From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 494-95.
HENRY V.
1599
THE | CRONICLE | History of Henry the fift, | With his battle 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 Iohn Busby. And are to be | sold at his house in Carter Lane next | the Powle head. | 1600. -- TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1600.
The popular and comic parts of the drama, although the originality of Falstaff's wit is absent, contains scenes of perfect natural gayety; and the Welshman Fluellen is a model of that serious ingenious, inexhaustible, unexpected, and jocose military talkativeness, which excites at once our laughter and our sympathy. -- GUIZOT, FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME, 1821-52, Shakspeare and His Times, p. 321.
This drama is full of singularly beautiful detached passages: for example, the reflections of the King upon ceremony, -- the description of the deaths of York and Suffolk, -- the glorious speech of the King before the battle, the chorus of the fourth act, -- remarkable illustrations of Shakspere's power as a descriptive poet. Nothing can be finer, also, than the commonwealth of bees in the first act. It is full of the most exquisite imagery and music. The art employed in transforming the whole scene of the hive into a resemblance of humanity is a perfect study every successive object, as it is brought forward, being invested with its characteristic attribute. -- KNIGHT, CHARLES, 1849, Studies of Shakspere, bk. iv, ch. iii, p. 185.
How popular after his old fashion, and at the same time how sublime, in his encouragement to the battle! How calm his last words to the French herald! How far is he from being over-hasty in giving credit to the victory! When he hears of the touching death of the noble York, how near is he to tears! and at the same moment alarmed by a new tumult how steeled to a bloody command! how impatiently furious at the last resistance! and at the moment when victory decides for him, how pious and how humble! And again, a short time after this solemn elevation of mind, he concludes his joke with Williams careful even then that no harm should result from it. The poet has continued in the fifth act to show us to the very last the many-sided nature of the king. The terrible warrior is transformed into the merry bridegroom, the humorous vein again rises within him, yet he is not so much in love with his happiness, or so happy in his love, that in the midst of his wooing, and with all his jests and repartee, he would relax the smallest article of the peace which his policy had designed. -- GERVINUS, G. G., 1849-62, Shakespeare Commentaries, tr. Bunnett, p. 346.
As the noblest glories of England are presented in this play, so it presents Shakspere's ideal of active, practical, heroic manhood. If Hamlet exhibits the dangers and weakness of the contemplative nature, and Prospero, its calm and its conquest, Henry exhibits the utmost greatness which the active nature can attain. . . . In this play no character except Henry greatly interested Shakspere, unless it be the Welsh Fluellen, whom he loves (as Scott loved the Baron of Bradwardine) for his real simplicity underlying his apparatus of learning, and his touching faith in the theory of warfare. -- DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1877, Shakspere, (Literature Primers), pp. 100, 101.
He proceeded to have a chronicle in hand to the close of his career, but he preserved for this class of work the laxity of evolution and lack of dramatic design which he had learned in his youth; and thus, side by side with plays the prodigious harmony of which Shakespeare alone could have conceived or executed, we have an epical fragment, like "Henry V.," which is less a drama by one particular poet, than a fold of the vast dramatic tapestry woven to the glory of England by the combined poetic patriotism of that Elizabethans. Is the whole of what wet read here implicit Shakespeare, or did another hand combine with his to decorates, this portion of the gallery? It is impossible to tell, and the reply, could it be given, would have no great critical value. "Henry V." is not "Othello." -- GOSSE, EDMUND, 1897, Short History of Modern English Literature, p. 107.
"Henry V. " is not one of Shakespeare's best plays, but it is one of his most amiable. He here shows himself not as the almost superhuman genius, but as the English patriot, whose enthusiasm is as beautiful as it is simple, and whose prejudices even, are not unbecoming. The play not only points backward to the greatest period of England's past, but forward to King James, who, as the Protestant son of the Catholic Mary Stuart, was to put an end to religious persecutions, and who, as a Scotchman and a supporter the Irish policy of Essex, was for the first time to show the world not only a sturdy England, but a powerful Great Britain. -- BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I, p. 243.
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