Henry V

Henry decides that he should take over France.  When France's crown prince insults him, he invades and suceeds.  Then he manages to basically seduce the French king's daughter.  Not a very difficult story, is it?

I tend to sympathize with Henry, though I don't know why.  I suspect he finds himself in over his head when he invades and retreats into his natural speaking abilities.  As for Princess Katherine, I'm not quite sure why she agrees to marry Henry.  I guess she's easily impressed, or easily intimidated, one or the other.  And I don't really think Pistol is supposed to be a parody of Henry, in spite of what that stupid essay I read says.  By the way, Crispin and Crispinian are the patron saints of shoemakers in the Catholic church, and their feast day is October 25.  Presumably, this is indeed when the real battle of Agincourt took place, so that would be where the St. Crispin's day speech comes from.  Harold Bloom, the guy who wrote Shakespeare : the Invention of the Human, doesn't seem to think very highly of Henry or of this play, but I beg to differ.  It is remarkable in that, in the chorus, it is very aware of being a play and the limitations of its format.  Bloom calls Henry a hypocrite but I don't see it.  I don't really feel like trying to refute what argument he makes critically, but I will tell you two ideal scene stagings of mine which might illuminate my perspective.  When Henry is praying the night before for God not to take out his father's crimes on him and his army, I see him as being sincere, pleading, even desperate, not hypocritically pretending to be pious.  Nobody's even watching him at that point.  As for the St. Crispin's Day speech, since it starts out with him just talking to Westmoreland in the text, I would like to see the speech not turn into an oration.  In my ideal version he would be talking intensely, excitedly, and then finishes and turns around to see a throng of soldiers hanging on his every word.  That is who I think Henry could be.  Or that other guy, who is well-respected and actually makes money thinking about this kind of thing, could be right, but I prefer to think the best of characters.  Oh, and the "we band of brothers" speech-when he says that the soldiers' conditions will be gentled, he's talking metaphorically and all the soldiers know it.  Any king would only make random people into nobility in extraordinary cases, as they would be well aware.  At least, I'm pretty sure of this-please don't e-mail me to destroy this theory, my ego is fragile enough as it is : )  The Chorus sort of reminds me of that narrator at the end of episodes of the old Batman TV show-"Will Batman be able to pull Robin from the clutches of the Joker and defuse the bomb in City Hall before time runs out?  Tune in next time..."

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