London’s National Film Theatre, one of the most useful institutions in this city (when it does not fill its entire programme with gay and lesbian films from Outer Mongolia) is running a Lawrence Olivier season in August and September. Naturally, the four Shakesperian films are shown and “Henry V” has been given pride of place with a certain number of disclaimers by critics who, over the years, have had to acknowledge with pursed lips that, despite its heroism and emphasis on patriotism, the film is superb. Some of us might think that contrariwise, the heroism and patriotism add to the quality of the film but that is probably why we are not film critics.
Made during the war, with Olivier taking time out from his service with Fleet Air Arm, it does emphasise patriotic ideals, in particular ideals of England. As it happens, none of that was invented by the film-makers the lines, the images, the concepts are there in Shakespeare’s play, which is what makes them so interesting.
Cinematically the film is mesmerizing, beginning and ending with a panorama shot of Elizabethan London, carefully recreated from contemporary prints. Famously, Olivier accepted and incorporated into the film the sheer theatricality of the play. We start with a raucous performance of “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France”, during which the Chorus, played by Leslie Banks, urges us to expand the play in our imagination to take in England and France, and opens out first into the Boar’s Head Inn, where Falstaff is dying, then the two courts, the armies and the battles themselves. William Walton’s music spreads through the film.
The opened up scenes are not particularly realistic though the battle and the sight of the dead afterwards affect one with melancholy about the horrors of war, no matter what modern critics might say. But it is all artificial, with scenery, costumes, group shots based quite clearly and enchantingly on late mediaeval miniatures. The film was shot in Technicolour, another thing the programme notes see fit to apologize for (it did seem amazing to those unsophisticated audiences in the forties, honest) and the artificial look of it adds to the splendour of the film and makes it a more consistent work of art than Kenneth Branagh’s “gritty and realistic” version made forty-odd years later. Of the two, it was Olivier who served in Fleet Air Arm, having returned to Britain in 1941 from Hollywood, and there have even been stories of him having been recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to build up support for Britain in the United States while it was still a neutral country.
So what are the accusations against Olivier’s “Henry V”, apart from the lack of nit and grit, not to mention realism? In order to fit a very lengthy play into a film a good deal of text had to be dropped a normal enough procedure even for stage productions, let alone films. Still, the programme notes tell us, some of the text was dropped for patriotic reasons, as it was wartime. The political intriguing behind Henry’s invasion of France is omitted as is the King’s bloodthirstiness.
Let’s start with the second accusation. Presumably, it refers to the enraged Henry’s order to kill the French prisoners after he finds that some of the renegade French had murdered all the baggage boys, unarmed and too young to fight. The “Henry V is a war criminal” school usually avoids discussion of the scene where a number of English soldiers and officers mourn the death of the boys and exclaim at the wickedness of it all because they would have to acknowledge that Shakespeare does not depict Henry as either particularly bloodthirsty or criminal. In fact, it is clear that the killing of the French prisoners is uncharacteristic and is ordered in response to a great wrong. In several other episodes, the taking of Harfleur, the release of the men who had spoken up against him before the battle (“Oh let us still be merciful”), the easy agreement to the French Herald’s plea after Agincourt, these all present a man who has a great heart as well as an ability to win battles against great odds.
The first accusation is simply untrue. The film may have left some of the scenes out but it is quite clear, despite the very funny “business” on the stage of the Globe, that Henry’s claim to various French dukedoms is doubtful to say the least. There is a strong hint that “now, that England’s youth is on fire” it might be a good idea to take them to fight in France rather than allow the country degenerate into a series of civil wars as had been the case under Richard II and Henry IV. And there is more than a hint of the machinations of the Church, whose bishops and archbishops effectively bribe Henry to go and fight in France, which is what he really wants to do, and not think of depriving them of some of their property.
The problem is that neither the “realistic and gritty” Kenneth Branagh nor the “Henry V was a war criminal just like George W. Bush in Iraq” school of thought, as personified by Nicholas Hytner, Director of the National Theatre, can ever get around the truth that King Harry Plantagenet, the fifth of that name in English history, is Shakespeare’s hero. In that series from Richard II to Richard III that depicts the tragic disintegration of England, Henry V is the one heroic and attractive character, whose early death is mourned throughout the long action of the three Henry VI plays.
There is, throughout the play, an image of England and of the English King that is essentially different from France. The French King is not an unattractive personality but he is weak and has been buffeted by history. The Dauphin is a fool and a braggart, a man who causes trouble through his thoughtlessness. The French nobles have no link with the people. The only truly attractive character is the Herald as he becomes more and more impressed by Henry.
England, on the other hand, is its people; the King is the King of all and the yeomen are as important if not, indeed, more important than the nobles. Although, the core of the play is England as reality and as idea, there is a kind of a proto-Union in the delightful vignette of the four captains: Gower, Fluellen, Jamy and McMorris, representing the four parts of it. They dispute, quarrel and drink together and there is an undying link between them.
In the night before the battle, the French nobles and the Dauphin sit in their own tent and alternate between dismal premonition and braggadocio. The Dauphin, spends not a minute of his time on his troops they are there to serve him and the nobles. If anything is mourned it is the destruction of its flower at Crecy, though the lesson of that has not been learnt by anyone except the King of France. The heavy and heavily decorated armour in which the knights have themselves mounted onto their unfortunate horses symbolizes France in the same way as swiftness, lightness and, above all, ingenuity symbolize England.
In the night before the battle, Henry leaves his nobles without a single complaint from them, puts on a cloak and walks through the camp, making sure he visits every tent (“a touch of Harry in the night”). He talks to soldiers as well as captains; he listens to their complaints and to their fears; he meditates on the duties and responsibilities of kingship, in some ways echoing his own father’s thoughts on the head that wears the crown lying uneasily. Of course, he does not have his father’s bad conscience, having inherited rather than usurped his position. Nevertheless, he acknowledges his responsibility for whatever horrors might come in the morning.
There is an interesting discussion between two soldiers in which one expresses the view that if the King’s cause be wrong (the very fact that an ordinary soldier can think such a thing is astonishing) he will pay a heavy price for the battle and its outcome:
“I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument?”
To which another soldier, one who is considerably more rebellious in his attitude to the King, replies:
“Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.”
Henry hears it all and thinks his own heavy thoughts.
His prayer at dawn is interesting. He does not pray for victory but for his soldiers to lose their fears:
“O God off battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;/Possess them not with fear; take from them now/The sense of reckoning, if the opposèd numbers/Pluck their hearts from them.”
When he addresses his troops he addresses them all on both occasions. They are all his friends, his brothers:
“For he to-day that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile/This day shall gentle his condition:”
(The film uses the alternative reading of “base” instead of “vile”.)
The battle is won by the yeomen archers and their craft as much as by the outnumbered nobles and the image of England as the land where all are one and the King is at one with all, is complete.
As a coda one sees Henry wooing the French Princess Katharine, who is obviously greatly taken by him, telling her that he is a plain speaking English soldier, who loves her but who will not produce flowery language for her sake. She must take him as he is but as he is he will be hers. This is a wonderful English theme, developed by numerous writers in subsequent centuries.
One can read too much into Shakespeare’s lines. He is, after all, the man who in “Macbeth” produced a description of a totalitarian state that has never been rivalled in force and pithiness. But there is a thread that runs through the Chronicles, a thread that clearly would have been comprehensible and acceptable to all his viewers, high and low: of an England that is a special country, where great things can and shall be done by all; where the yeomen are as proud of their identity as are the nobles; where the King is the King of all who owes his duty to his subjects as they owe theirs to him. When this breaks down as it does throughout the period of the Wars of the Roses, there is trouble and darkness.
“Henry V” was most probably written and first performed in 1599, only a decade after England had withstood and triumphed over a great danger from Spain, in the middle of yet another Irish rebellion and a time when folk memory could still recall accounts of the century long civil war that preceded the Tudors. A look across the Channel would have shown countries where civil warfare seemed almost endemic. There have been numerous interpretations of Shakespeare’s attitude to war was he glorifying it and praising Essex’s incompetent attempt to subdue Tyrone’s rebellion (probably, if he knew which side his bread was buttered on) or undermining it by the presence of such contemptible braggarts as Pistol and cowardly thieves like Bardolph and Nym? The answer, one suspects, is both, which is a happy thought for all those critics and producers. How else could they pretend that they understand what Will said than Will did himself?
Cross-posted from Albion’s Seedlings
I just watched and reviewed Henry V. A beautiful film.
It’s not fair to call it unrealistic, as its stylistically based on the Book of Hours in the same way that 300 is stylistically based on a comic book.
George MacDonald Fraser, best known for “The Flashman Chronicles,” wrote a memoir of his WWII service in Burma, titled “Quartered Safe Out Here.” He had a copy of Henry V, and an uneducated friend–a man who had probably left school at 14–asked to borrow it. When he returned it, GMF asked if he had liked it. The friend (Hutton) asked if Shakespeare had ever been in the army, to which GMF responded that he probably had not, and had picked up his military knowledge from talking with others. Hutton’s response:
“Nivver! Ye knaw them three, Bates, an’ them, talkin’ afore the battle? Ye doan’t git that frae lissenin’ in pubs, son. Naw, e’s been theer.”
GMF reflects: “In his own way Hutton was as expert a commentor as Dover Wilson or Peter Alexander; he was a lot closer to Bates and Court and WIlliams (and Captains Jamy and Fluellen) than they could ever hope to be. And I still wonder if Shakespeare *was* in the Army.
and to complete the couplet: “but when it comes to slaughter, you’ll do your work on water/and lick the bloody boots of im wots got’her” Mr Kipling’s army? or Mr Shakespeare’s? what a great link — i must look up this guy…. wot say you lexington green … i will freely admit i do not know him; i can only guess that you have both an autographed hard copy and two old paperbacks, one of which you might send me (of the George MacDonald Fraser)?!?
Have not yet read Quartered Safe Out Here. But it is ON MY LIST.
Thank-you,Helen. We rarely get pertinent commentary from our literary intellectuals; they see see everyting in terms of contemporary politics.
Not to be a spoilsport, but the rampant jingoism of the play is, I find, a bit annoying. Henry V was cold, manipulative, but heroic. How do we know? The measure, always, is how did a kind do against the French. The film production indeed a great one.
“Shakespeare was never above taking liberties with history in the service of a good story. In this story he takes serious liberties with a number of historical facts. For instance, the Battle of Agincourt, like the Battle of Crécy, 80 years before, was won by the English for two reasons:
1. the English were armed with the longbow,
and
2. the French generals were incredibly stupid.
The longbow is a weapon that, in skilled hands, can put a steel-tipped arrow completely through an armored man (or horse) at 500 yards, with a rate of fire comparable to a modern bolt-action rifle. The Black Prince at Crécy used massed archers against armored cavalry. The French chivalry charged in a body and were mowed down at a distance, again and again, until between 5,000 and 10,000 men-at-arms were killed, with only a few hundred English casualties. The French refused to learn their lesson, however, and repeated their mistakes at Agincourt, resulting in a virtual repetition of Crécy for Henry V. These were great victories for the English yeomanry, who manned the longbows. Shakespeare, however, barely mentions the bowmen, and concentrates on hand-to-hand combat of knights and nobles, of which there was very little at Agincourt. This suits his dramatic purposes, which concentrate on the nobles.
Another liberty Shakespeare takes is in the way he collapses the aftermath of Agincourt in 1415 with the Treaty of Troyes, 5 years later in 1420, where Henry wins the hand of Catherine of France. The courtship scene in Act V, Scene II in which Catherine can speak but broken English (set up by Act III, Scene IV, which takes place between Catherine and her maid, entirely in French) and Henry purports not to speak French, is surely stretching the point. It is quite probable that Catherine had learned the language of the enemy, and it is utterly certain that Henry learned French at his mother’s knee. It was the language of his family and their court, a fact which was neither well known nor politic to deal with in the England of 1599.
Henry’s political task was to make a nation of a congeries of tribes; the English, of several varieties, the Welsh, the Scots, and the Irish all were his subjects. And Shakespeare’s linguistic genius was to show the languages of all of them, tossed into the melting pot of English. “
It is, indeed, true that Shakespeare took some historical liberties. Just look at “Richard III”, which was pure Tudor propaganda. I am not sure there is any historical evidence that Henry V shouted “The game’s afoot” or talked about “Crispian Crispian” never being forgot. Not the point really. I was trying to write about the ideas in the play and the film. I consider that it is fascinating how early certain ideas of Englishness or what we would now call Anglospherism appeared in the public sphere.
Sorry, one more comment about the historical side. The Olivier film has a great deal about bows and arrows at Agincourt. How can one forget the scene when the French knights come thundering across the field and the bowmen hold their weapons ready and hold them ready and hold them ready until the King gives his the signal and the sky is darkened with the arrows? In fact, it is, as I tried to explain in my posting, one of the differences between the English and the French – the yeomen with their bows and arrows and the sharpened sticks against the knights in their heavy, unwieldy armour.
I seem to be writing another posting.