Henry V
Although not the most thematically interesting of Shakespeare’s plays, one can easily imagine that the reflections on war, sacrifice, and leadership really hit their mark when this was released, five months after D-Day and two days before Hitler would leave Rastenberg forever. The transition from highly artificial stage production to battleground and back again is indeed handled very well (and the shot of the cavalry advancing from a walk to a gallop is particularly effective), but equally impressive is the seduction scene.
Concerning the latter, what is most fascinating is the way in which peace is portrayed through the possibility of two people, a man and a woman, who happen to be “makers of manners”, learning how to love and adopt one another’s foreignness, in a context where, as the Duke of Burgundy puts it (and this is perhaps what remains most timely for us, today, writing in 2025, four centuries after the play was written and eight decades after the film was made, this “today” being characterised above all by relentless economic war beyond what Shakespeare could ever have imagined), neglect has meant that a place is “corrupting in its own fertility”, and where, therefore, its children “Have lost, or do not learn for want of time, / The sciences that should become our country; / But grow like savages”, the hope of peace being what may “expel these inconveniences / And bless us with her former qualities”.
It’s unclear to this viewer why Falstaff’s death scene was added, which serves mainly to cause one to wish that Olivier had filmed the other three plays that, in Kernan’s words, “constitute an epic” (Kernan, 1970, p. 245), that is, the Henriad. It is not just a question of seeing how that character, “banished” and “cast off” by the time we land here, might have been rendered (we can always just go back, or forward, to CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, 1965, if we wish to enjoy the pleasures of that substitute paternal figure). It is that, watching this, we can’t help but be conscious that, in this particular play, we have already arrived at the end of the “Falstaffiad” (Bloom, 2017), and that we are thus witnessing a man who has already undergone the “return to his true father in spirit and person”, and who thus is already in the process of assuming “the burdens of rule”, engaged in “the adult role of trying to order and ‘make the world work’” (Kernan, 1970, p. 275), without seeing in what way this “return” is an outcome of a long and difficult struggle, filled with ambivalence and oscillation between rising up and falling back, or between higher and lower visions of a possible life.
Concerning the latter, what is most fascinating is the way in which peace is portrayed through the possibility of two people, a man and a woman, who happen to be “makers of manners”, learning how to love and adopt one another’s foreignness, in a context where, as the Duke of Burgundy puts it (and this is perhaps what remains most timely for us, today, writing in 2025, four centuries after the play was written and eight decades after the film was made, this “today” being characterised above all by relentless economic war beyond what Shakespeare could ever have imagined), neglect has meant that a place is “corrupting in its own fertility”, and where, therefore, its children “Have lost, or do not learn for want of time, / The sciences that should become our country; / But grow like savages”, the hope of peace being what may “expel these inconveniences / And bless us with her former qualities”.
It’s unclear to this viewer why Falstaff’s death scene was added, which serves mainly to cause one to wish that Olivier had filmed the other three plays that, in Kernan’s words, “constitute an epic” (Kernan, 1970, p. 245), that is, the Henriad. It is not just a question of seeing how that character, “banished” and “cast off” by the time we land here, might have been rendered (we can always just go back, or forward, to CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, 1965, if we wish to enjoy the pleasures of that substitute paternal figure). It is that, watching this, we can’t help but be conscious that, in this particular play, we have already arrived at the end of the “Falstaffiad” (Bloom, 2017), and that we are thus witnessing a man who has already undergone the “return to his true father in spirit and person”, and who thus is already in the process of assuming “the burdens of rule”, engaged in “the adult role of trying to order and ‘make the world work’” (Kernan, 1970, p. 275), without seeing in what way this “return” is an outcome of a long and difficult struggle, filled with ambivalence and oscillation between rising up and falling back, or between higher and lower visions of a possible life.
Mini Review: Although not the most thematically interesting of Shakespeare’s plays, the reflections on war, sacrifice, and leadership must really have hit their mark, five months after D-Day, two days before Hitler would leave Rastenberg. The transition from artificial stage production to battleground and back is handled very well (the cavalry advancing from a walk to gallop is particularly effective), but so too is the seduction scene: peace as a man and a woman learning to adopt one another's foreignness.
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