"Once more unto the breach"

At the end of my last post, I mentioned the possible need to write something about Shakespeare's history plays. This came in response to an item on the e-mail list - Shakesper regarding a "new" movie version of Henry V. New is in quotes because supposedly the DVD is about to be released, but to my knowledge the movie has never been shown in theaters in this country. When I saw the topic, my instinctive reaction was that this was going to be another extremely negative portrayal of Henry so I wasn't surprised when I saw "cold-blooded killer" as a description of the title character.

There was also some mention of this being different from the more "patriotic" movie versions of Shakespeare's last history play. To be fair both Olivier and Branagh played fast and loose with the text, both cutting something like 50%. Olivier's version is clearly slanted on the "patriotic" track, but he deserves some slack for that given that this was during World War II. Actually I don't like the Olivier version and I find Olivier himself totally inadequate for the part because he cannot convincingly portray Henry's agon in the Act IV.

My problem with all of this is that I think Henry V is far too complex and too important a play to simply be put into "patriotic" and counter versions. Before writing this I reread part of Ron Rosenbaum's introduction to this book "The Shakespeare Wars." Rosenbaum writes about how a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream changed his life almost 40 years ago. I had a similar experience almost 50 years when I was required to watch "An Age of Kings" - a television version of the eight history plays - presented in regnal order. These plays have been an important part of my life ever since with one of the high points coming earlier this year when Carol and I went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see all eight of the plays again in regnal order - the first time I had ever seen the Henry VI plays on the stage.

In his introduction Rosenbaum talks about why he wants the reader to care about Shakespeare including "the question of why you think Shakespeare's work is worth caring about." In my case it is because the subject matter of the history plays is worth caring about, primarily because that subject matter is still important to us today. I think that is especially true of Henry V which to me is not about the extremes of the movie versions, but how this young king with everything going against him finds a way to turn an imminent disaster into a great triumph.

The essence of that issue is played out in Act IV which in my opinion has to be looked at as whole not as a series of scenes which allows some writers/scholars to pick one scene to make final negative judgements about Henry. Ultimately I think the history plays are about leadership - national leadership and that Shakespeare is exploring the keys to such leadership in terms of the real world, not the world as some people would like it to be. I want to write a whole lot more about this - to be honest I want to write a book about it. It will be a difficult book to get published because I lack the academic credentials, but I feel so strongly about it that it is something I need to do. I will write a lot more about the history plays in this blog, but felt the need to write this in response to what I believe is another negative, simplistic view of Henry V.