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    Henry V
    Henry V
    Henry V
    Ebook205 pages3 hours

    Henry V

    By William Shakespeare

    3.5/5

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    Believed to have been written in 1599, William Shakespeare’s “Henry V” forms the final installment of a tetralogy of plays which includes “Richard II”, “Henry IV, Part I”, and “Henry IV, Part II”. The play focuses on the events surrounding the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years’ War. Henry, who is introduced in the earlier plays as a wild and undisciplined youth, has now come of age and ascended to the thrown following the death of his father, King Henry IV. At the outset of the play we find the English fleet embarking for France in pursuit of conquest of the nation just across the English Channel. At this time a plot to assassinate the King by the Earl of Cambridge and two others is discovered. Henry’s cleverness in uncovering the plot and the ruthlessness in which he deals with the conspirators exhibits that his immaturity of youth, exhibited in earlier plays, has now past and that he has grown into a competent monarch. “Henry V”, along with the other plays of the tetralogy, provides an incredible dramatic portrayal of an important chapter in the long military conflict between two of the most powerful of European nations, England and France. This edition includes a preface and annotations by Henry N. Hudso, an introduction by Charles H. Herford, and a biographical afterword.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateSep 21, 2020
    ISBN9781420977516
    Author

    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.

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    Reviews for Henry V

    3.5/5

    2,170 ratings33 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This was great fun, although it was quite hard keeping all the characters straight in my mind because so many of them had unfamiliar Roman/Latin names.
    • 4/5
      Reason to read: Shakespeare Category Challenge, ROOTThis was actually enjoyable to listen to. Some great lines that are very familiar and of course the story is as well. Caesar, Anthony, Brutus, the Ides of March. One should probably read this one in March..
    • 4/5
      This is one of two of Shakespeare’s better-known plays that I somehow missed in high school and college (the other is [King Lear], which I have yet to read). Despite the title, most of the action centers around Brutus, his decision to throw in with the conspirators, Caesar’s death, and the aftermath.Perhaps the most famous lines in this play come from Mark Antony, mourning Caesar’s death and allowed by the conspirators to eulogize, as long as Antony does not blame them for the act. He does so, brilliantly getting the plebeians on his side while he talks about his friend, all the while repeating variations of “But Brutus says, he {Caesar} was ambitious; / and Brutus is an honorable man.” A couple of other phrases I was delighted to discover were “it is Greek to me” and “give up the ghost,” neither of which I realized were so old. I read it in one sitting, as is my wont, with a fair amount of help from the notes. I have the “Wordsworth Classics” edition which, instead of having notes on the opposite page or footnotes, had them in the back, so I had to keep a finger there and keep glancing back and forth. The glossary was separate and alphabetically rather than by line number, which was irritating, but despite that I mostly followed the meaning on my own from the context.I would include the play among the history plays rather than calling it an all-out tragedy. Certainly there is a lot of death, but unlike [Hamlet] where audiences have sympathy for the main character yet everybody dies, no one comes out completely sympathetic in [Julius Caeser]. The conspirators are not great people, yet Antony and the others taking over government after Caesar’s death can also be ruthless and bicker among themselves. All in all, it’s rather unsettling and as modern as any current book with unlikable characters. The introduction to my edition discusses this and also has some pointed things to say about politics that could have been written today rather than 2004: “To this day, human beings are, all too often, sacrificed pointlessly on the altar of one political ideology or another. Again and again, men of slogans and ambition seduce and delude their more decent auditors; the many are swayed by the hypocritical rhetoric of the few. Repeatedly, violence generates yet more violence.” Not much has changed since 1599 - or 44 BCE, for that matter.
    • 5/5
      I am doing some preliminary research and decided to start with Shakespeare.
    • 5/5
      One of Shakespeare's greatest and most accessible plays. Marc Antony's speech is one of Shakespeare's best, especially as it follows what would otherwise seem a pretty good speech by Brutus. Cutthroat politics goes back a long way....
    • 3/5
      Not Shakespeare's best, but then even his lesser works are better than 99% of the rest out there. Not my favorite, but still recommended.
    • 4/5
      It's Shakespeare, so pretty much everyone dies.
    • 5/5
      One begins to understand cultural references the more one reads Shakespeare, and Julius Caesar is no exception to this rule (this is perhaps especially true for Star Trek fans). The fault being not in our stars but in ourselves is a great bit of poetry that everyone should heed.
    • 5/5
      I love the Folger editions w awesome illustrations from the library. This is a larger sized paperback which is easy on the eyes. I have to say that Shakespeare is fairly neutral in presenting the main characters.Was happy to see "Let loose the dogs of war", though I previously thought that was from one of the Henry's.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful classic that truly speaks to the duality of man and his eternal search for not only power, but those that are truly pure at heart. Amazing how many quotes and sayings have come from this piece of literature.
    • 3/5
      Enh I don't know what I can tell you about this. Antony's funeral oration is fairly amusing.
    • 4/5
      'Tis happened upon chance that mine eyes have read the tale of Julius Caesar. For sooth, a great tragedy were 't. Yet happiness was clutch't betwixt mine hands that such wordsmithings are imbued into my corpus of knowledge. Brutus was not a noble understood, know that I now. It has cometh to pass that Royal Antony's quotes sitteth in upon my vernacular at the ready. What pleasure shall I give mine eyes to scan upon next? Be it, I prayeth, one of Sir William's comedies, for these tragedic readings have ravaged vexings upon my soul. Twelfth Night? Much Ado About Nothing? Instruct me, fellow plebeians.
    • 5/5
      “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. Et tu, Brute. Beware the ides of March.” I'm a little embarrassed to admit that this is all I knew of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar up to this point in my life. There's so much more to this play. Shakespeare captures the tension and drama of the last years of the Roman Republic and the role of Julius Caesar's ambition in hastening its end. The L.A. Theatre Works audio production is outstanding. The cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Kelsey Grammar, Stacy Keach, John De Lancie, and JoBeth Williams. I will listen to this recording again. Next time I will plan to do my listening when I'm able to follow along in the printed text.
    • 5/5
      Shakespeare’s dissection of the damage that idealism can do in politics is still relevant.
    • 4/5
      Cassius is quickly able to plant the idea of overthrowing Julius Caesar in the mind of Brutus, a man who claims to love Caesar. Cassius and Brutus gather a group of the Caesar's friends, who they join together to murder the leader, then tell each other that they did the man a favor and will be remembered for their courage in removing a tyrant. But then Marcus Antony gives a clever eulogy at the funeral, which causes the public to question the motives of the assassins, the conspirators no longer trust one another and Brutus finds his position threatened.A good example of how power corrupts, as even the good guy, Antony, tries to manipulate his friends to gain more for himself.
    • 3/5
      My favourite part of this play is the "Antony is an honest man" speech. Excellent.
    • 2/5
      So dry. What a mistake to cram this down 15-year old throats just because it's short. How many 10th graders have been completely turned off by Shakespeare because this is over their head. I really didn't care much for this. Many of his history plays are far superior. Should've been called "The Rise and Fall of Brutus" because Caesar is such a minor character -- no development either.
    • 4/5
      In the book Julius Caesar, a group of conspirators lead by a man named Brutus plot to kill Julius Caesar. After succeeding in killing him, Brutus sees Julius Caesar's ghost who promises to see him in Philippi. On a battlefield in Philippi, Brutus fights with Cassius's army. Cassius being overthrown, commits suicide. When one member of Cassius's army finds Cassius dead, he then also kills himself. Brutus is defeated and runs upon his sword. Conflict in Rome is at an end. As a twelve year old this wasn't the best book I've ever read. It was a little confusing with a lot of characters and action. I thought the book was going to be about Julius Caesar but it was more about the conspirators getting rid of him. One of the morals was don't murder anyone because you will have to live with the guilt the rest of your life. This play taught me a little about Rome and war. I really enjoy reading Shakespeare. Overall this was a good book.
    • 4/5
      Good story.
    • 4/5
      This is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays and one that I have read and reread over the years in addition to seeing several performances of the play. The classic story is informed by history as we know from Roman accounts about the life and death of Julius Caesar. Shakespeare adhered closely to the version of the story in Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. In comparing prominent figures from Greek and Roman history , Plutarch presented history as a compendium of the deeds of great men, portraying the characters with all the ambiguities and idiosyncrasies that were present in their lives. The writings of Marcu Tullius Cicero also informed Shakespeare. Cicero was a staunch republican and his dislike of Caesar preceded the conspiracy that led to his assassination, which conspiracy Cicero did not directly participate in. A final source for Shakespeare was the Roman historian Appian who chronicled the civil wars as part of his longer history of Rome. All of these sources inform the dramatic tension within this play adding a historical realism to Shakespeare's own dramatic genius. I especially like the relationship between Caesar and his wife. I also found the psychology of the characters, particularly Brutus, an important aspect of the drama. This helps make many of the characters from Brutus and Cassius to Mark Antony as memorable as the title character. It is one of the great Roman plays in Shakespeare's works, and it is both an historical and a dramatic achievement.
    • 4/5
      I read this play just after finishing Goldsworthy's excellent biography of Caesar. The play focuses much more on the conspirators, especially Brutus and Cassius, rather than the titular subject, who indeed hardly appears in person and is only about three scenes, one of them as a ghost. It is splendid stuff, largely, at least in the initial acts based on the premise that the conspirators were freeing Rome of a tyrant through their act; only, when Antony makes his famous "friends, Romans, countrymen" speech does a more nuanced view of Caesar's positives and negatives enter the scene. Not one of the meatier plays, but a good supplement to other reading about the period.
    • 4/5
      One of the most powerful of his plays. Yes, the characters are set in black and white in true Shakespearean style and there is no room for hman error, but therein lies the beauty and power of this drama.
    • 5/5
      I hope to see this again soon. The first time I saw it as a high school play, the next time in 1997 at a Pub theater (more members of the cast than the audience) next to the railroad station in Greenwich England...with a wonderful redo as a Mafia, Chicago script.
    • 3/5
      1599, meest klassieke tragedie, bron is Plutarchus; perfecte tekst (bijna helemaal rijm), later verketterd als schooltekstBrutus is de hoofdrolspeler, maar Caesar beheerst wel de handeling. Brutus is een idealist die ten onder gaat door een gebrek aan praktisch doorzicht; het tegendeel is Cassius, maar toch meer medevoelen met hem; Antonius is de gehaaide opportunist, demagoog. Brutus’ motieven: II,1 (p 820)Moord III,1Verheven pathetiek van Marcus Antonius na de moord, p 826, 827 (maar wel vals)Redevoeringen bij begrafenis III,2 vormen het hoogtepunt, vooral die van Antonius (p 828-29): opruiend door details over de dood van Caesar en een verwijzing naar zijn testament, tegelijk vriendelijk ten aanzien van de samenzweerders.
    • 2/5
      I read this play during my Sophomore year of high school. I loved it! "Et tu, Brute!" I thought of it again because I'm reading "A Long Way Gone", and this play is referenced frequently.
    • 5/5
      At this point (I've not yet read King Lear or Othello), this is my favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies. Unlike the essentially silly situation of Romeo and Juliet or the artificially dragged out events of Hamlet, Brutus' struggle to reconcile patriotism and friendship, passion and honor mesmerized me right from the beginning.This is a high point in my quest to read/re-read all of Shakespeare's plays.
    • 4/5
      Forgive me that it took me eight months to finish Shakespeare's shortest play. I kept picking it up, reading the first act, and then forgetting. It's strange reading about Roman history through compound filters: dramatization, Shakespearean England, what we know of the Roman Republic, modern norms. One gets so twisted around that nary an eyebrow is raised in Act 2 when Caesar asks "What is't o'clock?" (Brutus: "Caesar, 'tis strucken eight.") Such a tangle that it might not jump immediately to mind that there were probably not a whole lot of chiming clocks in the first century BC. We've got Centurions herein acting like they're on Queen Elizabeth's court. Strange.This play is brief. Brief enough that it doesn't feel like a story so much as a string of exchanges. Brutus (who refers to himself in the third person and thus puts me in the mind of Tarzan or other deep-voiced simpleton) seems instantly swayed to subterfuge. Caesar is full of lofty exaltations but kind of amounts to nothing when you think about it. Marc Antony does show a bit of craftiness, and Cassius is devious. I do like the way Casca responds to Cassius' invitation to dinner and I hope I can use it myself sometime: "Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth the eating."I do feel like that sometimes.
    • 3/5
      I read this due to my interest in HBO's Rome series (which has been cancelled after only 2 seasons - why TV gods, WHY???). Anyway, as an English major I read tons of Shakespeare, so it wasn't a challenging read for me and I found my mind analyzing language/passages as I would have been required to do in school. Let's just say the history plays have never been my favorites; maybe knowing the ending spoils the play?
    • 3/5
      Great Play, could easily see this as a modern re-telling set in the Italian Mob or as hotile financial take over...I see Macbeth the same way.But betrayal is a hell of a thing.
    • 3/5
      This is the best William Shakespeare that I have ever read. I haven't read much but this one was really appealing to me. Even though I knew the ending, I couldn't put the book down until the end.

    Book preview

    Henry V - William Shakespeare

    cover.jpg

    HENRY V

    By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

    Preface and Annotations by

    HENRY N. HUDSON

    Introduction by

    CHARLES H. HERFORD

    Henry V

    By William Shakespeare

    Preface and Annotations by Henry N. Hudson

    Introduction by Charles H. Herford

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7584-0

    eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7751-6

    This edition copyright © 2021. Digireads.com Publishing.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

    Cover Image: a detail of a Portrait of King Henry V (1387-1422) (oil on canvas), Benjamin Burnell (1769-1828) / Private Collection / Photo © Philip Mould Ltd, London / Bridgeman Images.

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    PREFACE

    INTRODUCTION

    HENRY V

    DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

    PROLOGUE.

    ACT I.

    SCENE I.

    SCENE II.

    SCENE III.

    ACT II.

    SCENE I.

    SCENE II.

    SCENE III.

    ACT III.

    PROLOGUE.

    SCENE I.

    SCENE II.

    SCENE III.

    SCENE IV.

    SCENE V.

    SCENE VI.

    ACT IV.

    SCENE I.

    SCENE II.

    SCENE III.

    SCENE IV.

    SCENE V.

    SCENE VI.

    SCENE VII.

    SCENE VIII.

    SCENE IX.

    ACT V.

    SCENE I.

    BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

    Preface

    Registered, along with As You Like It, at the Stationers’ on the 4th of August, 1600, but locked up from the press under an injunction to be stayed. In regard to As You Like It the stay seems to have been continued; but not so in regard to the other, as this was entered again on the 14th of the same month, and was published in the course of that year. The same text was reissued in 1602, and again in 1608. In these editions the author’s name was not given; the play, moreover, was but about half as long as we have it; the Choruses, the whole of the first scene, and also many other passages, those too among the best in the play, being wanting altogether. All these were supplied in the folio of 1623; which, accordingly, is our only authority for the text.

    In the Epilogue to King Henry the Fourth the speaker says, Our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Catharine of France. Whether this promise was directly authorized by Shakespeare we cannot positively say, as that Epilogue was probably not of his writing; but there is little doubt that the play to which it is affixed was written as early as 1597. That the play now in hand was written soon after the date of that promise, and written in pursuance of it, is highly probable. On the other hand, in the Chorus to Act v. we have the following:

    Were now the general of our gracious Empress—

    As in good time he may—from Ireland coming,

    Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,

    How many would the peaceful city quit,

    To welcome him!

    This undoubtedly refers to the Earl of Essex, who went on his expedition against the Irish rebels in April, 1599, and returned in September following. That Chorus, therefore, and probably the others also, was written somewhere between those two dates. The most likely conclusion, then, seems to be, that the first draught of the play was made in 1597 or 1598; that the whole was rewritten, enlarged, and the Choruses added during the absence of Essex, in the Summer of 1599; and that a copy of the first draught was obtained for the press, perhaps fraudulently, after it had been superseded on the stage by the enlarged and finished copy.

    In this play, as in King Henry the Fourth, the historical matter was taken from Holinshed, both the substance and the order of the events being much the same as they are given by the historian. The King came to the throne in March, 1413, being then twenty-six years old. The Parliament with which the play opens was held in the Spring of 1414, and the King’s marriage with Catharine took place in the Spring of 1420; so that the time of the action is measured by that interval.

    Shakespeare, for some cause or other, did not fulfil the promise, already quoted, touching Falstaff. Sir John does not once appear in the play. I suspect that, when the author went to planning the drama, he saw the impracticability of making any thing more out of him. Sir John’s dramatic character and mission were clearly at an end when his connection with Prince Henry was broken off; the purpose of the character being to explain the Prince’s wild and riotous courses. Falstaff repenting and reforming, if such a thing were possible, might indeed be a much better man, but in that capacity he was not for us. So that the Poet did well, no doubt, to keep him in retirement where, though his once matchless powers no longer give us pleasure, yet the report of his sufferings and death gently touches our pity, and recovers him to our human sympathies.

    In respect of proper dramatic interest and effect, this play is far inferior to King Henry the Fourth, nor does it rank very high in the list of Shakespeare’s dramas; but in respect of wisdom and poetry and eloquence, it is among his very best.

    HENRY N. NORMAN.

    1886.

    Introduction

    The earliest edition of Henry V. was printed in Quarto in 1600, with the following title:—

    The | Cronicle | History of Henry the fift, | with his battell fought at Agin Court in | France. Togither with Auntient | Pistoll. | As it hath bene sundry times playd by the Right Honorable | the Lord Chamberlaine his servants. | LONDON. | Printed by Thomas Creede, for Tho. Milling- | ton, and John Busby. . . . 1600.’

    Other editions of this Quarto (printed for Thomas Pavier instead of for Millington) appeared in 1602 and 1608.

    All these texts, however, differed widely from that published by Shakespeare’s executors in the Folio of 1623, and their relation to it was for long a burning question, as in the analogous cases of Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Wives, Henry VI., and Hamlet. But the problem is here a relatively simple one, and scholars are now almost unanimous in holding the Folio text to represent substantially Shakespeare’s MS., and the Quarto to be a surreptitious version of the acting edition, ‘hastily made up from notes taken at the theatre during the performance and subsequently patched together.’ The variations in the Quarto are all, with the trifling exceptions noticed below, easily explicable from one of these two sources of corruption:

    (1) The five Choruses and Epilogue, with three unessential scenes (i. 1., iii. 1., iv. 2.), are omitted. This would be an obvious expedient for curtailing a lengthy play. It is certain from the allusion in Prol. v. to Essex, that these are as old as March to September 1599, the probable date of the entire play. It is pretty safe to assume then that they formed part of the original draft and were omitted in performance.

    (2) Several characters are omitted, their speeches being sometimes omitted also, sometimes transferred. Thus in i. 2. Canterbury and Ely coalesce in a single ‘Bishop,’ though a tell-tale stage direction at the head of the scene describes the entry of ‘2 bishops.’ Similarly in iv. 3. Westmoreland’s part is made over to Warwick, while Erpingham, save for a mutilated semblance of his name in a stage direction (‘Epingham’) disappears altogether. These changes were an obvious stage-manager’s shift to reduce the number of actors required. It is less easy to explain why in the same scene a new character, Clarence, should be introduced (for Bedford), and in iii. 7. another new one, ‘Gebon,’ for Ramburé, and why in the latter scene and in iv. 5. Bourbon should take the place of the Dauphin.{1} These serve no obvious stage interest, nor are they the kind of changes which occur to a botching editor or a speculative printer. It is difficult to resist the inference that Shakespeare did perform some slight redistribution among these in the main faintly distinguished parts. But even this was not thorough-going,—witness the inconsistency still remaining in v. 2. 84, where the Duke of Clarence is addressed as present.

    (3) The whole text of the Quarto is barely half the length of the Folio;{2} and its brevity is not that of a first sketch, but of imperfect note-taking. It is not an unexpanded germ, but a cento of scraps. Scarcely a single passage of more than a few lines is reported continuously; catching phrases reappear, complexities of thought or phrase vanish, fidelity for a line or two is purchased by the total loss of the following lines.

    The date of Henry V. falls within narrow limits. The reference to Essex’s expected return from Ireland (Prol. to Act V.) shows that it was acted, and in part at least written, between March 27, 1599, when he left London, and September 28, the date of his summary and fatal return. In the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. Shakespeare had promised to ‘continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France’; and the promise is so imperfectly kept that it is clear the entire plan of Henry V. had still to be formed when the Epilogue was written. But, as we have seen, the Second Part of Henry IV. belongs to the latter half of 1598; while this part of the Epilogue, written after the change from Oldcastle to Falstaff had been made, may be yet later. Hence the general conclusion can scarcely be assailed, that Henry V. was written in the early part of 1599, and acted with prologues and epilogue that summer. It is probable, however, that a fragment of one of the least striking scenes in the play as we have it was added at a time when the accession of James had given an occasion for complaisance to the Scotch such as we know that Shakespeare did not always disdain to display.{3} The dialogue of the Scotch and Irish captains in iii. 2. 72 f. is not represented in Qq, and the presence of a Scottish captain in Henry’s army is undoubtedly surprising after the strong anti-Scottish animus exhibited in i. 2.—an animus not entirely supported by Holinshed. Simpson saw in this colloquy of the four captains—English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish—a dramatic plea for Essex’s policy of composing drastic differences, and especially of uniting Scotland with England. Mr. Fleay prefers to regard the passage as an insertion for the Court performance, Christmas 1605, ‘to please King James, who had been annoyed that year by depreciation of Scots on the stage.’{4}

    In Henry V. as in Henry IV, its magnificent and long-drawn prelude, Shakespeare follows the Chronicles of Holinshed and Hall with singular fidelity, adding, as there, a few touches from The Famous Victories. The ‘Harry’ of the Chronicles is in substance his. Here, in a fuller sense than in any other of the Histories, Shakespeare meant to recall the actual past. It was the real Harry that he strove to paint, the real Agincourt that he bade his audience reconstruct in imagination from his ‘cockpit’ and ‘vile and ragged foils,’ ‘Minding true things by what their mockeries be.’{5} But these two, the great King and the great victory, exhaust Shakespeare’s interest in the reign. All personality in the play is pale beside Henry’s, and all event is ancillary to the French campaign.

    Even as described in Holinshed the reign was remarkably poor in opportunities for the dramatist, and it would seem that Shakespeare deliberately made light of some that he found, in order to give his heroic subject in its magnificent simplicity full way without the distractions of intrigue and counterplot. The play is strictly no drama, but an epic in dramatic form. Shakespeare seems to hint as much by the use of the Chorus, an expedient to which he no longer resorted when dealing with the vaster distances and the more colossal warfare of Julius Cæsar and Antony and Cleopatra.

    Only one other drama entirely his own—The Whitens Tale—contains a chorus; and there it serves to announce an interval of dramatic time far greater than Shakespeare has anywhere else approached. Except in a single instance (Act V.), the Chorus in Henry V. announces only trifling intervals either of space or time,—a journey from London to Southampton, from Southampton to Harfleur, and so on. But the Chorus to Act IV. has no such role to perform; and this Chorus, the most splendid and high-wrought of all, serves to show that Shakespeare introduced this machinery not for the sake of bridging intervals of time and space,—which elsewhere his audience crossed ‘on imagined wings’ with the utmost unconcern,—but as the most obvious means of bringing home the outward semblance of an event of absorbing interest.{6} In Coriolanus, in Antony and Cleopatra, there are brief bursts of battle-poetry exceeding in sublimity anything in Henry V.; but

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