All the characters in Shakespeare’s Henry V are discussed here in the order of the cast list in Gary Taylor, ed. Henry V (Oxford: The University Press, 1982): 89-90. Some characters that an audience may consider to be minor turn out to reward close study, not only because they illuminate the protagonist King Henry from their different perspectives, but also for their intrinsic interest. Although some minor characters have few lines–one has none!–they exemplify the infinite variety of human nature.

CHORUS

Speaking the Prologue to each act, Chorus is a device for presenting the popular assessment of “warlike Harry”( 1.0.5). The king’s intervening actions and words may lead us to question Chorus’s assessment.

The presence of Chorus reminds readers that Henry V is more than words on a page. Chorus also reminds theatre audiences that Henry V is more than actors performing on a stage.  After all, the stage available to Shakespeare had limitations that modern cinema has largely overcome: “Can this cockpit hold / The vasty fields of France?” (1.0.11-12). Therefore Chorus often invites us to stage the pomp and ceremony of  royal courts, ships at sea and epic battles on land, in our imaginations: “For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings” (1.0.28); “Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies/In motion of no less celerity/Than that of thought. . . ” (3.0.1-3); “Play with your fancies, and in them behold/Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;/Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give/To sounds confused” (3.0.7-11).

All Chorus’s speeches are self-contained poems. Positioned outside the action, he speaks the play’s prologue and epilogue and introduces each act. Ironically, his promises sometimes turn out to be false. For example his Prologue’s promise of heroic action leads into a first Act full of talk, including long boring speeches by the Archbishop of Canterbury in support of Henry’s legal right to the French crown. The heroic tone of the Act 2 Chorus, which describes the the king’s fleet’s departure for France, contrasts first with the anti-heroic antics of the comic soldiers, Nim, Pistol and Bardolph, and secondly with the Hostess’s account of Falstaff’s death, which mixes humour with deep pathos. A similar mixture of tragedy and comedy and attends Henry’s consent to the hanging of his old drinking companion Bardolph for theft (3.6.108). Finally, the fine sonnet that comprises the Epilogue calls into question the longevity and worth of military conquest and glory:

Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned king
Of France and England did this King succeed.
Whose state so many had the managing
That they lost France, and made his England bleed,
Which oft our stage has shown.

KING HENRY

There are too many great speeches by King Henry V to limit study to just one of them. They include:

“We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us” (1.2.259-1.2.297)–tennis balls speech;

“Once more unto the breach” (3.1.1-34)–first Harfleur speech;

“How yet resolves the Governor of the town” (3.3.81-130)–second Harfleur speech;

“Upon the king.” (4.1. 218-72)–soliloquy;

“O God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts” (4.1.277-93)–prayer;

“St Crispin’s Day” (4.2.20-67)–oration before Agincourt;

Henry’s prose wooing speech  (5.2.121-242).

Not all of these speeches show the king in a favourable light. While the second Harfleur speech may merely be a strategy that encourages the town to surrender, it dwells in loving detail on the savage outcomes of warfare. Is it true that Henry sees things as black or white, that he elides moral nuances? The following lines express Henry’s astonishment at his inability to see his childhood friend Lord Scrope as a traitor. Do they also point ironically to a blind spot in Henry’s moral vision?:

                                                     ’Tis so strange
That though the truth of it stands off as gross
As black on white, my eye will scarcely see it.” (2.2.99-101)

Consider also these two encounters where King Henry does not come out of it so well:

First Encounter:

In 4.1, the disguised king goes through the camp at night to boost the morale of his troops. He encounters three ordinary soldiers, and tells them, smoothly: “I think the King is but a man, as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me. All his senses have but human conditions”  (4.1.99-102). He concludes with the highly-charged lines: “Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable” (4.1.122-23). Henry’s claim here accords well with the philosophy of another commoner in an earlier play: “No man’s too good to serve [his] prince” (Henry IV. Part 2. 3. 231-232). Henry is in disguise, at night, remember, and none of the three soldiers knows he is the king. So his comment “I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company” is a little joke at their expense, since he, the king, must always die in his own company. The rest of the line causes concern (both for Williams, on stage, and for a theatre audience). Henry says, in effect, you soldiers should be prepared to die beside the king, so long as his cause is “just and his quarrel honourable.” This is a continuing concern of the play. It leaves open the possibility that a king’s cause may sometimes not be just, and his quarrel merely personal. The proviso, to which he seems to expect a feeble assent, is harshly rejected by Williams with the great line:  “That’s more than we know” (4.1.124). This sane, independent answer forever refutes the excuse “we were only acting under orders.” The king tries to dig himself out of trouble, but Williams’ reply is unforgettable:

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 a battle shall join together at the latter day . . .some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe . . . I am afeard that there are few die well that die in a battle.  (4.1.129-36)

The disguised king retreats, they exchange gloves, Williams promises to punch Henry’s ears.

Second Encounter:

King Henry sometimes carries out or orders a harsh action, which in the terms of the play can be justified as just and necessary; but  quickly following, another of his actions seems less justifiable. An obvious case involves Bardolph. He has robbed a church, expressly against orders, and Henry must hang his former crony and drinking partner. Fluellen extends broad sympathy for “one that is like to be executed, one Bardolph, if your majesty know the man. His face is all bubunkles and whelks and knobs and flames o’ fire, and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue, sometimes red. But his nose is executed, and his fire’s out” (3.6.102-107). Henry extends no sympathy. He replies: “We would have all such offenders so cut off.” This careful answer avoids Fluellen’s implied question, “if your majesty know the man,” and he lets Bardolph hang without acknowledgment.

[JOHN OF LANCASTER, MY LORD BEDFORD]

Gary Taylor removes my Lord John, Duke of Bedford, a hero of the Hundred Years’ War, and reassigns speeches with “BED:” prefixes in the Quarto (1600) and Folio (1623) to either Clarence or Gloucester. For example at 1.2 (p. 99) Taylor substitutes “Clarence,” and at 2.2  (p. 130) “Gloucester,” for the Folio’s (F’s) “Bedford.” In Henry V Bedford is named in Henry’s “Crispin’s Day” speech immediately after “Harry the King” (4.3.53), as one of the Agincourt warriors whose names will become “familiar … as household words.” Other editions retain Bedford, who features as John of Lancaster in both parts of Henry IV (1596-1600). Overall, Taylor’s excision of Bedford from the Oxford text seems contentious.

HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER

Gloucester is an unlucky dukedom in Shakespeare’s English history plays. When the sons of the English kings are granted dukedoms in a clearly descending hierarchy, in three plays Gloucester goes to the youngest son:

(i)  In King Richard II Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and the king’s youngest uncle, has been murdered, and the opening scenes reveal King Richard’s part in that murder. 

(ii) Later, in Henry IV (Part 1), when Bolingbroke has overthrown Richard and become king as Henry IV, he confers the dukedom of Gloucester on his son, Humphrey, a younger brother of the prince destined to be crowned as Henry V. After Henry V’s sudden death from dysentery only a year after conquering France, Gloucester (“good Duke Humphrey”) is one of the powerful uncles watching over Henry VI, the infant king of England and France, whose reign is marred by civil war. 

(iii) In the early 1590s Shakespeare wrote, or collaborated in writing, four plays about grasping and murderous uncles–the three-part series Henry VI, and one play, Richard III, about the most notorious uncle of them all, Richard of Gloucester.  

History alleges that King Henry V saved his young brother Humphrey’s life after he had been wounded at Agincourt by fighting off the French duke Alençon. In Henry V, Gloucester is brought on stage at the first line of 2.2 to warn Henry against traitors. At the end of 4.1 he has been sent to find Henry, who, in the tense night before battle, has been wandering through the camp in disguise. Gloucester is no fool, for he makes a telling comment about the French messenger’s demeanour: “His eyes are humbler than they used to be” (4.7.62). Shakespeare makes sure that the players of his bit-parts get at least one good line, and this is Gloucester’s.

THOMAS, DUKE OF CLARENCE

This character vanishes from some editions of the play, or stays on as a non-speaking part. Why? Because of the way play-scripts are rewritten during rehearsals, performance and for post-performance editions. Shakespeare’s plans for Henry V clearly included Clarence, who had already appeared as Henry’s youngest brother in Henry IV (Part 2). But due to the necessity for some members of the small Globe Theatre cast to “double” in the various bit-parts, Clarence’s lines are transferred to the king’s other brothers, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester or John, Duke of Bedford. Whichever brother is not on stage as some other character gets “Clarence’s” lines.

“Clarence” lingers in the stage directions and in some of the lists of on-stage characters, but he has nothing to say or do: he is a “ghost.” Some ” CLAR:” speech-prefixes nevertheless remain. Have fun with your edition, and see whether your editor has changed them to “GLOU:” or to “BED:” (the other brothers), or whether this “lost” character actually gets to say a line. In other words, in performances of Henry V the roles of the King’s three brothers need just two actors.

THOMAS BEAUFORT, DUKE OF EXETER

Uncle to King Henry, Exeter is a leading Lancastrian lord in Shakespeare’s history plays, for Exeter, as everyone knows, was a bastard.  He is the acknowledged son of old John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, but he was the son of Gaunt’s mistress. Gaunt had first married Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, immensely wealthy from the estates of her father. After Blanche died of plague, “the black death,” Gaunt married a foreign princess in order to build a stake in the dynastic politics of Spain, Castille and Portugal. The love of Gaunt’s life however was his mistress, Catherine Swynford, by whom he had several favourite children, and whom he eventually married. The children were given names which identified them as noble bastards (not “beau fitz” as the Normans might have called their bastard children, but “beau forts” meaning “beautiful and strong”). Another of Henry V’s uncles, Cardinal Beaufort, stands over the young King’s coffin at the opening of  Shakespeare’s Henry VI.  So you can see that the Beauforts were powerful men, and names to conjure with in the fifteenth century. They were so powerful in fact, that a law was passed to prevent any Beaufort ever becoming King of England.

Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, then, is Henry’s most powerful uncle, and his “hard man.” It is he who arrests the would-be assassins Cambridge, Scrope and Grey (2.2.142); and bluntly threatens King Charles of France with “Bloody constraint”:

Therefore in fierce tempest is he [Henry] coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That if requiring fail, he will compel;
And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries
The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens groans,
For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers,
That shall be swallow’d in this controversy. (2.4.97-109)

Exeter goes on to confront the Dauphin, heir to the French throne  “He’ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it” (2.4.132).  His great moment comes when, ever the “hard man,” he fulfils his duty by reporting the death of his cousin, the Duke of York. At this point Exeter admits that even he was moved to tears, and his great speech reports in detail the chivalric death of his noble cousin (4.6.7-32). There are king-like qualities in this man who by law can never be king.

DUKE OF YORK

To understand the Duke of York one has to know some of his family secrets. This Yorkist background was so notorious that it would been known from chronicle and story, even to many of those in the early audiences who had not seen King Richard II (the first play in Shakespeare’s first tetralogy, or series of four plays, consisting of Richard II, Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V).

In Henry V the Duke of York is a man with a mission: he wants to restore his own and his family’s damaged reputation. A generation back, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, deposed his cousin Richard II and was crowned king as Henry IV. Richard later died while imprisoned in Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire. In Richard II he is assassinated by Sir Piers of Exton, who acts on a hint from the new king, but historically Richard was probably starved to death. In our play, King Henry V is haunted by his father Henry IV’s part in Richard’s deposition and murder. In his soliloquy: “O God of battles” (4.1.77-93) he recalls his attempts to make amends, speaks his repentance and pleads for pardon.

King Henry V’s great uncle Edmund Langley, the former Duke of York, was uncle to both Richard II and Henry IV. In Richard II the Duke’s elder son Aumerle tries to assassinate the usurper, Henry IV. Aumerle’s mother the Duchess persuades Henry to pardon her son.  The older York’s heartfelt cry to Bolingbroke in Richard II– “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle/I am no traitor’s uncle!” (2.3.86)–turns out to be ironic. Not only is he in fact the uncle of a traitor (Bolingbroke himself), but he is also the father of a traitor (Aumerle).

In Henry V the York family is under a cloud again when the new Duke of York’s younger brother, Richard of Cambridge, plots to assassinate the king. Read the powerful scene 2.2, in which he and two other traitors are unmasked and condemned to execution.

Can you therefore see why the Duke of York begs King Henry on bended knee to let him lead the most exposed part of the English attack at Agincourt?: “My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg/The leading of the vanguard”? And can you see why the king agrees to let the Duke prove his loyalty?: “Take it, brave York” (4.4.130-31).

When we next hear of York, the Duke of Exeter is reporting his heroic death, beginning with the understatement: “The Duke of York commends him to your majesty” (4.6.4). The line is heroically ambiguous: the Duke of York has commended himself, not only by sending Henry a message from the Agincourt battlefield, but by sending it with his last breath. He has died in the king’s service, thus “commending himself” through an act of ultimate loyalty. Exeter proceeds to give a context to York’s last words by reporting the manner of his dying and his comradeship with Suffolk: “Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk./My soul shall thine keep company to heaven” (4.6.15-16). Shakespeare invented this melodramatic yet moving scene. The Duke of York did die at Agincourt, but the manner of his death is uncertain. See, for example: http://www.agincourt600.com/2015/08/23/how-did-edward-duke-of-york-die-at-agincourt/.

EARL OF SALISBURY

In Henry V we see Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, taking leave of other English heroes before Agincourt:

If we no more meet till we meet in heaven,
Then joyfully, my noble lord of Clarence,
My dear lord Gloucester and my good lord Exeter,
And [to Warwick] my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu. (4.3.7-10).

The warriors to whom Salisbury gives his final farewell (for he says adieu) all answer him individually, so they clearly hold him in high regard. After the first skirmish Salisbury informs the king of the dangerous increase in French numbers (4.3.68-70), and historically he survived Agincourt. He is more famous for his final exit in Shakespeare’s, Henry VI (Part 1), which deals with the Wars of the Roses and the later phases of England’s wars with France. In 1.4 a master-gunner for the French is coaching his small son to aim properly. Simultaneously, Salisbury is exulting in the safe return of his friend, Lord Talbot, “the English Achilles.” Rumour has it that a witch has joined the French army, and this woman Joan la Pucelle (we know her as Joan of Arc) is fighting alongside the Dauphin against the English forces. Salisbury makes a fatal decision–he suggests to Talbot that they look out through the grating at the enemy forces. The gunner’s young son fires at exactly that moment, and one of Salisbury’s eyes and half his cheek are blown away. Was it fate? or black magic? or just bad luck? Salisbury’s end in Henry VI recalls the words of an unlucky leader in the American Civil War, whose “famous last words” were reported to be: “They couldn’t hit an elephant from this dist….”

EARL OF WESTMORLAND

The Earl of Westmorland is a prominent character in Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), where he seems to be the head of the intelligence service, since he reports enemy numbers and casualties. He is a cousin of Henry V, and in the First Folio the king addresses him by name.  (The First Folio (F) is the definitive printing of Shakespeare’s plays, put together by his friends and fellow actors in 1623, seven years after his death). For this reason I certainly would not replace Westmorland by “Warwick,” as in Taylor’s edition. In 4.3.17-19 Westmorland expresses concern that the English are so few, prompting King Henry’s great “Crispin’s Day” speech. Westmorland has his own sad moments, too. Grey the conspirator is his son-in-law, and to me this explains why it is Westmorland Henry addresses, as Grey silently reads his own death warrant in 2.2.67.

An insightful actor who assumed the part of Westmorland evaluated the character:

The man is not very well fleshed out, and I didn’t find it easy to get started on him. But I think he’s a professional soldier, very straight, very reliable, the first to lament that they’re very short of men at Agincourt, and, with Exeter, very worried about the way Henry handles the traitors…. I think Westmorland must be worried about what kind of leader in war that man is going to make, after that scene (2.2). [The young King Henry] could be a foolhardy man—a man who gets others killed as well as himself, and any trained soldier would be worried by that. (Beaumont, cited Mahood, 40).

EARL OF WARWICK

The Earl of Warwick appears in Henry IV (Part 2), in Henry V, and possibly in Henry VI (Part 1).  It isn’t always easy to tell which Earl of Warwick Shakespeare intends, whether Richard Beauchamp or his son-in-law Richard Neville the “Kingmaker.”<http://www.shakespeareandhistory.com/earl-of-warwick.php>. Although Taylor’s text of Henry V allots Warwick Westmorland’s lines (see above), Shakespeare may not have given Warwick a speaking part in this later play. Yet Warwick is certainly a physical presence in Henry V, since  the king’s St Crispin’s day speech lists him as one of the Agincourt warriors whose names will become “Familiar … as household words” (4.3.54).

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

Canterbury is plotting in Act 1: he wants to keep all the land the church possesses. He whispers to the Bishop of Ely, that if the act of Parliament King Henry is proposing is passed, “We lose the better half of our possession” (1.1.8); in fact, what the king would take by his new law would drink so deep from the church’s property, “ ‘Twould drink the cup and all”! (1.1.21). So Canterbury treads carefully. He certainly attempts to get the king on side–is the king about to accept the money when French Ambassador arrives? The possible offering and possible accepting of a bribe casts doubt upon the integrity of both the leader of the Church and the leader of the realm. Are Henry’s words upon deciding to go to France a mere rationalisation?: “May I with right and conscience make this claim?” (1.2.96). The lines can be delivered in a number of ways, each supporting a different interpretation. How does Henry deliver them in the performance that you will see: with impatience?  or with tedium?  or with a smile of complicity?  Or, as Branagh delivered them:  “Tell me the answer I want to hear and heaven help you if your decision is not right.”

Canterbury accedes: “The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!” (97). He exhorts the king with a rallying cry:

Stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag;
Look back into your mighty ancestors.
Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb,
From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,… (1.2.101-04)

BISHOP OF ELY

How does one “read” the Bishop of Ely? Is he puzzled and foolish (1.1.6), or politically acute (1.1.20), or merely a yes-man (1.1.23, 1.1.38)? He has his fine “strawberry” speech to explain the king’s idle youth (1.1.61-67), but has lines cut away from his part. Mahood asks further: “Is Ely just a ‘feed,’ who has scarcely anything to do but prompt his Archbishop’s exposition by laboured questions (“But what prevention?”), and to murmur assent to his Bishop’s prolix answers?” (Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare 39).  Mahood argues that “editors are so convinced that Ely is a yes-man, that when he takes a view contrary to the Archbishop in the next scene, they give his  words to Westmorland. But Ely’s sudden independence suggests that the previous scene contained a flicker of satire which the actor can kindle” (39).

Why did Shakespeare choose a Bishop of Ely to defend the Church’s extensive estates around Ely Cathedral? The reason may be as follows: in 1536 King Henry VIII closed the monasteries, threw out the religious orders, seized the Catholic church’s lands and money, and made himself the official head of the English church. When Henry’s Protestant daughter Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, she retained his royal privilege of appointing English bishops, and in 1558, the year of her accession, appointed Richard Cox as Bishop of Ely. “He was grasping, or at least tenacious of his rights in money matters, and was often brought into conflict with courtiers who coveted episcopal lands” (Wikipedia). Despite pressure from the crown, Cox succeeded in retaining the lands belonging to his see from 1558 until 1580. He died the following year. Shakespeare’s audiences would have heard of Ely’s determined resistance, because Elizabeth I, out of caution or as a mark of respect, kept the bishopric vacant (unfilled) for eighteen years after Cox’s departure, i. e. until February 1599. After commencing writing in January 1599, Shakespeare completed Henry V in May or early June of the same year (see Taylor 4-5 and Gurr ed. King Henry V, 1.1.8 note, p. 72). Early audiences of Henry V may therefore have mentally transferred the known tight-fistedness and determination of the sixteenth-century Anglican Bishop of Ely to his fifteenth-century Catholic predecessor (c. 1415).

RICHARD, FIRST EARL OF CAMBRIDGE

Cambridge is younger brother to the Duke of York in our play. He is the chief conspirator, having been bribed by “French crowns” to assassinate King Henry before he can set sail for France. The attempt fails in 2.2, for the King, who has learnt of the “Cambridge Plot,” entraps the ringleaders and tricks Cambridge into pronouncing his own death-sentence.  Pretending to consult the conspirators, Henry urges clemency and is inclined to set free an old drunk who had publicly abused him, but Cambridge advises against it: Henry: O let us yet be merciful./ Cambridge: So may your highness, and yet punish, too (2.2.47-48).

In view of Cambridge’s, Scrope’s and Grey’s assassination plot, this is blackguardly. When found out, Cambridge pleads for the very mercy he has just denied to the drunkard: “I do confess my fault,/And do submit me to your highness’ mercy” (2.2.74-75). He must have been shocked by Henry’s icy reply: “That mercy that was quick [alive] in us but late/By your own counsel is suppressed and killed” (2.2.77-78).

When Cambridge married Anne Mortimer and became the brother-in-law of Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March, he linked his family to the heirs of Lionel, second son of Edward III, and up‑graded the status of his York clan. Cambridge was godson to King Richard II (Gurr Intro. 67).

Cambridge was executed for treason, but his grandchildren kept trying to murder the reigning monarch. They eventually succeeded during the Wars of the Roses when (according to Thomas More’s The History of  King Richard III (1513-1518, first published 1557) and Shakespeare’s play Richard III) his grandson the Duke of York murdered the boy king Edward V and his younger brother in the Tower of London and took the throne as Richard III.

HENRY, LORD SCROPE OF MASHAM

A Scroop without scruples? Henry, the third Lord Scrope of Masham was the King’s childhood friend, close counsellor, and treasurer of the royal household. And yet he sells Henry out for French gold. His confession is dignified:

Our purposes God justly hath discovered,
And I repent my fault more than my death,
Which I beseech your highness to forgive
Although my body pay the price of it. (2.2.147-150)

But Henry does not accept it:

What shall I say to thee, Lord Scrope, thou cruel,
Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature? (2.2.91-92)

The king refuses to offer Christian forgiveness to those conspirators in the Cambridge plot whom he has already condemned to death (2.2.74-80). He argues he is justified in condemning them and tells them to seek the mercy of God (2.174-178).  It seems to be a case of “God forgives, I don’t.”  Branagh makes it credible dramatically with a lightning-bolt of fury and physical rage. It shows just how action can explain and annotate literature.

SIR THOMAS GREY

As Andrew Gurr, the Cambridge editor of Henry V, explains, Grey had ties to both camps. He is Westmorland’s son-in-law, and to me this explains why it is Westmorland the king addresses (2.2. 67), as Grey silently reads his death warrant. He appears only here, and is the mildest and most repentant of the conspirators (2.2.157-162).

PISTOL

“Pistol’s cock is up,/ And flashing fire will follow” (2.1.49-50), wrote Shakespeare (rather rudely).  Pistol is a “swaggerer.” What is a swaggerer? Certainly a “roaring boy,” a pub bully, a man of violence.  There are the expected double meanings in the name:  Pistol threatens to discharge upon the Hostess, with two bullets,  but Nell Quickly offers little sexual challenge now. He is a cock, a rooster, and at the end of Henry V he is beaten around his cox-comb .

Pistol’s speech is like nothing else on this earth.  His diction is impossibly stilted; he draws on vocabulary reminiscent of old ballads and romances. Alternatively, Pistol speech parodies the elaborate language made fashionable twenty years earlier by John Lyly’s prose romance, Euphues, Or the Anatomy of Wit (1579). This style favoured balanced phrases (parallels and antitheses) in which correspondences were typically marked by alliteration, e.g.: “A noble shalt thou have, and present pay,/ And liquor likewise will I give to thee,…” (2.1.102-103) In Stages of History Phyllis Rackin argues that Shakespeare consciously intended Pistol as an anachronism, whose self-conscious speech is “full of scraps of cliché” from a contemporary Elizabethan theatre that in Henry V’s day “did not yet exist.” Moreover, since pistols weren’t invented until the mid-sixteenth century, in 1415 and earlier Pistol’s “very name is an anachronism”(1990, 139).

If you give it time, Pistol’s elaborate mode of expression is really extremely funny. Unfortunately most directors have him rush the lines. As in the burlesque diction and delivery of the old-time music hall, Pistol needs to linger lovingly over alliteration: “The grave doth gape and doting death is near.” (2.1.59) “An oath of mickle might” (2.1.63)  One of my favourite Pistol‑cracks is a line which is superbly pompous and scurrilously self-justifying: when approached for eight shillings lost in a bet he replies to Nim:  “base is the slave that pays!” ( 2.1. 92) Again, read his speech  pleading that Fluellen will intercede with Henry for clemency for the condemned  church-robber, Bardolph:

Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him;
For he hath stolen a pax,
And hangèd must a be. A damnèd death–
Let gallows gape for dog,  let man go free,
And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate.   (3.6.38-42)

NIM

Nim is a cut-purse: he uses a sharp knife to cut through the strap holding a rich Elizabethan’s purse to his belt. His name is the Anglo‑Saxon word for “take”; he is “a sworn brother with Bardolph in filching”.

Nim uses his knife in other ways, too. He is a cut‑throat.  He does not threaten directly, but prefers to be obscurely menacing:  “Men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time, and some say knives have edges. It must be as it may”  (2.1.19‑22) . Versions of this last threatening sentence and phrases like “there’s an end” (2.1.9), and “There must be conclusions” (2.1.23) pepper Nim’s speech. When roused during his fight with Pistol, he says: “If you would walk off, I would pick your guts a little, in good terms, as I may, and that’s the humour of it” (2.1.54-56). Nim is the opposite of braggadocio Pistol because he commits his crimes in stealth, and always with an eye to self-preservation: “Faith I will live so long as I may” (2.1.13). But Nim is like Pistol in being a coward at heart: “I dare not fight, but I will wink and hold out mine iron. It is a simple one, but what though? It will toast cheese, and it will endure cold, as another man’s sword will–and there’s the end” ( 2.1.4-9). Pistol’s and Nim’s cowardice is what makes their drawing of their swords on each other–three times in 2. 1–so funny. There is never any possibility that they will do harm.

Bardolph and Nim remind the audience that not everyone is heroic, and conversely that being heroic is not the only way to be human. Alternatively, the bad example of these “chocolate soldiers” makes the courage of other English fighters shine more brightly by contrast.

BARDOLPH

In Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2) Bardolph is one of the crew of cronies that loll around with the fat knight Sir John Falstaff and Prince Hal, later Henry V, at the Boar’s Head Inn in Eastcheap, the meat-selling district of Shakespeare’s London. There are frequent jokes about that beacon of Bardolph’s drunkenness, his bright red, luminous nose, a lantern to light him safely home. But even as early as Henry IV (Part 1) written 1597, two years before Henry V,  Bardolph’s fate is predicted in a cameo when the young king-to-be catches him out with a triple pun: 

BARDOLPH: My lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these exhalations?
PRINCE HENRY: I do.
BARDOLPH: What think you they portend?
PRINCE HENRY: Hot livers and cold purses.
BARDOLPH: Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.
PRINCE HENRY: No, if rightly taken, halter.
(Henry IV (Part 1) 2.4. 305-311). 

Bardolph is pretending the whelks on his red face are meteoric exhalations, and claiming that if Hal knew how to take predictions from the planets he would know how to read these signs. He says his face shows martial anger: “ ‘Choler’ [anger], if rightly taken.” He means that a correct interpretation would note his angry or choleric nature. However the future King Henry sees a different meaning, namely that Bardolph’s face is like that of strangled felon, hanged for stealing: “No, ‘halter‘ if rightly taken” chimes in Hal. The king-to-be means that if Bardolph were to be “rightly taken” (that is, “justly arrested”) then his reward would be a noose!–A “halter” or noose is another kind of “collar,” and if Bardolph gets “collared” (as we would say today), his collar would be a noose. Again, this may seem mere word-play, until you discover Bardolph’s fate in Henry V. 

Henry later lets Bardolph hang for robbing a church, a crime that he has warned his soldiers against. The honest Welshman Fluellen extends sympathy for “one Bardolph, if your majesty know the man. His face is all bubunkles and whelks and knobs and flames o’fire, and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue, sometimes red. But his nose is executed, and his fire’s out” (3.6. 103-107). This is one last, very black, nose-joke, in which the blue and red of Bardolph’s face suggest that of a strangled felon.  Henry extends no sympathy, perhaps justifiably, with the words “We would have all such offenders so cut off.”  But this careful reply fails to respond to Fluellen’s implied question, “if your majesty know the man,” since Henry has let Bardolph hang unacknowledged.

Branagh’s film takes great liberties with the text here, even if moving ones. Henry has tears in his eyes as he watches the execution, and flashbacks by montage and voice-over show him remembering scenes of his camaraderie with Bardolph, as acted earlier in Henry IV. Even so, Bardolph’s voice in the flashbacks purloins some of Falstaff’s lines. Shakespeare’s harsher Henry cannot inhabit Branagh’s production any more than it could Laurence Olivier’s film.

QUESTION: Is Bardolph anything more than Falstaff’s crony with a red nose? Can you find anything in Henry V, before his demise, to suggest another dimension?

BOY

The page from Henry IV (Part 2) functions as truth-teller in Henry V. When Bardolph reports that on his deathbed Falstaff “cried out against women,” the Hostess, who was in love with Falstaff, denies it; but Boy tells the truth: “Yes that ‘a did, and said they [women] were devils incarnate” (2.3.27-29). Later, in France, Boy proves also to be a realist about war: “Would I were in an alehouse in London. I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety” (3.2.10-11).

In addition he has a gift of prophecy.  Now that Falstaff is dead, there will be no more jokes about Bardolph’s nose.  But Boy recalls an encore from Falstaff’s death-bed:   “He saw a flea on Bardolph’s nose and said it was a black soul burning in hell”  (2.3.36-37). That’s another foreshadowing of Bardolph’s hanging, and his likely fate as a “black soul.”

Boy likewise prophecies his own death when he reveals the truth about his friends’ being war profiteers:  “Nim and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching…I must leave them and seek some better service,” i.e. in heaven (2.3.50-51). Boy will not agree to be an apprentice thief.  He debunks Pistol–“the empty vessel makes the greatest sound” (4.4.66-67), but then makes the fatal decision to go back with the luggage, which is unprotected: “I must stay with the lackeys, with the luggage of our camp.  The French might have a good prey of us, if he knew of it, for there is none to guard it but boys” (4.4.71‑74). This dramatic premonition foretells his fate and that of the other boys.

HOSTESS NELL QUICKLY

Nell is a madam, but also a kind of bawdy Mrs. Malaprop (a character in Richard Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals, 1775).  She is constantly making unintentionally bawdy remarks.  In Henry IV (Part 1) Falstaff gets her to disremember his debts by confusing her. In one of his many jokes about Nell’s having lost her sexual attractiveness, he cruelly says she is, “Neither fish nor flesh, a man knows not where to have you” (3.3.113-114); and she gullibly retorts: “Every man knows where to have me!” (115-116). In Henry IV (Part 2) Nell is shown to procure for Falstaff and to envy Doll, but she herself is said, again callously,  to be ‘Pistol-proof’ (2.4.99). Yet, as we have seen, in Henry V Pistol has married Nell for her property.

In Henry V Nell still has a disreputable crew of lovers fighting over her, and except for the show-stopping account of Falstaff’s death she has the same role as in Henry IV.  Like Pistol, she is killed off by the end of the play (5.1.74-75).  It is my view by the way, that it is Doll, not Nell, who dies of the French Disease (syphilis) in the ‘spital.  It is clear that Pistol, like Falstaff before him and Nim after, has been on with both the women.  Pistol is callous; it is more damaging if you are a brothel-owner to lose your sole marketable piece of stock than your aging proprietress.

In 2.1.111-112 Nell calls Bardolph, Pistol and Nim to Falstaff’s deathbed. It is significant that Falstaff, the main source of comedy and energy in the low life sequences of Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2) dies offstage, allegedly of a broken heart. Nell reports his death, saying simply, ‘The King has killed his heart” (2.1.84). Has one kind of wisdom been lost to the world of Henry V with the death of Falstaff? Nell’s comment suggests that what the world lost was the wisdom of the heart, the wisdom of love. Is the pronoun, “his,” we wonder, ambivalent?  Is it reflexive, referring to the king’s heart as well? 

Two scenes later, Pistol reports that Falstaff is dead (2.3.5). Nell is sure however that he is not damned (sadly confusing Abraham in the Old Testament and the legendary King Arthur): “Nay sure, he’s not in hell! He’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom” (2.3.9-10). If Falstaff is known for anything besides monstrous lies, it is love.  Besides his love for young Hal, he is known for the love of three things: sack [a sherry wine]; womanizing; and jokes, most often at Bardolph’s expense.  Which of these loves does Nell tell us he retracted before he dies? (In Nell’s and Boy’s speech ‘’a’ is simply the unstressed form of “he.”):

NIM: They say he cried out of sack.
HOSTESS:   Ay, that ‘a did.
BARDOLPH: And of women.
HOSTESS: Nay, that ‘a did not!
BOY: Yes that ‘a did, and said they were devils incarnate. (2.3.25-29)

The Hostess first evades Boy’s claim with her famous line: “ ’A could never abide carnation, ‘twas a colour he never liked.” But Boy objects: ” ‘A said once the devil would have him about women.” Nell reluctantly agrees, but uses another of her notorious unintentional sexual puns: “He did, in some sort, handle women.” (2.3.30-32). (By “handle” Nell means “discuss,” but the literal sense, “lay hands on,” is more obvious and immediate.)

Nell’s great moment in Henry V comes when  she reports Falstaff’s death in what is widely recognised as the greatest “messenger-speech” in Shakespeare (2.3.9-24; cited Mahood):

a parted ev’n just between 12 and one, ev’n at the turning o’ th’ tide–for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his finger’s end, I knew there was but one way. For his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ‘a babbled of green fields. “How now, Sir John?” quoth I. “What, man, be o’ good cheer.”  So ‘a cried out “God, God, God!”, three or four times.  Now I, to comfort him, bid him ‘a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet.  So ‘a bade me lay more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone. Then I felt up to his knees, and so up’ard and up’ard, and all was as cold as any stone. 

This immensely moving speech has often been compared to Plato’s account of the death of Socrates, which it greatly resembles.

SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM

Knighted for bravery on the battlefield, Sir Thomas is a soldier respected by the entire English army. Although by birth he is not the social equal of the dukes and lords who people Henry V, he is an old, seasoned campaigner whom they are always glad to see. He is sure enough of his standing to speak familiarly to the king himself, and even to make a little joke:

KING HENRY:  Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham,
A good soft pillow for that good white head
Were better than a churlish turf of France.

ERPINGHAM: Not so, my liege, this lodging likes me better,
So I may say, “Now lie I [I am housed] like a king” (4.1.13-17).

King Henry admires this brave old man, and envies his confidence: “God-a-mercy, old heart, thou speak’st cheerfully” (4.1.35). Disguised by Sir Thomas’s cloak, he jokes by telling the English soldier Williams that the captain he serves under is “Sir Thomas Erpingham.” The staunch Williams replies: “A good old commander and a most kind gentleman” (4.1.93-94.). Mahood writes that Erpingham is “the ideal English captain, substitute[ed] for the generally discreditable image of that rank” (66). She is right, and one only has to think of the hot-headed Irishman, Captain MacMorris, or that scurrilous old rogue, Sir John Falstaff, who takes bribes from men wanting to avoid conscription (Henry IV (Part 1) 4.2. 11-44) to see why Captains had such a poor reputation. Henry V admires Erpingham for the same reason he admires Fluellen, that they are Captains who are concerned for their men: “Though it appear a little out of fashion/There is much care and valour in this Welshman (4.1.82-83). The sentiment also applies to Erpingham.

CAPTAIN GOWER

The English captain Gower is also an experienced soldier and a friend of Fluellen. He is the silent type. When other Captains are bickering, as Fluellen and MacMorris do in 3.3.31-73, Gower warns against fighting: “Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.” (3.3.74). 

Gower is essential for two fine scenes in Henry V:

First, a kind man himself, he totally mistakes the king’s motives for slaughtering the French prisoners (4.7.5-10).  If Taylor is right, an atrocity occurs at the end of the preceding scene (4.6), when Henry decides that Orleans’ plan has worked to some extent, for “the French have reinforced their scattered men. / Let every soldier kill his prisoners” (4.6.37-38). Henry orders this slaughter so that the English can focus on fighting the reinvigorated French army. Gower mistakenly thinks Henry’s motive is to avenge the slaughtered boys and the looting and burning of the king’s tent (4.7.5-8), “wherefore the King most worthily hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner’s throat. O ’tis a gallant king.” (4.78-10). Surely many members of the audience will see the irony of Gower’s naive praise for Henry’s murderous command. 

Fluellen then proceeds immediately to compare Henry to “Alexander the Pig.” Gower corrects this: (Surely you mean) “Alexander the Great.” (line 14). But Fluellen sticks to his guns: “Why I pray you, is not ‘pig’ great?” etc. (lines 1-18). Superficially merely a comic blunder, Fluellen’s mistake invites the audience to understand that there’s not much difference between greatness and piggishness (blind greed)–a point surely that all who aspire to high office need to take to heart!

Fluellen goes on to elaborate his blunder and, for alert members of the audience, to multiply the ironies: “Alexander, God knows, and you know,  in his rages and his wraths and his cholers and his moods and his little displeasures and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicate in his prains, did in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend Cleitus–” (4.731-35). Gower responds: “Our King is not like him in that. He never killed any of his friends.” (36-37). Gower’s simplicity and naivete here produces an even bitterer irony–Which of his friends has Henry on record as killing in this very play?–Think hanging and even worse, killing the heart.

Secondly, in 5.1 honest Gower gets a fine speech, upbraiding Pistol, after the brave Fluellen has beaten him, for the fake that he is: “Go, go, you are a counterfeit cowardly knave.  Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words?” etc. (5.1.63-72). In one modern stage production, Gower, who has been the phlegmatic Englishman through the whole play, breaks into a loud guffaw at this point, and hoots with laughter at Pistol–an action that works on stage.

CAPTAIN FLUELLEN

“Fluellen” is the Shakespearean spelling for the Welsh name “Llewellyn.” As discussed above, this honest Welsh captain sometimes acts as the king’s conscience or foil. Fluellen draws the attention of an audience to things which escape the players on stage. He is much more than a comic stage-Welshman: in relation to Henry he takes over many of Falstaff’s functions. 

Does Fluellen sometimes doubt King Henry’s integrity? 

Fluellen extends broad sympathy for Bardolph before his execution, but politely refuses Pistol’s plea to ask the Duke of Exeter to save his life. For as long as they are all playing the dangerous game of warfare, Fluellen will not condone Bardolph’s crime: “Certainly, ensign, it is not a thing to rejoice at. For if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke to use his good pleasure, and put him to executions. For discipline ought to be used.” (3.6.52-55). Fluellen nevertheless speaks the epitaph for the hanged Bardolph (3.6.101-107). I believe that he notices that the King did not reply to his question “if your majesty know the man,” since thereafter, he is greatly concerned over how Henry treats his friends. Thus it is Fluellen who raises the killing of Falstaff.

At 4.7.10 when Gower exclaims ,”Oh, ’tis a gallant King,” Fluellen claims Henry as a Welshman.  “Ay he was porn in Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you the town’s name where Alexander the Pig was born?” (4.7.11-13). Gower corrects him: “Alexander the Great,” but it is only Fluellen’s accent “And does not pig mean great?”  Fluellen then makes his famous comparisons between the (historical but) legendary Alexander and the (historical but) near legendary Henry: “There is a river in Macedon and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth. It is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river–but ’tis all one, ’tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both.”  (4.7.24-28).  Fluellen then notes with some insight:

Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages and his furies and his wraths and his cholers and his moods and his displeasures and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend Cleitus–  (4.7.30-35).

But the comic comparisons prove unfortunate, for Gower identifies what he mistakenly assumes is a dissimilarity: “Our king is not like him [Alexander] in that. He never killed any of his friends.”

No wonder Fluellen is flustered: “It is not well done, mark you now, to take the tales out of my mouth ere it is made an end and finished. (4.7.38-39), and, in an apparent non sequitur, defends Henry for “turning away the fat knight with the great belly doublet,” i.e. Falstaff (4.7.43-45). Fluellen seems disturbed, for he reiterates “there is good men porn at Monmouth” (4.7.47-48). So does Fluellen doubt King Henry’s integrity after all?

After Agincourt, Fluellen almost demurely approaches the king, and mentions the leek adorning Monmouth caps, asking: “I do believe that your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon St Tavy’s Day.” [St David is the patron saint of Wales; the Welsh name sounds like “taffy” to English ears.]  The king replies: “I wear it for a memorable honour/ For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman” (4.7.99-100). In Shakespeare this is one Henry’s most human moments; in Branagh’s film both men embrace in tears.  Fluellen, it seems, is a blood-brother. Not even the Welsh river Wye can wash that Welsh blood away.  But Fluellen is still perhaps concerned about Henry’s treatment of other erstwhile “brothers,” such as Bardolph.  Otherwise, why would he next say to the king, immediately after Henry’s greatest victory “I need not to be ashamed of your majesty, praised be God, so long as your majesty is an honest man.”   It is said that Olivier in stage performances always replied here by dropping his voice low, and hesitating before giving the reply, “God keep me so” (4.7.107-109).

Fluellen, honest Welshman and king’s conscience, is one of the best developed characters in the play. Henry himself admires Fluellen, who is a brave Captain, concerned for his men:

Though it appear a little out of fashion
There is much care and valour in this Welshman.
(4.1.82-83).

There is much to choose from in finding Fluellen’s best line.

CAPTAIN JAMY

Is Jamy anything more than a Scots accent? And why is he given the name? There seems an agreement at least that “Jamie” was the best known Scots name at the time. In 1599 (when Henry V was first performed) the old Queen, Elizabeth, was deteriorating in health. As the Virgin Queen, she had no heirs “of the body,” but her near relation, James VI of Scotland, was widely tipped to become the next King of England. So “Jamie” was one Scots name on everyone lips. It may be that Captain Jamy’s promise (in dialect): “Ay’ll de gud service,” (3.3.57; “I will do good service”), hints at the political situation. In 3.3.55-60, Jamy, as Gurr notes, uses other Scotticisms: “lig in the ground” has a hard Scandinavian “g” (we say “lie”); “Got” is used for “God,”  “sall” for “shall,” “suirely” for “surely,” and ‘twae’ for “two.” He swears a mild oath, “Marry,” equivalent to the English “by’r Lady,” both referring to Mary the Mother of Christ.

Captain Jamy tries to stop the squabble between the Welsh Captain, Fluellen, and the irritable Irishman, MacMorris (3.3.45-47).  Fluellen openly admires Jamy as a skilled and determined soldier, asserting at his entrance that “Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous gentleman, that is certain” (3.3.21).

CAPTAIN MACMORRIS

As you know, “Mac” is a common prefix for both Irish and Scots names. MacMorris is an irritable Irishman who has summoned up Irish soldiers to fight for King Henry in France. He looks for a quarrel, and is especially touchy if ever anyone appears to denigrate his nation. In 3.3, the strange scene between the four bickering captains, Jamy, tries to stop the squabble between MacMorris and Fluellen (3.3.46-47). Fluellen openly admires Captain Jamy, but has little sympathy for MacMorris, who uses a different, more modern, style of warfare. Like all Welshmen, Fluellen wants to keep out of the mines. But MacMorris thinks the mines work wonderfully well, for they will let him “under-mine” Harfleur, and blow it up! (3.3.31-37). For Fluellen, this modern use of explosives is an atrocity, against “the disciplines of the war” (3.3.39). In their debate, Fluellen is going to generalise about the the Irish nation, and MacMorris “blows up,” losing it completely.  He says to Fluellen, “I do not know you as good a man as myself. So Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.” (3.3.72-74). But MacMorris has his insights too. He warns: “An the trumpet call us to the breach” [i.e. if the trumpet call us to charge the break in Harfleur’s wall], and we just stand here quarrelling, it will be shameful.” (3.3.51-54). But when a trumpet does sound, it signals not another charge but a parley.

In Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare, Mahood asserts that “the bickerings of the four Captains are a joke that does not quite come off…. The Captains are not so much departures from as replacements for the Eastcheap gang. Fluellen’s verbal exuberance and imagination help console us for the loss of Falstaff; MacMorris is a fiery as Pistol, Gower as conciliatory and easy going  as Bardolph, Jamy [the Scot] as deliberative as Nim. Shakespeare has not got Henry’s army completely right… [so] he quickly breaks [the scene and quarrel] up” (65).

JOHN BATES

In 4.1 the disguised king walks through the camp at night to observe his army and boost the morale of his troops. He encounters three ordinary soldiers. Cold, hungry and apprehensive, they are characters with whom many in Shakespeare’s Elizabethan and later audiences would empathise.

John Bates is a practical soldier who compares well with his two comrades, Alexander Court and Michael Williams. Alexander’s single line is addressed to Bates, whom he regards well enough to name “Brother” (4.1.84). Bates is far more practical than either of his comrades. When the disguised Henry says: “I am sure the king would not wish himself anywhere but where he is,” Bates shrewdly responds: “Then I would he were here alone.  So should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved.” (4.1.117-18).

When the disguised King Henry quarrels with the third soldier, Michael Williams, Bates brings them both back to earth, by recalling their main priority: “Be friends, you English fools, be friends. We have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to reckon [count]” (4.1.212-13). There is a typically deep-laid Shakespearean pun here. The word “quarrel” is the technical name for the bolt (arrow) fired from the French crossbows. Crossbows were terrifying steel weapons, and a “quarrel” was a four-sided steel bolt. Thousands of these “quarrels” were to be fired at the English in the first minutes of the battle, far too many to reckon, even if one knew how to count. So Bates is given a fine couple of lines.

ALEXANDER COURT

A second English soldier is Alexander Court. , Mahood argues that Court says least probably because he is terrified (67): “Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder?” (4.1.84)). Can you see that this man does not want the day of the battle to begin? Why, otherwise, would he ask? And he wants to reassure himself that he is among “brothers,” an idea that is at the heart of Henry’s great St. Crispin’s Day speech before the battle at Agincourt:

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition. (4.3.57-63)

Alexander Court sees the need for such comrades-in-arms, such brothers-in-battle: 

a good actor would show the inexperienced Alexander Court, who is still on stage, shaking, terrified, or vomiting. Actors can do a lot, even if they only speak one line. Professor Mahood has a great regard for Alexander Court. After all, he and those like him are at the centre of her book Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare. She gets the audience’s apprehension for him entirely right when she comments:

[At the end of the scene] the grim business of identifying and counting the dead is going on elsewhere, and … the casualty list firmly divides those “of name” from “all other men.” We can only hope though scarcely trust that Alexander Court is not among the latter” (69).

MICHAEL WILLIAMS

Henry’s exchange with Michael Williams enunciates a continuing concern of Shakespeare’s play: whether Henry’s claim to the French throne morally justifies a war that entails so much suffering and loss of life. (See above under “King Henry, First Encounter.”) Henry finds that a private joke (4.1.121-23) stirs up objections from Williams, including a horrific catalogue of “all those legs and arms and heads chopped off” in battle (4.1.129-140). The two men exchange gloves and agree that they will exchange blows afterwards if they both survive.

When Williams does later find the man whom he now sees is the king himself, he speaks nobly:

Your Majesty came not like yourself. You appeared to me but as a common man. Witness the night, your garments, your lowliness. And what your highness suffered under that shape, I beseech you take it for your own fault, and not mine; for had you been as I took you for, I made no offence. Therefore I beseech your highness  pardon me. (4.8.49-55). 

Henry tries to reward him (or buy him off?) by filling a glove with gold. Williams nobly answers him “I will [want] none of your money” (4.8.66). This is his finest moment in the play. In Branagh’s film version, Michael Williams was played by the great character actor, Michael Williams, the husband of Dame Judi Dench, and Branagh’s mentor. (That’s his real name, truly!)

The heroic, realistic Michael Williams, who refuses to be intimidated, has one of the best parts in Henry V.  Although he is a common soldier, he is far from an ordinary man.

KING OF FRANCE

Although he is named only as King in the play, the French king at the time of Henry’s invasion was Charles VI. Although he is assisted by the powerful Duke of Berri (a silent part), Charles is no match for Exeter the English ambassador, nor for the tantrums of the crown prince of France, The Dauphin. Yet despite this, the king retains dignity, even when bullied, and is given some splendidly regal lines to proclaim war against the English (even if he overestimates his position). The thing to notice about the French court of King Charles is its sumptuousness, compared with the far less grand court of Henry. This contrast will be repeated on the battlefield, for the French will talk of grand horses, and suits of armour covered with gold, sun and stars.

The King receives an embassy from England with dignity, and his language attempts to put himself on the same level as his kingly counterpart. He asks Exeter have you come here,“From our brother, England?” (2.4.76), only to be told harshly he is no king, his throne is only “borrowed.” When Exeter demands he vacate the throne of France as the price of peace, Charles replies (again, with dignity) “Or else what follows”? only to be told “Bloody constraint!”

The king refuses to be a puppet. After the English victory at Harfleur and invasion of France north-east along the River Somme (3.5.1; see http://www.aginc.net/battle/route-map.htm), Charles proclaims that Montjoy must go to Henry’s camp: “Let him greet England with our sharp defiance” ( 3.5.37). He has a majestic simile to utter, followed by an acerbic metaphor:

Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow
Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat
The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon.” (3.5.50-53)

But by the Treaty scene (5.2), King Henry V makes it clear that the mad old king is simply not a player in the peace negotiations, in which the hand in marriage of the king’s daughter Catherine (Kate)  is Henry’s “capital demand” (5.2.96). When Kate answers Henry “What if my father does not like it” (in French at 5.2.237), Henry answers (238-239): “Nay, it will please him well, Kate [a prediction]. But then “It shall please him, Kate.” [a command.] The King of France is no longer a player, Queen Isabel does the talking save for King Charles’ capitulation in 5.2.328-29.  Yet even at his surrender the king still has dignity. He gives the hand of the princess in marriage to his new son-in-law:

Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up
Issue to me, that the contending kingdoms
Of France and England, whose very shores look pale
With envy of each other’s happiness,
May cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction
Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord
In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance
His bleeding sword ‘twixt England and fair France.  (5.2.333-40)

His last words in the play still show regal concern for the future of la belle France (“fair France”).

QUEEN ISABEL

A tiny part, but Shakespeare treats the Queen of France well. As a minor character her one great speech (see Mahood) resolves all tension over her daughter’s forced marriage and creates unity and peace with a prayer: “God, the best maker of all marriages,/Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one…” (5.2.344-53).

THE DAUPHIN

In the First Folio (F), this character is playfully called “The Dolphin.” Well, perhaps it is not so playful at that, for The Dauphin is the crown prince, next in line for the throne; he is the French equivalent of the Prince of Wales. Consider what will happen if the treaty of Act 5 goes ahead, and King Henry marries Catherine of France. For France, the most important implication of the treaty is that, although King Charles will remain on the throne while he lives, Henry will succeed him as king of France, and children born from the treaty-marriage with Catherine will rule both England and France after Henry. This arrangement disinherits the Dauphin–an outcome stemming not from justice but from the fortunes of war.

Shakespeare therefore prevents the audience from sympathising with “The Dolphin.” A funny name is a starting point, as is “the tennis ball scene” in which The Dauphin gratuitously insults the English king about his youth: “balls to you” (1.2.258). Examine too the scene (2.4.127-133) which shows The Dauphin flexing the muscles of his authority against the king his father, and being reprimanded by Exeter for it. Finally, The Dauphin loses further audience sympathy by underrating the English and their king:

…[England] is so idly kinged,
By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
That fear attends her not. (2.4. 27-30).

The French king decrees that his son the Dauphin will not fight at Agincourt, but will remain with him in Rouen (3.5.64-66). However, speeches before the battle which the Quarto text (Q), followed by most modern editors, gives to the Duke of Bourbon, the First Folio (F) re-allocates to the Dauphin, and this is the reading I personally prefer. It is “the Dolphin,” I believe, who is insulted relentlessly in the boasting competition  (3.7.37-63) among the French leaders–“the Constable, Lord Rambures, the Dukes of Orléans and [Bourbon], with others” (Taylor 196)–which suggests he is having sex with his horse. Mahood states that Q is as bad a text as a bad text can be, and I think that insulting the soon-to-be-disinherited Dauphin suits Shakespeare’s dramatic purposes as these appear elsewhere in Henry V, such as in the two scenes just discussed.

 In the first Folio, it is clear that the Dolphin is the sonneteer, who writes sonnets to his horse, and is in ecstasy when astride her back (racist jokes which suggest that the French not only eat horses, but have intercourse with them.) When it is decided that the Dauphin will not appear at Agincourt, editors assign the Dolphin’s lines to Bourbon, but to me they seem out of place given Bourbon’s over-aggressive, warlike character.

CATHERINE OF FRANCE (KATE)

“Kate” may be impressed with the young conqueror who wants to marry her, but watch him! Shakespeare’s portrait of Henry as suitor seduces readers into forgetting that the Catherine has no choice in the matter whatsoever; the decision has been made in advance. Although Henry gives his uncle Exeter power to augment or alter parts of the peace treaty, his proviso insists that one demand will not be altered:

Yet leave our cousin Catherine here with us.
She is our capital demand, comprised
Within the fore-rank of our articles. (5.2.96-97).

Henry’s anglicising of Catherine’s name is one sign of his determination to possess both her and France. A valid interpretation of Kate’s marriage cannot be based on the wooing scene alone; and in any case this scene is not as one-dimensional as both Olivier and Branagh produce it. When Kate modestly blunders in thinking that the match depends on her father the king’s approval, Henry’s statement that the marriage shall please him insists on his own predominance (5.2.239-40; see above). Power games are played in what amounts to a pseudo-rape when both Kate and the vociferous Alice point out that French girls don’t kiss before marriage.  Henry’s firm reply reverberates: “O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings” (5.2.260). Just what does Kate say in her own voice to this marriage? She may be most herself when she asks: “Is it possible dat I sould love de ennemi of France?” (5.2.166).

ALICE, CATHERINE’S LADY-IN-WAITING

In 3.4 all Alice can talk to Kate about is sin and sex, but she doesn’t mean to do so! In her outrageous “English lesson” she is teaching the Princess to speak like the English, and “sin” is merely her attempt at “chin.” (lines 32-33). Shakespeare had an excellent ear for languages, as his stage-Welshman Fluellen demonstrates with “plue,” for “blue” and “pig” for “big.” Both women are embarrassed at the end of the scene to discover the English are always using two taboo French words–the f… word and the c… word–when they say “foot,” “neck,” and “gown.”  Oh well, the English are like that, Alice thinks, always using f… and c…., and she tells the Princess her English is “Excellent, madame!” (3.4.55). Shakespeare’s joke is that Alice’s closing words “Excellent, madame!” are identical in English or French.

As one gathers, Alice’s English is not too hot. Later, after Alice has come on stage for the peace negotiations, she remains as interpreter in the “wooing scene.” Here she tells King Henry that the Princess thinks “dat de tongeus of de mans is be full of deceits” (5.2.120), only too true in her own case as well! Alice is a lady (and a lady-in-waiting), “an old gentlewoman.” The “wooing scene” in the First Folio “records her [there] only as ‘Lady,’ in the speech headings, but she must be the same lady as ‘Alice’ of Act 3, scene [4]” (Andrew Gurr, ed. King Henry V, 196.) 

Shakespeare is notorious for his inconsistency with speech prefixes. He can sometimes call the one character by four names, or even by the name of the actor playing the role. If Shakespeare is such a great dramatist, why does one need to make any conjectures about “Lady” at all?  Why wasn’t Shakespeare careful about indicating which character said which speech, or who was on the stage, or where one scene ended and a new scene began? Stanley Wells has dealt with this problem first-hand, having edited two Oxford Shakespeares, one in original spelling and the other in modern spelling. In Re-Editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader Wells suggests a surprising answer:

It is clear from all the available evidence that Shakespeare wrote, not as a dramatist whose work would be completed the moment that he delivered his script to the company for which it was written, but as one who knew that he would be involved in the production process… Shakespeare seems to have had no interest in preparing his plays for the reader.

Wells is careful to note:

By ‘reader’ here, I do not mean simply one who wished to read a play, whether or not he saw it; I mean even those who were obliged to read it as part of their duty to put it on the stage.

If Wells is right, it would explain why Shakespeare quite often doesn’t write down  every speech-prefix, or decide exactly where to divide every scene, since these things are often best worked out in performance, and Shakespeare knew he would be there for the rehearsals. Should we bring “Alice” on stage again with the French court? “Yes!” all the cast would have agreed, for she is one of those minor characters who “provide the texture of the tapestry which throws the principal parts into relief” (cited Mahood 1998, 2).

THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE

King Henry reads out the Constable’s full name in the list of those killed at the Battle of Agincourt: “Charles Delabret, High Constable of France” (4.8.90). The Constable clashes verbally and exchanges bawdy jokes with Rambures and the Dauphin [Bourbon in Taylor] throughout 3.7. When, shockingly, Rambures  proposes to gamble on the number of English prisoners he personally will capture: “Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?” (lines 81-82), the Constable shrewdly replies: “You must first go yourself to hazard [place yourself in danger], ere you have them [before you can capture them]” (3.7.81-82). The Constable twits Bourbon for becoming over-excited about his horse, which he prefers to his mistress: “Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly [that is, shrewishly] shook your back” (3.7.46-47). “So perhaps did yours!” “Mine was not bridled,” the Constable responds, only to be told, cruelly, “at least mine had hair.” This implies that the Constable’s mistress has gone bald from venereal disease–see Taylor’s note to 3.7. 58-59. Later, in a grand speech before Agincourt (4.2 14-47), the Constable encourages the French lords by pointing to their advantage in numbers and the evident weakness of the English, to the point where the mere appearance–the “fair show” of the French, “shall suck away their souls, /Leaving them but the shells and husks of men” (4.2.17-18). He closes this scene by seizing a trumpeter’s banner and leading the charge (60-63). Yet when he re-enters 4.5.1, he begins with a curse “O diable!“; and in his final charge he hopes that the disorder that has destroyed the French strategy will now be his friend by taking his life and saving him from dishonour  (4.5.16-17). 

Can you see what the the interminable internal quarrels of the English and French fighters achieve? By pitting Nim against Pistol, Pistol against Fluellen, Fluellen against MacMorris and pairing off the French nobles into similar subgroups the play builds an impression of an abundant cast of fighters. Chorus has told us the play cannot bring a million characters on stage, so we must use a “cipher,”  a small number, to make imaginary plenty out of very little (Prologue 15-18).

DUKE OF BOURBON

Bourbon is characterised as the most over-confident of the French. In 3.5.10-14 he calls the English, “Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!”  He fights to the end, but does not die in battle as he wishes: “Let life be short, else shame will be too long” (4.6.23-24). Instead he is taken prisoner and marched onstage at 4.7.49. Bourbon’s “conspicuousness as the most lordly of the prisoners” makes him the target for Henry’s threat to cut more prisoners’ throats at 4.7. 58. (Gurr King Henry V n. 4.7.0, stage direction). Is this brilliant warrior, who at all costs wants to avoid shame, to be shamed at the last by having his throat cut on stage?  Historically, Bourbon like Charles, Duke of Orléans was taken as a prisoner to the tower of London.]

CHARLES, DUKE OF ORLÉANS

Long after Charles of Orléans has been forgotten as one of the noblest French dukes captured by Henry at the battle of Agincourt, he is remembered as a great poet in both French and English. He was “imprisoned” lavishly in the Tower of London and elsewhere for 25 years, while his huge ransom was being paid off. Charles was far too noble to harm, and his exile gave him time to write. As well as being the nephew of the enormously wealthy Jean, Duc de Berri [also in our play, see below] his first wife was Isabella of Valois, the widow of the deposed English king Richard II.

In Henry V Shakespeare’s Orléans gives the call to battle (4.2.1). Taylor also assigns him lines in which he boldly asserts “we can still win if we can regain some order” (4.5.7-9). His plan’s potential success is noted by the desperate King Henry, who sees that keeping the French prisoners alive has become too risky, because once liberated and reunited with the army, they could overwhelm the English by sheer weight of numbers.

DUKE OF BERRI

One of the wealthiest and most powerful men in France, Jean Duc de Berri was regent during the unstable periods of Charles VI’s minority and, later, insanity. He barely survived the battle of Agincourt, in which so many French nobles were killed, and in which his favourite grandson, Charles of Orléans, was taken prisoner. The Duc was one of “the greatest patrons in the history of art, whose lavish and imaginative support made possible the illustration of [one of] the most exquisite manuscripts known today, Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berri.”  In Plate 1, “January” the Duc, who wears a blue velvet cloak and a beaver hat, gives and receives New Year’s gifts at one of his lavish feasts. His tiny dogs wander around the delicacies on the table, near a huge gold salt-cellar shaped as a ship: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_Duc_de_Berry#/media/File:Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_Janvier.jpg>. Plate 5, “April,” may depict Charles of Orléans’ second marriage (following Isabella of Valois’s death) to Bonne de Armagnac, but none of the characters in this abundant spring scene has been definitely identified: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_Duc_de_Berry#/media/File:Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_avril.jpg>.

The Duke of Berri speaks no lines in Henry V, but is one of those minor characters “who provide the texture of the tapestry which throws the principal parts into relief” (cited Mahood 1998, 2). Lavishly dressed and a sumptuous presence in scenes at the French court, the Duke forms in fact the richest part of the tapestry. As he watches and listens imposingly in Act 2 Scene 4, he is a silent reminder of the inadequacies of the French King and the Dauphin. Which of the three speakers whom the Duke overhears has the most powerful and compelling lines: King Charles, the Dauphin, or Exeter?  Perhaps the strongest single line is Exeter’s:  “For if you hide the crown/ Even in your hearts, there will he [Henry] rake for it” (2.4.97-98).

LORD RAMBURES

Rambures “is named as Master of the Crossbows at Agincourt, where he is amongst those killed” (Gurr 68). Agincourt was another battle won by the English longbow, which again proved deadlier than the potentially more powerful crossbow. The history of the longbow probably explains why King Henry so admires Fluellen and his care for his “Welsh bowmen,” for “the longbow was probably invented by the Welsh … it inflicted devastating slaughter. A trained bowman could fire up to twelve arrows a minute,” so [a death-shower of] arrows could have fallen on the French in that minute…. Used arrows would be torn unceremoniously from their victims and used again…. These “cloth-yard” shafts were about a yard long…. At first arrows had broad-headed points, but later these thinned to [needle-pointed] bodkins, and later came to resemble modern bullets” (truncated from an account by Philip Warner, formerly Senior Lecturer at the Royal Academy, Sandhurst). William Langland, a poet writing forty years before Agincourt, has a remarkable description of Christ’s love as “portable and piercing as the needle-point [of an arrow] which no armour can withstand, nor any high walls.”

By contrast, Rambures’ crossbows were terrifying steel weapons that fired a four-sided steel bolt known as a “quarrel.” It was slow-loading, heavy, needed a lever or windlass, but could be loaded by a boy. Rambures is training a boy in illustration 6: “The French Nobles before Agincourt,” by stage historian C. Walter Hodges (Gurr 38).

In Henry V 3.7.66-67 Lord Rambures tries to gain favour with the Constable of France by praising his star-spangled armour (see illustration 14 in Gurr 211 for armour lavishly covered with stars). Rambures then proposes to gamble on the number of English prisoners he personally will capture: “Who will go hazard with me for twenty prisoners?” (81-82). The Constable makes a shrewd reply: “You must first go yourself to hazard [place yourself in danger] ere you have them [before you can capture them]. (3.7.81-82; Taylor 200). Rambures again insults English valour by praising their dogs: “That island of England breeds very valiant creatures. Their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.” (134-135; see Taylor’s note), and is still cocky as he again joins in soldierly boasting  immediately before the battle (4.2. 11-12; Taylor 233). Later, when the same French leaders know they are losing the battle, Rambures prepares to flee before Bourbon persuades them to rally  the scattered troops (4.5). Finally the list of French nobles slain at Agincourt includes both “Charles Delabret, High Constable of France… [and] The Master of the Crossbows, Lord Rambures” (4.8.91-92). The irony is Biblical and deeply gratifying for Shakespeare’s English audience: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

LORD GRANDPRÉ

One of the more attractive of the French nobles, Granpré is first mentioned when Messenger interrupts the overconfident Orléans and Constable, who are feeling randy after swapping derogatory stories about their mistresses. Messenger breaks into the merry mood with a dose of realism: “My Lord High Constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents.” (3.7.120-21). Instead of being grateful and acting instantly, the Constable of France, who was winning the debate, snaps discourteously something like “has anyone counted the steps?” Shocked at this sarcastic reply, Messenger answers: “The Lord Grandpré.” The Constable’s response to news he does not want to hear is a blaming action commonly known as “shooting the messenger”! Nevertheless, Grandpré’s expertise, his precise knowledge of the English troop movements, has been introduced, and this actor’s big speech is his vivid description of the wretched condition of the opposing army:

Why do you stay so long, my Lords of France?
Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
Ill-favouredly become the morning field.
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose
And our air shakes them passing scornfully. (4.2.38-42)

Is Granpré’s best line here? Or do you find him more forceful in describing the even more wretched state of the English horses, a few lines later?

DUKE OF BURGUNDY

The name suggests a full, red wine from one of the finest regions of France. Like the wine, the actor needs a full, rich voice for the wonderful set-piece of nearly fifty lines that Shakespeare has written for him (5.2.23-67). In Olivier’s film, Burgundy is spoken appropriately by Valentine Dyall, known for many years as “The Man in Black,” the narrator of the BBC Radio horror series Appointment with Fear (Wikipedia).

Burgundy in Henry V is the negotiator who has brought the warring sides together for a peace-treaty. His description of a countryside ravaged by war–the opposite of Burgundy in peacetime–updates a poetic tradition going back to Homer and Virgil. The fertile land is a Garden of Eden no longer, but, since the invasion, the vines lie unpruned and weeds root everywhere, “while that the coulter [plough-share] rusts/ That should deracinate such savagery” (5.2.46-47). 

Burgundy has another, less commendable side: he is a “fixer.” King Henry has made it clear that the non-negotiable clause in the peace treaty is his marriage to Catherine. The King of France can retain the throne only for his life-time, but then by terms of the treaty it will go to Henry’s offspring, by descent through the princess (5.2.95-97). King Charles, Queen Isabel, Burgundy, and Henry’s choice of English negotiators leave the stage to refine the terms of this agreement, and the intimate “wooing scene” between Henry and “Kate” takes place. When Burgundy returns, it is back to hard politics. In his exchange with Henry (5.2. 272-304), Burgundy as a man-of-the-world promises to make sure the young Princess will not only marry Henry, but will be taught to submit to his sexual demands without complaint. This exchange is important and must be given due weight in any assessment of Henry’s character and priorities. What would be the outcome if Henry had to choose between Catherine and conquest?

MONTJOY

That the grand French herald and king-at-arms Montjoy, “named after the French war-cry ‘Montjoi! Saint Denis!” (Gurr edn 68), admires Henry is implied by two lines in his first message in which he seems to speak for himself: “So far my King and master: so much my office” (3.6.135); and “I shall deliver so. Thanks to your highness” (3.6.166). Regardless of his messages’ contents, Montjoy is always formal and speaks in a neutral tone. His second message reproduces the vain over-confidence of the Constable who has sent him:

Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry,
If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound
Before thy most assurèd overthrow. 4.3.79-81.

Montjoy’s great speech, however, is 4.7.66-77, beautifully delivered in Brannagh’s film by the English stage and television actor Christopher Ravenscroft. Montjoy may find the boastful earlier messages of his masters unchivalric and distasteful, but in the end must beg for leave to bury the dead French nobles. He finally delivers the surrender: “The day is yours” (4.7.82). 

MESSENGERS

Shakespeare loves using messengers. They can bring new material into a scene, adding something not known to anyone else on stage. If the news is vital, the lines they deliver can leave the audience struck to silence, with everyone in the theatre listening.

Besides Montjoy, our play has five messengers, which is a lot, even for Shakespeare (see Clemen 96-123).

1. The most enthralling is the Hostess, Mistress Quickly, who reports the offstage death of Falstaff, regarded by some as Shakespeare’s greatest character after Hamlet (discussed above under the subtitle “Hostess Nell Quickly”). This may be the greatest messenger speech in Shakespeare.
2. The next messenger-part is that of the grand French herald and king-at-arms, Montjoy, “named after the French war-cry Montjoi! Saint Denis!” (Gurr 68). This proud fellow, who admires Henry, comes first to threaten (3.6.114-166); secondly to ask the king to save his life by paying a ransom, though his army is doomed  (4.3.79-90); thirdly and finally, to ask his permission as victor to bury the French dead (4.7.61-84).
3. The (unnamed) Messenger first enters at the sumptuous French court to announce to the King of France the arrival of the Duke of Exeter from England: “Ambassadors from Harry, king of England/ Do crave admittance to your majesty” (2.4.65-66). He comes on stage again the night before the great battle of Agincourt: “My lord Constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents” (3.7.120-121) only to be snapped at! Constable’s sarcastic reply to news he did not want to hear is an example of blaming the person who delivered it, commonly known as “shooting the messenger”! When Messenger arrives for the third time, things are almost over for the French: “The English are embattled, you French peers” (4.2.14). “embattled” here, as Gary Taylor notes in your excellent prescribed edition, means “in battle array” (Taylor edn 4.2.14 n.14, 223). The French are still fooling, the English are ready. The three small communications from Messenger slide from wonderful to worst, communicating to the audience the declining fortunes of the French army.
4. The English Herald gets just one line, but all in the theatre, both players and audience, hold their breath as he hands his list to the king: “Here is the number of the slaughtered French.” (4.8.71)
5. Duke of Exeter–see above.

GOVERNOR OF HARFLEUR

“How yet resolves the Governor of the town?” Henry asks in 3.3.81, and threatens Harfleur with atrocities if they will not surrender. It is Henry’s most brutal speech, but  it gets the job done. The Governor must consider the lives of his citizens, and is certain Henry will carry out the war-crimes he threatens. But why is King Henry so determined to force the governor’s hand, by adding: “This is the latest parle [last truce] we will admit [allow].” (3.3.82)?

To understand this, one has to know the strategies of siege warfare. The surrounding army tries to starve out the town, cutting off their supplies and water, while constantly attempting to break down the city walls. If a breach is made, they attack it again and again, hence, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” (3.1.1). The only defence against this tactic was to have built up a store of food and water in advance, for any emergency, and to wait in the hope that an allied army might come and attack the besiegers, thus “raising the siege.”  So, the Governor of Harfleur has been stalling for time, hoping that reinforcements from the Dauphin will arrive and disperse Henry’s tired troops. But at 3.3.130, he admits his hope has run out, and that “we no longer are defensible.” His moving speech (3.3.123-29) shows an exhausted and resigned man, let down by the Dauphin. The moment the Governor surrenders Harfleur, Henry drops the threats, and becomes the practical soldier. He puts Exeter in command, but tells him to “Use mercy to them all” I.3.144. Harfleur has fallen.

FRENCH AMBASSADOR

Although they are named and spoken of in the plural (1.2.233, 237-239), only one Ambassador speaks, and he has the unenviable job of saying “balls!” to the king of England. The Dauphin has sent a casket of tennis balls to insult the young king of England.  But is the ambassador scared? If not, we wonder why he asks leave freely to render his message, “Or shall we sparingly show you far off” (1.2.239). Why does he want to get as far back as possible, and out of range? Henry’s responds with an invitation to speak on–“We are no tyrant, but a Christian king….” Accordingly, the Ambassador delivers the Dauphin’s calculated insult to King Henry (1.2.246-257). We hear no more of him, and perhaps he takes off. Find the best line in his provocative speech.

Did you notice the way the tentative performance of the French ambassador at the English court contrasts with the challenging behaviour of Exeter, the English ambassador, at the French court (2.4.76-146)? At the end of the latter scene, Exeter harshly criticizes the Dauphin for undermining French diplomacy by insulting the King of England with tennis balls. The gift, Henry says through Exeter, is too childish to be taken seriously: “Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt;/ And anything that may not misbecome the mighty sender, doth he prize you at” (117-119).

MONSIEUR LE FER, FRENCH SOLDIER

This poor victim of Pistol’s rage in 4.4 and 4.6 is easy to overlook, so much so that Gary Taylor omits him from “The Persons Of The Play” (89-90). As Andrew Gurr notes in his edition’s “List of Characters” (69), his name (ironically) means “Man of Iron.” Yet although they are all in French and ably translated by the Boy, M. le Fer is given more lines than some other characters and has to act confusion, panic, growing fear, relief, and horror in sequence.

Shakespeare here does what he does best, something which no other writer (as my colleague Prof. Richard Lansdown argues) can match. He shows us someone foolish, confused, or ridiculous, so that we laugh at the character, and then later presents them as human, and engages our entire sympathy, making us uncomfortable about our early, easy laughter. If Gary Taylor’s conjecture is right, and M. le Fer has his throat cut before our eyes at the end of 4.6, it is a dramatic coup in more ways than one. 

In view of his probable fate, which of M. le Fer’s lines in 4.4 is most moving and powerful?  (Use  the translations provided by Boy, not Pistol’s mistranslations.)

In 4.4 Shakespeare reduces the battle to a fight between two soldiers. The stage directions, “Alarum. Excursions.”, and fighting across the stage mark the entry of the scurrilous Pistol, who has captured M. le Fer. This famous “extraction” scene, “Pistol’s French lesson,” is a parallel to the scene in which Catherine learns English. Pistol, who came to France for profit, here  attempts to extract a ransom from his French prisoner. The jokes are based on Pistol’s failure to understand French:

Using the anglicised French of Shakespeare’s day, M. le Fer begs “Ayez pitié de moi!” [Pity me!]. Terrified, he instantly realises he has somehow said the wrong words. Pistol is furious, since a moi sounds to him like a very small bribe of a single coin (though Taylor glosses it as a bushel of corn). Wanting a big bribe, Pistol roars: “‘Moy’ shall not serve: I will have forty ‘moys’,/ Or I will fetch thy rim [stomach lining] out at thy throat/ In drops of crimson blood!” (4.4.12-14). His mind is on ransom, so when the unlucky Frenchman mentions “the strength of your [Pistol’s] arms,” his phrase, la force de ton  bras enrages his captor.  Pistol will not release him just “for de brass.” Pistol wants gold!: “Brass, cur? Thou damnèd and luxurious mountain goat,/ Offer’st me brass? (4.4.17-18). The desperate Frenchman realizes he has made a fatal phonetic blunder, but does not know what it is, so cries in despair “O pardonne-moy!” [spare me!/ please pardon me!], and to his astonishment, the greedy Pistol is delighted! “Ah,” says Pistol who again mistakes him (with a very fine phonetic joke by Shakespeare in reply): “Sayst thou me so? Is that a ton of moys?” (20). One moy, to 40 moys, to a ton of moys!  “Moys” get more plentiful by the minute. Pistol imagines he is rich, and he momentarily becomes so, when the prisoner buys his life for 200 golden crowns (37-44).

Yet all the comedy is given a brutal edge, when, at Henry’s command, Pistol slits through the throat of his prisoner, crying for the third time in the play, “coup’ la gorge” literally “cut his throat” (4.6.37). Pistol may be a mere braggart on the earlier occasions. This time, under orders, he carries out the threat.  A ransom would have set Pistol up for life, but his short-lived prosperity is snatched away by Henry’s command that every soldier must kill his prisoners (4.6.37).  Pistol in fact does exactly what he had threatened earlier: “fetch thy rim out at thy throat/ In drops of crimson blood!”

WORKS CITED

Clemen, Wolfgang. “Shakespeare’s Use of the Messenger’s Report.” Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art: Collected Essays. London: Methuen 1972; repr. London: Routledge, 2005: 96-123.

Gurr, Andrew, ed. King Henry V. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge UP: updated edition 2005.

Longon, Jean and Raymond Cazelles eds., Millard Meiss preface; Lombourg Brothers Illustrators. Les  Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berri. Singapore: George Brazillier, 2008.

Mahood, M. M. Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 1998.

Rackin, Phyllis. Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles. Ithaca, New York: Cornell UP, 1990.