Henry V : (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840224215 ISBN 13: 9781840224214

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 2000

Synopsis

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex.

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series, with Henry V as its inaugral volume, presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing endeavours to take account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.

Henry V is the most famous and influential of Shakespeare's history plays. Its powerful patriotic rhetoric has resounded down the ages, gaining eloquent expression in Laurence Olivier's renowned film. Henry himself, astute and charismatic, who led his 'band of brothers' to victory in the Battle of Agincourt, could indeed seem to be 'this star of England'. In recent decades the play has attracted increasing critical attention and is now highly controversial. Kenneth Branagh's film-production reflected the changing valuation. Does this play have a sceptical sub-text which subverts its patriotism? Is Henry's achievement beset by irony? Has current scepticism distorted a predominantly and proudly nationalistic drama? Henry V demonstrates Shakespeare's acclaimed ability to bring new complexity to the material that he adapted, so that different eras may find within his work the familiar and the strange, the congenial and the harsh, the sustaining and the challenging.

About this title

Review

"Cry, 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'" Henry's V's rallying cry to his soldiers before Harfleur has become an iconic rallying cry for English nationalism. More than any other Shakespeare play, Henry V has been seen to define what it means to be English in its account of Henry's triumphant victory over vastly superior French forces in 1415. The play has been endlessly quoted by politicians as an incitement to patriotism, and Laurence Olivier's ground-breaking film of the play was dedicated to the Allied soldiers who landed in France on D-Day in 1944.

More recently critics have questioned the extent to which the play is simply a piece of nationalist propaganda, pointing to the more ambivalent reflections on the cost of war voiced by various characters throughout the play. As one of Henry's soldiers reflects on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, "if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make". Henry himself has already been defined as a cunning and rather unsympathetic character in Henry IV Parts One and Two, and his cynical manipulation of patriotism in his pursuit of military glory is incisively undercut by the Irishman Macmorris' poignant question as to "What ish my nation?" This more ambivalent dimension of the play is most effectively captured in Kenneth Branagh's post-Falklands film, Henry V, which portrays a king much more aware of the dreadful consequences of going to war. Branagh's film suggests that Henry V ultimately questions, rather than endorses the glory of going into battle for one's country. --Jerry Brotton

Synopsis

This book is edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex. Henry V is the most famous and influential of Shakespeare's history plays. Its powerful patriotic rhetoric has resounded down the ages, gaining eloquent expression in Laurence Olivier's renowned film. Henry himself, astute and charismatic, who led his 'band of brothers' to victory in the Battle of Agincourt, could indeed seem to be 'this star of England'. In recent decades the play has attracted increasing critical attention and is now highly controversial. Kenneth Branagh's film-production reflected the changing valuation. Does this play have a sceptical sub-text which subverts its patriotism? Is Henry's achievement beset by irony? Has current scepticism distorted a predominantly and proudly nationalistic drama?

Edition details

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1840224215
• ISBN 13: 9781840224214
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 153
• Editor: Watts M.A. Ph.D. Professor Cedric