INTRODUCTION NOTE. In citations from Shakespeare's plays and nondramatic poems the numbering has reference to the Globe edition, except in the case of this play, where the reference is to this edition. I. SOURCES The serious Elizabethan drama began in patriotism and had a high political motive. The perils and difficulties of a nation rent asunder by bitterly opposing factions confronted Elizabeth at the beginning of her reign, and when Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton wrote Gorboduc, the first regular English tragedy, their main object was to warn the English people of the danger in a kingdom divided against itself and to show the maiden queen the perils involved in uncertainty as to legitimate succession to a throne. The story was taken from British legendary history, and blank verse, destined to be the great national measure, was used for the first time in an original English play. With that steady growth of national spirit which characterized the reign of Elizabeth, developed the taste for chronicle plays dealing with the history of the nation in its formative period. The national drama grew up with the increasing pride of nation. In the defeat of the Armada this pride of nation reached full tide, and the enthusiasm found immortal expression in Shakespeare's ten history plays culminating in the drama of the hero-king who won the battle of Agincourt. The true source of the spirit of King Henry the Fifth is the patriotism and political enthusiasm of the decade which closed the sixteenth century in England 1; the sources of the letter and historical detail of the drama are Holinshed's Chronicles and an old play, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. THE MAIN STORY 1. Holinshed's Chronicles. As in his other plays dealing with English history, Shakespeare derived the great body of his material for King Henry the Fifth from the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, of Raphael Holinshed (Holynshed, Hollynshed, Hollingshead, etc.), first published in two folio volumes in 1577. A second edition appeared in 1586-1587, "newlie augmented and continued." In this second edition are many significant changes in the text, and the fact that Shakespeare adopts these strengthens 8 1 It has been held that King Henry the Fifth was written for a similar reason to that which led Sackville and Norton to write Gorboduc. "The reign of Henry V was a good subject for a dramatist who wished to cure his countrymen of these suicidal hatreds through an appeal to the national pride."- W. G. Boswell-Stone. In Politics of Shakspere's Historical Plays (New Shakspere Society Transactions, 1874) Richard Simpson says that the Welsh, English, Scottish, and Irish captains are introduced serving side by side under a common flag, "as if to symbolise the union of the four nations under one crown, and the coöperation in enterprises of honour, no longer hindered by the touchiness of a separatist nationalism." 2 In W. G. Boswell-Stone's Shakspere's Holinshed are given all the portions of the Chronicles which are of special interest to the Shakespeare student. 8 For example, 'dishonest,' in I, ii, 49, is in the second edition where the first has 'vnhonest'; 'desolation,' in II, ii, 173, is in the second edition, where the first has 'destruction.' Boswell-Stone gives other proofs of this kind. the conclusion that this was the edition used by him. This evidence is of particular weight in the case of King Henry the Fifth, for in no other play does Shakespeare reproduce so much of the exact language of a 'source.' His deviations from Holinshed are in the interests of dramatic economy and artistic effectiveness. The essential facts are not altered. He deals with his historical material as Turner treated the features of a landscape in his pictures of places. Shakespeare selects and arranges details to get the spirit of a movement and the imaginative truth of a series of events. 2. The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. Entered in The Stationers' Registers in 1594 under the title The famous victories of Henrye the Fyft conteyninge the honorable battell of Agin-court is an anonymous chronicle history which was acted as early as 1588 and printed in 1598 "as it was plaide by the Queenes Maiesties Players." The first half of this old play covers much the same historical ground as the two parts of Shakespeare's King Henry the Fourth, and undoubtedly gave hints for the comic business there; the second half deals with the general subject-matter of King Henry the Fifth. While The Famous Victories is also founded on Holinshed and follows in a rough, crude way the same lines as Shakespeare's play, there are some interesting passages in both for which there is no original in Holinshed and for which Shakespeare is certainly indebted to the old chronicle history. Among these are the incident of an English comic character's adventure with a French soldier (IV, iv), the details of the peace negotiations (V, ii, 1-98), and the wooing scene (V, ii, 98–269) where in The 1 Reprinted in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library. |