SHAKESPEARE'S HENRY V: AN ANTI-WAR MESSAGE RELEVANT TODAY
First performed in 1599, play engages with themes of conscience, agency and just cause
French knights’ horses get bogged down in the mud as English archers pour deadly fire into their ranks. The Battle of Agincourt is an enduring story of English patriotism, but in reality, Henry V was engaged in naked pursuit of war and conquest.
As the world’s major powers square up to each other (United States/NATO vs China, Russia,) William Shakespeare’s plays remind us of the futility of wars and the fictitious claims used as justifications.
The ugly face of ‘Mad-brained war’
Scholar John Gittings in 2015 notes Shakespeare’s anti-war leanings: ‘The adjectives which Shakespeare uses to categorise war are almost always negative and pejorative. War is “all-abhorred” (Henry IV) and “cruel” (Troilus and Coriolanus,) it is “none-sparing” (All’s Well) and “mortal-staring” (Richard III,) it is “dreadful” (Henry VI,) “fierce and bloody” (King John,) “mad-brained” (Timon) and “hungry” for men’s blood (Richard III); it is a “hideous god” which has a “harsh and boist’rous tongue” (Henry IV).’
Gittings notes: ‘Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus all have as their subject a general of great military prowess whose character is fatally flawed—by jealousy, ambition, sexual weakness, or pride.’
Henry V is still pictured today as the valiant young king who matures from a rowdy youth to a wise, courageous warrior. In Henry V, Shakespeare assigns him military-friendly lines such as ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’ and ‘we happy band of brothers’ that are still quoted today.
But a closer read of Henry V reveals themes about conscience and individual responsibility in a war of aggression.
At the beginning of Shakespeare’s play Henry V, the King has to develop an acceptable reason, based on inheritance law, to claim France as his right.
France has not threatened or attacked the British Isles, so it’s important to obtain a Church-sanctioned justification to invade it. Otherwise, Henry will be found at fault for costing lives, knowing - as he says - that each innocent drop of blood is a tragedy, when life is so short. ‘Is it right for me to make this claim, and can I do it in good conscience?’ he asks the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Archbishop wants to give the answer the King really desires. Church lands are under threat from Parliament, and he needs Henry V onside.
The eminent cleric digs up a spurious claim to the French throne, dating back 600 years, which he elaborates in a long speech. He says Henry’s loyal subjects are ready to fight for him, and offers to help with a ‘mighty sum’ of Church money:
‘Oh, let their bodies [of loyal subjects] follow, my dear liege/ With blood and sword and fire to win your right; In aid whereof we of the spiritualty/ Will raise your Highness such a mighty sum/ As never did the clergy at one time/ Bring in to any of your ancestors.’
A messenger from King Louis of France arrives at Henry’s court. He bears a box with tennis balls as a joke response to the English fake claim to the French throne. Henry growls that the joke will cost thousands of French women the lives of their husbands and children:
‘And tell the pleasant prince this mock [joke] of his/Hath turned his [tennis] balls to gun-stones, and his soul/ Shall stand sore chargèd for the wasteful vengeance/ That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows/Shall this his mock out of their dear husbands/ Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down,And some are yet ungotten and unborn/That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.’
A Chorus comments that the die is cast, young men must leave their sweethearts and arm themselves, and that (just like today) the armor-makers are doing good business.
The siege of Harfleur
So Henry and his troops cross over to France.
Their first act of war is to lay siege on the town of Harfleur and its innocent civilians. The resistance is fierce; the French have dug themselves into tunnels ‘four yards’ underground.
Shakespeare zeroes in on a group of petrified English soldiers begging their captain not to send them ‘unto the breach’ despite Henry’s rallying cry. A youth yearns to be back safe in London in an alehouse, with a pot of ale.
Henry describes to the hapless Governor of Harfleur what will happen if the city continues to resist.
In the modern translation, he says: ‘If not, in a moment expect to see a blind and bloody soldier reaching with a dirty hand towards the hair of your piercingly-shrieking daughters, your fathers grabbed by their silver beards and their wise heads smashed against the walls, your naked babies stabbed on pikes while the crazed mothers break the clouds with their confused howls.’
Not surprisingly, the Governor surrenders to Henry.
The eve of the battle of Agincourt: Act 4, Prologue, Scene 1
Henry then moves his rain-soaked troops on to Calais to fight the French King’s army.
It is the night before the famous battle of Agincourt (1415.)
In the camps, hungry and threadbare foot soldiers can’t sleep, faced with the prospect of a barbaric killing field in the morning.
The Chorus observes: ‘The poor condemned English/ Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires/ Sit patiently and inly ruminate/ The morning’s danger; and their gesture sad. Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats/ Presenteth them unto the gazing moon so many horrid ghosts.’
Dawn has risen. One man, John Bates, sighs: ‘We have no reason to want day to come.’
His friend Michael Williams agrees, ‘We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it.’
Meaning, they expect to die in battle. Enter Henry, who has been roaming around the camp in disguise, assessing the mood of the combatants.
Henry tells the men that the situation is dire, but that captains don’t want to discourage anyone by showing fear.
Not recognizing his King, Bates says in that case, they should all quit immediately.
Henry briskly responds that the King would not leave, because there is nowhere else he would rather be.
Then let the King confront the French by himself, responds Bates heatedly, to save ‘many poor men’s lives.’
Henry argues for loyalty to the monarch. ‘Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.’
But Williams isn’t convinced: ‘That’s more than we can know.’
His mate Bates says that the King will have to face divine Judgment, if the cause is wrong:
‘The King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day [of Judgment] and cry all, “We died at such a place,” some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.’
Henry isn’t prepared to be accountable: ‘The King is not bound to answer the particular endings [deaths] of his soldiers.’ In any case, he argues, some soldiers go to war in order to dodge punishment for their crimes. Each man’s conscience is judged individually by God.
Williams notes that it’s hard to act with agency when under orders: ‘A poor ordinary man who is sent to war for no good reason, has no recourse. Any attempt to disobey his king would be like trying to shoot an old gun – it could blow up in your face. ‘ (Modern translation.)
Henry doesn’t answer that. Instead he turns conciliatory, and says that if captured the King won’t ask for a ransom to be raised in exchange for his freedom.
What will a ransom matter to me, Williams fires back, if I die?
Enraged, he offers to duel with the stranger after the battle, if they both survive.
Alone, Henry moans that his subjects don’t understand him. They are too stupid to appreciate that his only goal is to improve the life of ‘the peasant, the slave, a subject in a peaceful country.’ He, Henry, has to stay up all night to preserve the peace: ‘Oh hard condition, Twin-born with greatness, subject to breath of every fool, whose sense no more can feel /But his own wringing’ [who can only understand his own hardship.] What infinite heart’s ease/Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?’
In this speech Henry shifts the cause of the war from an alleged legal claim of inheritance, to that of preserving the peace. It’s not clear how he made that leap of logic.
The next morning, noblemen and poor men slice each other up in the muddy fields near the castle of Agincourt. Bloodied and bludgeoned by sword, lance, club and arrow, 15,000 end up dead, mostly French. A messenger from King Louis describes the scene:
‘And our commoners’ peasant limbs are drenched with the blood of princes, and the wounded horses are fretting, their legs buried in mud up to the fetlocks, and with wild rage kick their hooves covered in metal at their dead owners, killing them again.’ (Modern translation.)
Conclusion
Henry wins big at the Battle of Agincourt.
The defeated French King capitulates to Henry’s demands. An amicable settlement is reached. Henry is to marry the daughter of King Louis, with the agreement that on the latter’s death, England takes over France.
The Chorus ends the play by noting that during the reign of the child Henry VI, the French regain control over its territory.
We are left thinking, thousands died for no good reason or cause.
Shakespeare didn’t want to be cancelled, and was mindful to show respect to the Crown. He gave Henry the most memorable, war-rallying speeches in English literature.
But his anti-war message comes down to us across the centuries, as relevant today as when the play was first performed in 1599.
Kenneth Brannagh portrays Henry V as a handsome young warrior in his film of the same name.
Portrait of Henry V, date and artist unknown. ‘In the real battle of Agincourt, just after the English appeared to have won, Henry V notoriously ordered the mass slaughter of French prisoners – perhaps thousands of them.’https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jul/28/henry-v-kenneth-branagh