Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T11:02:20.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Henry V and the Pleasures of War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

David Loewenstein
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Paul Stevens
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

While Henry V is alive with religious echoes, its moral direction seems incoherent or unstable. Accordingly, the focus of this account is the way the play’s use of religion paradoxically intensifies and legitimates the pleasures of war. The chapter aims to explain not only how the sacral monarchy of England’s Plantagenet kings lives on in Shakespeare’s play but more importantly how in instrumentalizing it and its complex political theology, the prince outdoes his royal predecessors and the play aestheticizes war. It does this by enabling Henry to appropriate the dynamism and sheer agency imagined in Scripture’s representation of God’s freedom. The king comes out of a whirlwind and his army appears as Leviathan – all apparently in the service of the new national community. While Henry V is insistently skeptical about the value of war, its delight in the king’s virtù or violent agency complicates the irony and so denies the play any clear-cut moral critique.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Allmand, Christopher. Henry V, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Dutton, Richard. “‘Methinks the Truth Should Live from Age to Age’: The Dating and Contexts of Henry V,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 68 (2005), pp. 173204.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion,” Glyph, 8 (1981), pp. 4061.Google Scholar
Harriss, Gerald. Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keegan, John. The Face of Battle, New York, Viking Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Kerrigan, John. “Oaths, Threats, and Henry V,” Review of English Studies, 63 (2012), pp. 551–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maus, Katharine Eisaman. “Introduction to Henry V,” in Greenblatt, Stephen et al. (eds.), The Norton Shakespeare, 3rd ed., New York, W. W. Norton, 2016, pp. 1533–40.Google Scholar
Rabkin, Norman. “Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 28 (1977), pp. 279–96.Google Scholar
Shapiro, James. “‘What Ish My Nation?’ Shakespeare’s Irish Connections,” The Irish Times, April 23, 2016.Google Scholar
Vale, Malcolm. Henry V: The Conscience of a King, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×