57-63. Those who object to the manner in which Henry wooes Katherine may well be asked to indicate how it could have been managed better. The fact that he won his wife in France could not be ignored, yet he must impress us to the end primarily as the conquering soldier. His robust wooing is effective upon the stage. Effective too in its ironic way is the fact that the child of Henry and Katharine, the "boy, half French, half English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard," was in reality the weak Henry VI. Certain features of the play impair the epic grandeur of the hero-king. The command of Henry to kill the prisoners, at the close of IV, vi, and the threat to kill other prisoners at IV, vii, 66, are probably looked upon by Shakespeare as a necessary concession to historical accuracy. The savage threats against Harfleur in III, iii, bring about its surrender, but Henry's words practically condone the outrages that he threatens. Kreyssig is led to speak of a brutal strain in the Anglo-Norman race, "which seems to come to life again in the practices of some of the inhabitants of North America, like a long-preserved grain of wheat planted in favorable soil." 1 The unwise depreciation of the French is fatal to the best interests of the play. What glory can come from conquering such opponents? The play shows no real conflict, either inward or outward. The ideal king here presented is so aggressively English that he cannot completely enlist the sympathies of other nations. Thus, while Miss Porter calls the strenuous speech in III, i, beginning "Once more unto the breach, dear friends," "the supreme battle-speech of Literature," Brandes declares that "King Henry's two speeches before . 1 Vorlesungen über Shakespere, 3te Aufl., 1, 257. Berlin, 1877. Harfleur [III, i, and iii,] are bombastic, savage, and threatening to the point of frothy bluster." It is interesting to note a general agreement and also a contrast between Shakespeare's own life and that of Henry V, his "ideal of active, practical, heroic manhood" (Dowden). Like that hero, the dramatist won practical success against great obstacles. But it shows real catholicity of mind that Shakespeare seems to admire especially in Henry the power of accomplishing great results in the real world, because this was so different from his own imaginative and ideal achievements. The play as a whole has been much criticized for its dramatic deficiencies. Some of these judgments seem somewhat narrow and academic. Sturdy Dr. Furnivall declares that "a siege and a battle, with one bit of lovemaking, cannot form a drama, whatever amount of rhetorical patriotic speeches and comic relief are introduced." 1 Professor Brander Matthews says of the play: "It is a mere drum-and-trumpet history, with alarums and cannon-shots, sieges and battles, the defiance of heralds, and the marching of armies. As a specimen of play-making it is indefensibly artless.” 2 Is not the play criticized in the passage last cited for not hitting a mark at which it does not aim? Shall we call the Choruses, for example, "indefensibly artless"? I admit that they are distinctly non-dramatic. And while Dr. Furnivall's criticism is true for us, it is well to remember that the play was not made for us. That "Henry V” is not a real masterpiece, completely effective for all men and for ever, must be admitted. But this play should not be judged entirely from a dramatic standpoint. The The Leopold Shakspere, p. liv. Cassell, 1877. Shakspere as a Playwright, 122-23. Scribners, 1913. drama was made for man, not man for the drama. The Prince who has interested us in three preceding plays is here presented as the young hero-king. Our admiration is appealed to more than our sympathy. The purpose and effect of the piece are more epic than dramatic. This epic song to the glory of England and England's hero-king, written and acted about a decade after the defeat of the Armada, undoubtedly drew crowds to the new Globe Theatre, and quickened the patriotism of every man who saw and heard it. The crowds paid well, and that also was intended. When examined in the study by a spectacled twentieth century scholar, the play easily gets out of focus. While we apply our critical measurements and standards, we easily forget the mighty communal and national appeal which brought the great throngs together, and which thrilled and satisfied them. |