Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Henriad
>
Henry V - close reading
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Everyman
(new)
Dec 23, 2014 08:32PM
Although I think this play is more action oriented than lyrical, there are still plenty of great speeches and lines to explicate.
reply
|
flag
In the Henry IV discussion, Patrice posted this comment she had found:"Language is often a clue to social scale. Kings usually speak in blank verse and servants speak in prose. Serious matters call for blank verse, romance for rhymed verse, and humor for prose."
I had just been looking at Act 2 when I read this, and took a glance to see how it might apply.
The Chorus speaks in verse.
Nym, Bardolph, the Hostess speak in prose, as would befit lower class. But interesting, Pistol, in the same scene (2.1), speaks in blank verse, intermingled into the prose the others are speaking. This is so deliberate that it must mean something, but I'm not sure what this means. Is Shakespeare saying that Pistol is really an upper class person? Or is he the only one speaking seriously? Neither of these seems to work for me. But once one looks for it, it's so obvious that he's the only one in this scene speaking in verse, and all the others speak in prose.
Why?
Not sure I have a good answer to E-man's question above. Best I can come up with is that Pistol feels aggrieved in the scene and is trying to come off as superior.
More generally, however, there is some nice information about the use of language at the Royal Shakespeare Company site.
http://www.teachingshakespeare.ac.uk/...
One thing I have come to be convinced of is that Shakespeare's prose is anything but casual. The sentence Patrice quoted above is oversimplified in my opinion.
The director John Barton who, working with actors from the RSC, made a tremendous set of recordings titled Playing Shakespeare stresses that the actor must give every bit as much attention to prose passages and not treat them as conventional, naturalistic speech.
First, he urges the actor to analyze and try to determine the reason for the prose--especially when a character switches between verse and prose. The change is never arbitrary, he cautions; it is Shakespeare's way of offering directorial clues.
Secondly, as with verse, he is insistent that the key to understanding in Shakespeare is looking for antithesis among words, ideas and images. Quoting Hamlet by way of example, he shows how: "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action" is a double antithesis." An actor needs to find the antitheses and "point them up." The antitheses "articulate and define the sentences and hold them together."
"...each new word in a sentence qualifies what has gone before or changes the direction of that sentence. If we don't set up one word, we won't prepare for another to qualify it. And if the next word doesn't build on the first and move the sentence on, both the audience and the actor may lose their way. That's what I mean by urging actors to think antithetically."
To me this highlights how Shakespeare's prose is as musical --in its own way- as his verse. It reminds me of music, where any single note is meaningful only in the context of the others around it.
Cicely Berry, formerly speech director of the RSC, agrees that with its cadence, stresses and rhythms (to say nothing of the antitheses) Shakespeare's prose is every bit as demanding as his verse.
We are so accustomed to movies with sound tracks and cinematography subtly influencing our emotional response to speeches that perhaps our attention and response to them is dulled. However, Shakespeare's plays were performed on an unlighted, unamplified stage. All he had to convince us were the words and the actor's use of language. Today, overly mannered and overly naturalistic presentations both sound "off" to us.
Perhaps this is the place to mention one of my all time favorite quotations about Shakespeare. I think it sums up the genius of his language. It is from the critic Jonathan Bate. Reflecting on the limitations of Shakespeare's stage, he wrote: "He could make darkness visible to our ears."
More generally, however, there is some nice information about the use of language at the Royal Shakespeare Company site.
http://www.teachingshakespeare.ac.uk/...
One thing I have come to be convinced of is that Shakespeare's prose is anything but casual. The sentence Patrice quoted above is oversimplified in my opinion.
The director John Barton who, working with actors from the RSC, made a tremendous set of recordings titled Playing Shakespeare stresses that the actor must give every bit as much attention to prose passages and not treat them as conventional, naturalistic speech.
First, he urges the actor to analyze and try to determine the reason for the prose--especially when a character switches between verse and prose. The change is never arbitrary, he cautions; it is Shakespeare's way of offering directorial clues.
Secondly, as with verse, he is insistent that the key to understanding in Shakespeare is looking for antithesis among words, ideas and images. Quoting Hamlet by way of example, he shows how: "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action" is a double antithesis." An actor needs to find the antitheses and "point them up." The antitheses "articulate and define the sentences and hold them together."
"...each new word in a sentence qualifies what has gone before or changes the direction of that sentence. If we don't set up one word, we won't prepare for another to qualify it. And if the next word doesn't build on the first and move the sentence on, both the audience and the actor may lose their way. That's what I mean by urging actors to think antithetically."
To me this highlights how Shakespeare's prose is as musical --in its own way- as his verse. It reminds me of music, where any single note is meaningful only in the context of the others around it.
Cicely Berry, formerly speech director of the RSC, agrees that with its cadence, stresses and rhythms (to say nothing of the antitheses) Shakespeare's prose is every bit as demanding as his verse.
We are so accustomed to movies with sound tracks and cinematography subtly influencing our emotional response to speeches that perhaps our attention and response to them is dulled. However, Shakespeare's plays were performed on an unlighted, unamplified stage. All he had to convince us were the words and the actor's use of language. Today, overly mannered and overly naturalistic presentations both sound "off" to us.
Perhaps this is the place to mention one of my all time favorite quotations about Shakespeare. I think it sums up the genius of his language. It is from the critic Jonathan Bate. Reflecting on the limitations of Shakespeare's stage, he wrote: "He could make darkness visible to our ears."
Zeke wrote: The director John Barton who, working with actors from the RSC, made a tremendous set of recordings titled Playing Shakespeare ..."
This is a fantastic program, available on DVD. Many libraries have it -- if yours does, I highly recommend it.
The play certainly has its pep talk speeches to stir the blood. But I am also fond of one speech of Henry's says that reminds me of something I was told when I was a young coach. The moral was that you should appreciate the opposition, and hope they are strong, because this brings out the best in you by making you play to your fullest ability. I didn't understand it at first, thinking weak opposition gave us a better chance to win, but I came to appreciate it.
Here is Henry speaking to Gloucester about the challenges posed by the French:
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself.
Here is Henry speaking to Gloucester about the challenges posed by the French:
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself.
In Act IV scene 1 Henry goes among the men disguised as a soldier. He and Pistol have a comic exchange with bad puns (Harry Le Roy) and a chance for Pistol to express his disdain for Fluellen for not helping Bardolph earlier in the play. Fluellen then enters and uses a lot of words to explain the military necessity for maintaining silence. When he leaves, Henry makes a statement that I can't believe we are expected to take seriously:
Henry V. Though it appear a little out of fashion,
There is much care and valour in this Welshman.
Perhaps all of this is to set the audience up as the scene turns into one that is anything but comic. Soldiers Michael Williams, Alexander Court and Thomas Bate enter. Note the names. These are solid Anglo-Saxon names, not the comic names like Pistol or Nym (which meant thief in Old English). The conversation that ensues is a serious debate about just-war theory and the relationship between sovereign and soldier.
The King begins by trying to demonstrate his fundamental humanity to the men.
...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: his ceremonies
laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and
though his affections are higher mounted than ours,
yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like
wing.
I am struck by how his tone has changed after the conversation. Here he sounds much like other Shakespeare Kings we've met (Richard II and Henry IV) or could meet in other plays bemoaning their burden and isolation.
... What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony? [Shades of the "hollow crown"]
...
Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men? the realization that he can't have it both ways: you are either a man or the office, but cannot be both.]...
O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending? [Again the metaphor of disease]...
...
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave...
He has been brought to this by their repudiation of his sincerely held homilies about how the king cares for them and the justice of the cause he has drafted them to fight for.
Henry V. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king:
I think he would not wish himself any where but
where he is.
Bates. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be
sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.
Henry V. I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here
alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men's
minds: methinks I could not die any where so
contented as in the king's company; his cause being
just and his quarrel honourable.
Williams. That's more than we know.
As always was, and probably always will be, it's a rich man's war, with abstractions for justification, and a poor man's fight, with all the attendant suffering. What's worse--in a culture that deeply believed entry to heaven depended on dying a 'good death--' that suffering is likely to lead to damnation. Williams offers a powerful anti-war speech:
Williams. 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 battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, Falstaff: 'honour hath no skill in surgery' some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. 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? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.
This leads to what I consider Henry's strained analogy about the merchant and his son and the sinking ship.He is pushed to assert: Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.
Williams and Bates actually agree demonstrating their yeoman's virtue. But when Henry (in disguise) tries to assert that he would call the king out on his hypocrisy if he lied about not wishing to be ransomed, it is more than they can take. And, strangely, this evidence of the difference between commoner and noble pushes Henry past patience. He and Williams engage in a parody of the chivalric challenge. His common touch has failed him and he has lost his case that the king is just like them or, as Orwell said in <Animal Farm "All animals are equal. Some are just more equal than others." It is left to Bates to sound like the adult:
Bates. Be friends, you English fools, be friends: we have
French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon.
The soldiers leave and we have the soliloquy and prayer quoted above.
AJ Nuttall writes of this scene: " We believe [the king] but the exalted 'happy band of brothers' tone of the SC day speech is implicitly subjected to an intense strain--before it has been delivered."
I sympathize with Henry in this scene. It kind of reminds me of the USA TV show "Undercover Boss." Be careful of mingling too closely if you are a leader. You may discover things it is safer not to know.
Perhaps this is another instance of the rabbit-duck dilemma. To quote Rabkin once again: In this play, Shakespeare reveals the conflicts between the private selves with which we are born and the public selves we must become, between our longing that authority figures can be like us and our suspicion that they must have traded away their inwardness for the sake of power. The play contrasts our hope that society can solve our problems with our knowledge that society has never done so. The inscrutability of Henry V is the inscrutability of history.
We long for our leaders to be worthy of us, but deep down we know they never can be. They run for office projecting the 'common touch' but even though we pretend to be fooled, deep down we really aren't. To be a leader is by definition to be different and, sadly, most often, ethically inferior.
Henry V. Though it appear a little out of fashion,
There is much care and valour in this Welshman.
Perhaps all of this is to set the audience up as the scene turns into one that is anything but comic. Soldiers Michael Williams, Alexander Court and Thomas Bate enter. Note the names. These are solid Anglo-Saxon names, not the comic names like Pistol or Nym (which meant thief in Old English). The conversation that ensues is a serious debate about just-war theory and the relationship between sovereign and soldier.
The King begins by trying to demonstrate his fundamental humanity to the men.
...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: his ceremonies
laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and
though his affections are higher mounted than ours,
yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like
wing.
I am struck by how his tone has changed after the conversation. Here he sounds much like other Shakespeare Kings we've met (Richard II and Henry IV) or could meet in other plays bemoaning their burden and isolation.
... What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony? [Shades of the "hollow crown"]
...
Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men? the realization that he can't have it both ways: you are either a man or the office, but cannot be both.]...
O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending? [Again the metaphor of disease]...
...
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave...
He has been brought to this by their repudiation of his sincerely held homilies about how the king cares for them and the justice of the cause he has drafted them to fight for.
Henry V. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king:
I think he would not wish himself any where but
where he is.
Bates. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be
sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.
Henry V. I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here
alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men's
minds: methinks I could not die any where so
contented as in the king's company; his cause being
just and his quarrel honourable.
Williams. That's more than we know.
As always was, and probably always will be, it's a rich man's war, with abstractions for justification, and a poor man's fight, with all the attendant suffering. What's worse--in a culture that deeply believed entry to heaven depended on dying a 'good death--' that suffering is likely to lead to damnation. Williams offers a powerful anti-war speech:
Williams. 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 battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, Falstaff: 'honour hath no skill in surgery' some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. 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? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.
This leads to what I consider Henry's strained analogy about the merchant and his son and the sinking ship.He is pushed to assert: Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.
Williams and Bates actually agree demonstrating their yeoman's virtue. But when Henry (in disguise) tries to assert that he would call the king out on his hypocrisy if he lied about not wishing to be ransomed, it is more than they can take. And, strangely, this evidence of the difference between commoner and noble pushes Henry past patience. He and Williams engage in a parody of the chivalric challenge. His common touch has failed him and he has lost his case that the king is just like them or, as Orwell said in <Animal Farm "All animals are equal. Some are just more equal than others." It is left to Bates to sound like the adult:
Bates. Be friends, you English fools, be friends: we have
French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon.
The soldiers leave and we have the soliloquy and prayer quoted above.
AJ Nuttall writes of this scene: " We believe [the king] but the exalted 'happy band of brothers' tone of the SC day speech is implicitly subjected to an intense strain--before it has been delivered."
I sympathize with Henry in this scene. It kind of reminds me of the USA TV show "Undercover Boss." Be careful of mingling too closely if you are a leader. You may discover things it is safer not to know.
Perhaps this is another instance of the rabbit-duck dilemma. To quote Rabkin once again: In this play, Shakespeare reveals the conflicts between the private selves with which we are born and the public selves we must become, between our longing that authority figures can be like us and our suspicion that they must have traded away their inwardness for the sake of power. The play contrasts our hope that society can solve our problems with our knowledge that society has never done so. The inscrutability of Henry V is the inscrutability of history.
We long for our leaders to be worthy of us, but deep down we know they never can be. They run for office projecting the 'common touch' but even though we pretend to be fooled, deep down we really aren't. To be a leader is by definition to be different and, sadly, most often, ethically inferior.
Zeke wrote: "The play certainly has its pep talk speeches to stir the blood. But I am also fond of one speech of Henry's says that reminds me of something I was told when I was a young coach. The moral was that..."Fascinating speech. And you're right, in a way it's counter-intuitive. But it's a very appropriate thought to bring forward on this day when four college football teams are competing for right to play for the first college championship game.
