Matthew Anderson Shakespeare Paper #2 March 9th, 2011

The King Binded: The Tenuous Position and Ineffectualness of Henry V His character long having been established, the Harry seen in Henry V is a man looking to prove his worth through action and might. Action is considered such a granted center piece, that we are given both British and French characters who only worry that King Harry may be too bold, too reckless with youthful passion. Yet, the king we see speaking to himself voices a concern over the pointlessness of his actions. The king in solitude pledges: More will I do/ Though all that I can do is nothing worth/ since that my penitence comes after ill/ Imploring pardon (4.1.284-287). His concern runs to the very heart of his claim to the throne; we are given a king subservient to his past and to his own title. Through his subordination to the past of his family, we are given a king who does not put forward bold new action, but is constantly seeking atonement. Through war and through marriage, King Harry seeks only to reconcile the history of his family. Giving further weight to Harry's sentiment of believing that all he can do is nothing worth are the constant references to the violent conquests of his family. Early in the play, Archbishop Canterbury implores Harry to Look back into your mighty ancestors...to your greatgrandsire's tomb/ From who you claim; invoke his warlike spirit/ And your great uncle's (1.2.102105). Harry's response is fear. He remarks that his grandfather never unmasked his power to France without having already set up defence against the suspicious Scots. The irony, of course, is that there are some Scottish soldiers serving under the British crown; while the king and the lord's

fears are based out ofon outdated paradigms, they continue to act on them despite the shift in reality. In the same scene, the Bishop of Ely continues the thread by Canterbury, remarking You are their heir, you sit upon their throne/ The blood and courage that renowned them/ Runs in your veins (1.2.117-119). It is made clear that they realize the power of lineage and the inherent pressure it continuously exerts upon the young king. While Harry implores Canterbury not too bend his interpretation of the Salic law simply in order to go to war and waste the brief mortality of their soldiers (1.2.8-32), what changes his mind within the same scene, is their invocation of his ancestors. His right and conscience are not soothed by the legality of his claim, but are spurned on by the fear of disgrace and the hope for redemption of the deeds of his father. Harry's rousing speech against Harfleur in scene three reflects strikingly his closely felt obligation to his father and the very notion of what a son owes to his father. He compares the essence of the English father to Alexander the Great, claiming that those before them only stopped fighting once there were no more enemies to battle. Dishonour not your mothers; now attest/ That those whom you called fathers did beget you (3.2.22-23) he urges, measuring what glory they have at stake to the glory already earned by their fathers. We begin to see how uneasily attentive Harry is to how he, and his England, stand in measure against to what came before. Harry wants to assert the worth of he and his men's breeding; to lose is also to taint what has already been won. The essential character of Harry's unease with being upon the throne, is his idea of forgiveness and being unsure whether, as king, he can ever be forgiven. When challenged by Williams, when he thinks Harry a common soldier, the point is brought up about whether or not a king's word can be trusted when he sends men to death in war, for the dead men will lose the

opportunity of retrospect. Harry answers to the possibility that the king could be ransomed with the dead never knowing by answering that, if he lived, he would never trust his word after (4.1.182). Williams laughs at the thought of what a poor and a private displeasure can do against a monarch (4.1.184-185), thinking it to be nothing. Harry's only response is stating his belief that William's idea is too blunt and harsh. His father having stolen the crown leaves Harry enormously uncomfortable with anyone questioning the validity of his choice or position; he is stung by the shame of even possibly being seen as an illegitimate heir and shaken by the notion of his throne being stolen itself. If he had yet to wander amongst his men, since being coronated as king, and William's remark were the first unvarnished one he had heard, then it should certainly be a troubling one. After Harry pontificates on the toils and troubles of king hoodmonarchy, and once he is alone again, we are given the short aside that reveals his lack of confidence in the redeeming possibility of any of his initiatives. He defends to God that he has interred his father once more, even continually paying five hundred poor to pray for pardon and paying for chapels to sing solely for his father's soul and misdeeds. We are given a Harry who is mired in the past and is at a point of feeling he can only implore God to make right what has been done. He has foregone the possibility of his future actions being able to, at least completely, make recompense. He even asks of God to take away his soldier's ability to count so that they do not realize how terribly outnumbered they are. The sudden shift from that request to the further imploring of God to forget his father's sin on the day of battle gives us a man whose present is inextricable from both the past and the actions of others. If that is the case, he truly can never be forgiven, at least not based off ofon his own actions; only God or other people can redeem both Harry and his legacy. Even once the play has striven past the war, established Harry as the honored victor, and set

the marriage between him and Catherine into motion, we are still faced with a king whose hope rests on the actions and others and the forgiveness of his subjects, both British and French. In his private conversation with Catherine, he reveals a hope for the future, but a hope outside of himself. He describes to her his, in his mind, only virtue being that of fighting and his hope for a halfFrench, half-English child to unite their countries and take the Turk by the beard (5.2.196). Soon after, still attempting to win her consent, he asks to her to forgive his father's ambition. He argues to her that if she marries him thou hast me, at the worst, and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better (5.2.216-217) for as he ages he believes he shall become less like his father. The distance between himself and his past he seeks to gain through both an era of peace between Britain and France and the possibility of future glory gained through a son. Shakespeare's epilogue, however, guarantees us that this hope of Harry's will not come to full fruition. This certainly makes the play a tragedy, in that we have a character cursed by circumstances and characters he can no longer interact with, much less overcome, and his only hopes thwarted by a future unseen. It is sincerely an act of compassion and respect by Shakespeare to end the play where he does, despite the epilogue. Harry was a king whose hope rested in a tenuous place, and although he is a king of military victories, his internal strife never abated. By the end, he is at least allowed some political peace and, for a moment, the hope that the future will hold a larger and yet, more personal, redemption for him and his family. Where he is left, his requests to God had begun to be answered, and future action, though embryonic, appears bright. Matthew, This is an utterly original and very strong paper. You are a confident, eloquent writer, and you are

able to compass in this paper an argument which is both derived from nuanced close readings and has explanatory power for our overall understanding of Henrys monarchy. Your reading is particularly intriguing because it goes against the grain of conventional readings of Henry, which see him as a charismatic and self-possessed king. You remind us that undergirding that selfpresentation is a fundamental and irrevocable insecurity; as you describe it, it is the imprint of a tainted past upon the present which Henry finds so unnerving. This argument extends toward the lovely point that Henry cannot find redemption in his own actions but is forced to seek it in the favor (the grace?) of others. Again, this claim flies in the face of readings which say that Henry seeks to control everything himself. In fact, I think that both sides might coexist: Henry is a control freak because he recognizes at certain moments that there is so little he might control. If I had any criticism of your masterful analysis, it would be that you might acknowledge both of these sides a bit more while continuing to emphasize the monarchs vulnerability. Your paper suggests some very interesting ideas about the way that Shakespeare is constructing Englands monarchy as constantly indebted to and overcome by its own past. This is an intriguing view of Shakespeares construction of history. It is hugely regrettable that this paper, like your first, came in late, so that you are not getting the grade that your excellent work deserves. I hope very much that you can get the final one in on time. Grade: B (would have been A if handed in on time)