Henry V
Making a King
Making England
Making England Proud
Lancaster
Tudor
York
Tudor Rose
Elizabeth I, the
"Pelican" portrait,
c. 1572
Nicolas Hilliard
History Plays
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2nd Tetralogy
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Richard II
Henry IV Part 1
Henry IV Part 2
Henry V
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Act
Act
Act
Act
Act
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I Henry’s Claim to France
II Henry’s Preparations and the Net
III Henry’s Progress Harfleur to Agincourt
IV Henry’s Band of Brothers & “God’s” Victory
V To the Victor go the Spoils
(All of France & Princess Katherine)
1599
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Tiny Island of
England
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Mighty Spanish
Armada
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Protestant
Catholic
I need a Hero!
Make Your Own Quiz
Choose 1 (A, B, or C):
A) What is the significance of the
“Tudor Rose”?
Choose 1 (N or H):
N) Give a brief definition of New
Historicism.
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B) How did the Tudor’s use
religion to justify their
position?
H) Explain a specific passage of
Henry V from a New Historicist
perspective.
C) How did the historical situation
of England in 1599 influence
the creation and production of
Henry V?
Finding Meaning
or
Making Meaning
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What is this?
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A Rabbit?
Or A Duck?
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How can it be both?
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
Both?
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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 playwithin-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”
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.
Reconstructing “Ideology”
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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.”
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D. G. Meyers “The New
Historicism in Literary Study”
The critic’s
reading is itself
a “text”
produced from
a specific
H.S./Context
Historical
Situation
(H.S.) AKA
Context
Creates a
reading that
explores the
Ideology of the
original H.S.
The “Text”
Critic in a
different
Historical
Situation
H V: A War Time Play?
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1599 Topicality
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Out of Fashion
Major Revivals 1775
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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)
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Victorian Turn of the Century Henry/Hero
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“Jingo Henry” G. B. Shaw
Boer Wars (1880-81, 1899-1902)
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“Afric for Ireland” Chorus, Act V
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WW I Revival
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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).
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“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).
War Time Again--WWII
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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).
1944: Olivier’s Film
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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).
How Does Olivier Open
the Play?
How Does Branagh Open the
Play?
A Rabbit or a Duck?
Film Report: Discovering the
“Rabbit or the Duck”
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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?
Making a Miracle
God’s Hand in a Good King
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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
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Rabkin, Normin. “Rabbits, Ducks and
Henry V” Shakespeare Quarterly 28
1977. 279-296. Print.