The most influential writer in
all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to
a successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.
Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded
no further. In 1582 he married an older woman,
Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he
left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor
and playwright. Public and critical acclaim quickly followed, and
Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England
and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns
of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603) and
James I (ruled 1603–1625),
and he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare’s
company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing upon its members
the title of King’s Men. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired
to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age
of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare’s death, literary luminaries
such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.
Shakespeare’s works were collected and printed in various
editions during the century following his death, and by the early
eighteenth century, his reputation as the greatest poet ever to
write in English was well established. The unprecedented admiration
garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeare’s
life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details
of Shakespeare’s personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have
concluded from this fact and from Shakespeare’s modest education
that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by someone else—Francis
Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates—but
the support for this claim is over-whelmingly circumstantial, and
the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary,
Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirty-seven plays
and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy
of this body of work is immense. A number of Shakespeare’s plays
seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming
so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature
and culture ever after.
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s so-called
history plays. It forms the fourth part of a tetralogy (a four-part
series) dealing with the historical rise of the English royal House
of Lancaster. (The three plays that come before it are Richard
II, I Henry IV, and II Henry IV.) Henry
V, probably written in 1599, is
one of the most popular of Shakespeare’s history plays. It contains
a host of entertaining characters who speak in many accents and
languages. The play is full of noble speeches, heroic battles, and
valiant English underdogs who fight their way to victory against
all odds. Additionally, King Henry seems to be a perfect leader—brave,
modest, and fiercely focused, but with a sense of humor to match.
The play’s treatment of King Henry V, however, is more
problematic than it seems at first glance. Henry is a model of traditional
heroism, but his value system is confusing. After all, his sense
of honor leads him to invade a nonaggressive country and to slaughter
thousands of people. He sentences to death former friends and prisoners of
war while claiming to value mercy, and he never acknowledges that
he bears any responsibility for the bloodshed he has initiated.
It is useful to read the play with an eye toward these discrepancies, which
Shakespeare examines in a complicated exploration of the nature
of kingship. Whether or not he appears to be an admirable man, Henry
is presented as a nearly ideal king, with a diamond-hard focus,
an intractable resolve, and the willpower to subordinate his own
personal feelings to the needs of his nation and his throne. The brilliance
of Henry’s speeches and his careful cultivation of his image make
him an effective and inspiring leader. Whether he emerges from the
play as a heroic figure or merely a king as cold as he is brilliant
depends largely on each individual reader’s interpretation.
