Henry V

1. Henry V Making a King Making England Making England Proud

2. Lancaster Tudor York

3. Tudor Rose Elizabeth I, the "Pelican" portrait, c. 1572 Nicolas Hilliard

4. History Plays • 2nd Tetralogy • Richard II • Henry IV Part 1 • Henry IV Part 2 • Henry V • Act I Henry’s Claim to France • Act II Henry’s Preparations and the Net • Act III Henry’s Progress Harfleur to Agincourt • Act IV Henry’s Band of Brothers & “God’s” Victory • Act V To the Victor go the Spoils • (All of France & Princess Katherine)

5. 1599 • Tiny Island of England • Protestant • Mighty Spanish Armada • Catholic • I need a Hero!

6. Make Your Own Quiz • Choose 1 (A, B, or C): A) What is the significance of the “Tudor Rose”? B) How did the Tudor’s use religion to justify their position? C) How did the historical situation of England in 1599 influence the creation and production of Henry V? • Choose 1 (N or H): N) Give a brief definition of New Historicism. H) Explain a specific passage of Henry V from a New Historicist perspective.

7. Finding Meaning orMaking Meaning • What is this? • A Rabbit? • Or A Duck? • How can it be both?

8. Rabkin’s “Either/Or: Responding to Henry V” Either a “Mirror of all Christian Kings” (II.0.6) Or a cynical play about a ruthless and hypocritical Machiavellian tyrant

9. Both? • Thus Rabkin identifies Henry V’’s “ultimate power [as] precisely the fact that it points in two opposed directions, virtually daring us to chose one of the two opposed interpretations it requires of us.” • Rabkin describes Shakespeare’s “‘terrible subversiveness’ in undermining the play’s ostensible message, in a view of the play which has its theatrical counterpart in Trevor Nunn’s account of the 1964 production of the Royal Shakespeare Theater as an interpretation which saw a play-within-a-play, a hidden play which amounted to a passionate cry by the dramatists against war” (Smith 4). Both a “celebration of Henry’s rule” or scathing critique/analysis of “bellicose power mongering”

10. The New Historicist’s 4"enabling presumptions” l) Literature is historical, a social and cultural construct shaped by more than one consciousness—not the sole product of one mind/author 2) Literature is part of general human activity-situated in a historical milieu—not a distinct category of human activity. 3) Man himself is a social construct, the product of social/political forces— history is a series of "ruptures" separating people of different periods irretrievably from one another 4) As a consequence, the historian/critic is trapped in his own "historicity”—trapped by his own historical situation.

11. Reconstructing “Ideology” • With these enabling principles, “the best a modern historicist approach to literature can hope to accomplish, according to Catherine Belsey, is "to use the text as a basis for the reconstruction of an ideology.” • D. G. Meyers “The New Historicism in Literary Study”

12. H V: A War Time Play? • 1599 Topicality • Out of Fashion • Major Revivals 1775 French Indian War/Seven Years War “Franco phobia” • Harfluer: “Cry God for us! For England! And for King George! (Gentlemen’s Magazine) (Smith 18-19)

13. Victorian Turn of the Century Henry/Hero • “Jingo Henry” G. B. Shaw • Boer Wars (1880-81, 1899-1902) • “Afric for Ireland” Chorus, Act V

14. WW I Revival • New Psychological Criticism of “WAR” “Discovered” in H V • According to Gerald Gould’s “A New Reading of Henry V” in 1919, “None of Shakespeare's plays are so consistently and thoroughly misunderstood as Henry V and one is tempted to think that there is no play which it is more important to understand. Irony is an awkward weapon. No doubt the irony Henry V was meant to ‘take in’ the groundlings when it was first produced; had it failed to take them in, it would have invited bitter and immediate unpopularity, but Shakespeare can scarcely have intended that the force of preconception should, hundreds of years after his death, still be preventing the careful, the learned, and the sympathetic from seeing what he so definitely put down. The play is ironic” (Smith 45).

15. “It had taken a devastating war for the explicit discovery in this most martial of plays of a coded, ironic warning against warfare” (Smith 45).

16. War Time Again--WWII • Olivier, on stage and in a one man show in military camps “geared to whip up patriotism” • Olivier: “By the time I got to ‘God for Harry…’ I think they would have followed me anywhere. Looking back, I don’t think we could have won the war without ‘Once more into the breach…’ somewhere in our soldier’s hearts” (Olivier On Acting 66).

17. 1944: Olivier’s Film • American Critic James Agee: “I am not a Tory, a monarchist, a Catholic, a medievalist, an Englishman, or despite all the good that it engenders, a lover of war, but the beauty and power of this traditional exercise was such that, watching it, I wished I was, thought I was, and I was proud of it” (Smith 53).

18. How Does Olivier Open the Play? How Does Branagh Open the Play?

19. A Rabbit or a Duck?

20. Film Report: Discovering the “Rabbit or the Duck” • Watch the end of both the Olivier and Branagh films. • Explain how the films present similar or different images of Henry. Use specific details from the films (cutting or including elements of the original text, staging, lighting, depictions of violence, etc.) to support your claims. • An exemplary report will also use New Historicism to explore how the specific time periods of each film might have shaped the films. How did Olivier’s WWII production influence his depiction of Henry, for example?

21. Making a MiracleGod’s Hand in a Good King • Estimates of the French forces range from 8,000-150,00 • Commonly accepted numbers are 6,000 English vs. 30,000 French and Burgundian troops • God’s retribution St. Crispin Crispianus Day 1 Year before-French Massacre at Soissons

22. Rabkin, Normin. “Rabbits, Ducks and Henry V” Shakespeare Quarterly 28 1977. 279-296. Print.