Where I Saw the Play in my Head

Henry V by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What do you picture when you read a Shakespeare play?

Usually, I picture something more like a movie, with real people in real settings. But reading this one, I definitely pictured actors on the stage in the Globe theatre. When I realized this, I had to backtrack to see why, and it's definitely because of the prologue, the opening "O for a Muse of fire" bit where the chorus asks the audience to imagine the fields of France:

... But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?...
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass...

I guess I got it backwards, then; instead of seeing a stage and imagining a world I sat in the world and imagined the stage. In any case, that worked for me. I saw in my mind's eye the play as it would have been performed for audiences 400 years ago, experiencing with them the range of feelings: the anxiety for the outnumbered British forces the night before Agincourt; the aggravation at overhearing the French forces' derision; the soul-stirring approval for the king's patriotic speeches; the contempt for the religious leaders and their venality; the pride in sense of duty portrayed by genuine heroes of the nation; the disappointment in cowards like Pistol; and the upsurge of jubilation at the ultimate victory. No doubt a lot depends on actors and staging, but I can imagine this working very well. Even though I'm anti-war (who isn't?) it worked for me.

I'm not sure the play has a distinct perspective regarding the value or virtue of war. Despite the patriotic support for war found in many speeches, there are also many arguments against it made throughout the play. The clearest expression is the speech by Williams, a soldier speaking unawares to the king in disguise. He argues that the cost of war is high, especially if the cause is unjust:

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day 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.

That's a stark image. That's the perspective of soldiers with nothing to gain by hazarding their lives in battle. Between this and the St. Crispin's Day speech, it's hard to say what the author really felt. I don't think that's an interesting question, anyway. Or a trivial one. A better question is whether he's done a good job at showing us different faces of war and warriors, and I feel like he has.

Marlowe's Tamerlane plays tapped into a similar action/adventure excitement, bringing the thrill of bigger-than-life action to the stage. It just seems like Shakespeare did a better job of making it a story. For us groundlings, packed shoulder to shoulder, watching over the head of the guy in front of us, that mix of drama and spectacle feels like a blockbuster.

Recommended.

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