WE ARE FACED at the outset with the same problems that confronted us with Henry IV: to what extent the text of The Famous Victories gives a fair idea of the play, or plays, it purports to represent, and to what extent Shakespeare was influenced by this play and by Harey the V, performed by the Admiral’s men in 1595 and 1596.
Shakespeare’s main source was Holinshed’s Chronicles, but he also used Hall and The Famous Victories, probably used Grenewey’s translation of The Annales of Cornelius Tacitus (1598), possibly used Daniel’s Civile Wars, and, though this is much less likely, The Batayll of Egynge-courte (c. 1530).1
The evidence that Shakespeare consulted Hall consists of a large number of small details in which the play is closer to Hall than to Holinshed. J. H. Walter, indeed, goes so far as to say that ‘Shakespeare’s debt to Holinshed is in effect superficial, Hall is the source of his inspiration’.2 It is true that Hall’s attitude to historical events is more thoughtful and coherent than Holinshed’s and that Shakespeare absorbed his attitude to a considerable extent; but it seems likely nevertheless that the facts of Henry V’s reign derive from Holinshed, and a good deal of his actual phrasing. The echoes from Hall come mostly in patches: there are hardly any in Acts II, III, and V, and there are a number in I. ii and IV. ii. But even the clustering echoes are not particularly striking, and the remainder may well be accidental. The Archbishop of Canterbury may refer to Henry IV’s reign as an ‘unquiet time’ (I. i. 4) because that is the title of Hall’s chapter; and Exeter may warn the French king of the inevitable sufferings which would result from a war –
the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries,
The dead men’s blood, the prived maidens’ groans,
For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers –
(II. iv. 106–8)
because Hall had spoken in similar terms of the French mourning after Agincourt:
And yet the dolor was not onely hys, for the ladies swouned for the deathes of theyr housebandes, the Orphalines wept, and rent their heares for the losse of their parentes, the fayre damoselles defied that day in the whiche they had lost their paramors.
(f. xxv)
But, after all, any poet writing on the subject would have come up with the same, fairly obvious, list of mourners.
One famous remark in the play is derived from Holinshed – it is not in Hall:
It is said, that as he heard one of the host vtter his wish to another thus: I would to God there were with vs now so manie good soldiers as are at this houre within England! the king answered: I would not wish a man more here than I haue, we are indeed in comparison to the enimies but a few, but if God of his clemencie doo fauour vs, and our iust cause (as I trust he will) we shall speed well inough.
(553; Bullough, IV. 394)
So Westmoreland exclaims:
O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do not work to-day!
(IV. iii. 16–18)
This provides the cue for one of the King’s most rousing speeches. It should be mentioned, however, that a Latin biography, the Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti, ascribes the remark to Walter Hungerford and mentions the figure of 10,000 – ‘decem milia de melioribus sagitariis Angliae’ – so Shakespeare may have been acquainted, directly or indirectly, with this Life.3
Shakespeare is at his worst when he is slavishly following Holinshed’s narrative. The one passage in all his plays where he fell below the level of a score of his contemporaries is in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s exposition of the Salic Law:
Herein did he much inueie against the surmised and false fained law Salike, which the Frenchmen alledge euer against the kings of England in barre of their iust title to the crowne of France. The verie words of that supposed law are these, In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant, that is to saie, Into the Salike land let not women succeed. Which the French glossers expound to be the realme of France, and that this law was made by king Pharamond; whereas yet their owne authors affirme, that the land Salike is in Germanie, betweene the riuers of Elbe and Sala; and that when Charles the great had ouercome the Saxons, he placed there certeine Frenchmen, which hauing in disdeine the dishonest maners of the Germane women, made a law, that the females should not succeed to any inheritance within that land, which at this daie is called Meisen, so that if this be true, this law was not made for the realme of France, nor the Frenchmen possessed the land Salike, till foure hundred and one and twentie yeares after the death of Pharamond, the supposed maker of this Salike law, for this Pharamond deceassed in the yeare 426, and Charles the great subdued the Saxons, and placed the Frenchmen in those parts beyond the riuer of Sala, in the yeare 805.
(Holinshed, 545; Bullough, IV. 378)
The first part of the Archbishop’s paraphrase runs as follows:
There is no bar
To make against your Highness’ claim to France
But this, which they produce from Pharamond:
In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant –
“No woman shall succeed in Salique land”;
Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
The founder of this law and female bar.
Yet their own authors faithfully affirm
That the land Salique is in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe;
Where Charles the Great, having subdu’d the Saxons,
There left behind and settled certain French;
Who, holding in disdain the German women
For some dishonest manners of their life,
Establish’d then this law; to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land;
Which Salique, as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Sala,
Is at this day in Germany called Meisen.
Then doth it well appear the Salique law
Was not devised for the realm of France;
Nor did the French possess the Salique land
Until four hundred one-and-twenty years
After defunction of King Pharamond,
Idly suppos’d the founder of this law;
Who died within the year of our redemption
Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great
Subdu’d the Saxons, and did seat the French
Beyond the river Sala, in the year
Eight hundred five.
(I. i. 35—64)
The feebleness of this speech suggests that Shakespeare’s imagination was not engaged; and he may have doubted the righteousness of the King’s cause. There was bound to be a suspicion that the King was following his father’s advice to ‘busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels’; and the realpolitik of the two churchmen who open the play makes it clear that they are backing the war against France in return for the King’s agreement not to confiscate church property. As Holinshed puts it:
they determined to assaie all waies to put by and ouerthrow this bill: wherein they thought best to trie if they might mooue the kings mood with some sharpe innuention, that he should not regard the importunate petitions of the commons.
(Holinshed, 545; Bullough, IV. 377)
Hall, a supporter of Henry VIII’s policy with regard to the monasteries, is satirical at the expense of the clergy in the earlier reign:
the fat Abbotes swet, the proude Priors frouned, the poore Friers curssed, the sely Nonnes wept, and al together wer nothyng pleased nor yet content. Now to finde a remedy for a mischief and a tent to stop a wounde, the Clergy myndyng rather to bowe then breake, agreed to offre to the kyng a greate some of money to staye this newe moued demaund. The cause of this offre semed to some of the wise prelates nether decente nor conuenient, for they will forsawe and perfightly knewe that yf the commons perceiued that they by reward or offre of money would resist their request and peticion, that thei stirred and moued with a fury would not onely rayle and despise theim as corruptours of Princes and enemyes of the publique wealthe, but would so crye and call on the kyng and his temporall lordes that they were lyke to lese bothe worke and oyle, cost and liuying: Wherefore they determined to cast all chaunces whiche mighte serue their purpose, and in especiall to replenishe the kynges brayne with some pleasante study that he should nether phantasy nor regard the serious peticion of the importunate commons.
(f. iiiv)
It seems likely that Shakespeare’s own attitude was as ambivalent as Hall’s, admiration for the victor of Agincourt and patriotic feeling being counter-balanced by a dislike of ecclesiastical chicanery and of dubious moral claims.
Shakespeare omits the trial of Sir John Oldcastle for heresy and his escape from the Tower of London. His Oldcastle had deviated from his namesake and by this time had been rechristened. In any case the heresy issue would have been irrelevant in a play devoted to what Hall called ‘the victorious acts’ of Henry V.
The conspiracy by Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey was apparently not mentioned in The Famous Victories. Shakespeare provides his hero with an eloquent speech on Scroop’s hypocrisy, but he conceals the fact that the plot was on behalf of the Earl of March, whose title to the throne was stronger than Henry’s own. Hall, Holinshed, and Daniel all suggest that Cambridge wrongly confessed to being bribed by the French, a suggestion that was followed in A Mirror for Magistrates:4
We sayd for hier of the French kinges coyne, we did
Behight to kil the king: and thus with shame
We stayned our selues, to saue our frend fro blame.
(Bullough, IV. 419)
Henry’s speech at Harfleur, warning its inhabitants of what will happen if the town is sacked, is apparently based on a speech made four years later at the siege of Rouen. In spite of this horrific speech, Shakespeare makes Henry instruct his soldiers to show mercy after the surrender: according to Hall and Holinshed, Harfleur was nevertheless sacked.
It was probably Shakespeare’s idea to have representatives of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in Henry’s army – despite the danger of a Scottish invasion of England mentioned in Act I – in order to reflect the policy of multi-national unity advocated in Elizabeth’s reign, the pride of the Tudors in their Welsh ancestry, and the prospect of the accession of the Stuarts.
The King’s tour of the English camp on the eve of the battle may have been suggested by The First English Life of King Henry the Fifth, in which there is an account of Henry’s practice at the siege of Harfleur.5 Others think the episode owes something to the account given by Tacitus of how Germanicus went among his troops in disguise to estimate their morale: an English translation of the Annals had recently been published (1598).6 The plight of the English army is described briefly by Holinshed, and at greater length by Hall, especially in the French King’s oration before the battle:
And on the otherside is a smal handfull of pore Englishemen which are entred into thys regon in hope of some gain or desire of proffite, whyche by reson that their vitaill is consumed and spent, are by daily famyn sore wekened, consumed and almost without spirites: for their force is clerly abated and their strength vtterly decaied, so that or the battailes shall ioyne they shalbe for very feblenes vanquished and ouercom, and in stede of men ye shall fight with shadowes.
(f. xvv)
This passage probably formed the basis of the Constable’s oration in IV. ii; but Shakespeare also drew on memories of an earlier campaign in France when the Black Prince’s forces were similarly outnumbered, and he was familiar with Edward III, in which the episode was dramatized. There are also some interesting resemblances between the plight of the English army and that described in Xenophon’s Anabasis, as Mary Renault has recently pointed out.7
Shakespeare says nothing whatever about the instructions to the archers by which the battle was won. He could have found them in Holinshed, or in The Famous Victories:
Then I will, that every archer prouide him a stake of
A tree, and sharpe it at both endes,
And at the first encounter of the horsemen,
To pitch their stakes downe into the ground before them,
That they may gore themselues upon them,
And then to recoyle backe, and shoote wholly altogither,
And so discomfit them.
(Bullough, IV. 333)
Shakespeare omitted these facts, presumably because he wished to stress the miraculous and providential nature of the victory.
It has been argued8 that as originally written, Falstaff appeared in the French scenes; and that it was Falstaff, not Pistol, who was made to eat the leek by Fluellen. The main evidence for this is the soliloquy in V. i in which Pistol says ‘my Doll is dead’ and ‘Old I do wax’. Pistol’s wife is Nell, and he is not, so far as we know, old. It is more likely, however, that ‘Doll’ is a misprint, or a slip by Shakespeare himself; for the tone of the soliloquy, in verse, is quite unlike any of Falstaff’s speeches in Henry IV. It is surely out of character for Falstaff to say: ‘from my weary limbs/Honour is cudgell’d’ (78–9).
Shakespeare’s play owes most to The Famous Victories in the scene where Pistol captures M. de Fer (IV. iv), which is based on a scene between Dericke and a French soldier, and in Henry’s wooing of Princess Katherine. It could be argued that here he was following the old play too closely, as the scene gives the impression that the King is putting on an act as a plain, blunt, unimaginative Englishman.
The differing critical opinions about the play, and about the character of Hal both here and in Henry IV, are not wholly due to changing attitudes to war and patriotism, nor even to changing stage conventions. Shakespeare himself provides the material for regarding Henry as a great and heroic figure, even as an ideal king; but he also was the first to put forward the kind of reservations some modern critics have expressed. It is impossible to believe that Shakespeare took the Archbishop’s justification of the war as anything but a pretext; and some members of any audience would notice that in his conversation with the soldiers on the eve of Agincourt, the King evades the question of whether it is a just war. The choruses, splendid as they are, exhibit Shakespeare’s anxiety about the limitations of his theatre, and this may conceal an unresolved conflict between his public and private feelings about his hero.9