Day 10: Your Favorite History

[a_t_rain]

This, I am sure, will come as a surprise to NO ONE WHATSOEVER.



I first came to Henry V as a freshman in college. Somewhere I had absorbed the idea that it was a play about an Ideal King, so it was a surprise to discover that the professor -- a blunt-spoken New Yorker of the Vietnam generation -- regarded Henry as the villain of the piece. (It was also fabulously liberating; one of the things that I loved about that class was discovering that it was OK to take critical commonplaces with a whole shaker of salt. I do wonder, though, what I would think about this play if I had read it on my own, or with a prof who was less openly Henry-skeptical. I always have to fight to see things from Henry's perspective, and I wish I found it easier, because I do think his perspective is meant to have merit, and his virtues are meant to be real. But perhaps it wouldn't have made a difference. It's a slippery chameleon of a play; what you think of Henry really depends on what you value and believe; so I don't know that there's any way to change the particular bent with which you approach it.)

And it's masterfully done -- Henry gets all of this fabulous, stirring rhetoric, and a couple of heart-piercing moments, and the Chorus mostly backs him up. And yet. There are all these other voices that undercut the idea that this war is a glorious enterprise: Canterbury and Ely conducting private machinations; Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph quarreling and thieving and trying to survive; Michael Williams asking intelligent, skeptical questions that are never really answered. And I think we're always meant to see Falstaff's ghost hovering just offstage; his name gets invoked so many times. And at the end, just when you think all those dissenting voices are silenced, the Chorus is back to say "oh, by the way, it's all futile, no lasting peace or victory here." I love the sheer complexity of it all -- the way there's always another voice to say "Yes, but..."

I also love what the Chorus has to say about the role of imagination in shaping history -- the second tetralogy gets more and more metatheatrical and metahistorical as it progresses, and finally, a big chunk of the responsibility for piecing out the story is left with the audience. Which is where it belongs, really.



Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line

Comments

[phantomcranefly.livejournal.com]

On the topic of different ways to approach it, I read the play on my own first (prompted by your fic, actually) but I didn't get more than the most general sense of any of the characters. Then I saw my school's performance, and was blown away. Henry seemed very young, very insecure but mostly hiding it well, trying desperately to convince himself he was doing the right thing. In the "Upon the King" speech and the final scene, where he's trying to woo Katharine, you can see the bold public face slipping away.

Our college film series did a short docu-thing on it, which I'm emailing (the link, that is) to the address on your profile with the subject line Henry V Video. (I don't mind you knowing where I live, but I'm not so sure about the whole internet. :) ) You can kind of see what I mean, especially at 2:22 and Henry's reaction to the fight with the Dauphin at 3:00.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool! Thanks!

[phantomcranefly.livejournal.com]

I just saw the Kenneth Branagh version over the weekend, and having something to compare it to makes it easier to explain how my school's production differed. (My apologies in advance for geeking out at you.)

During the traitor scene, Henry seemed much more grieved than angry (so the shouting and throwing people around in the movie came as quite a surprise to me :) ). Cambridge fell to his knees on "your highness' mercy" and Scroop and Gray followed him on "to which we all appeal". At some point around "thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels" Henry reached his hand to Scroop and pulled him up. He sounded genuinely heartbroken and bewildered in the "why so didst thou" speech, and turned away on "hear your sentence" as though he couldn't stand to look at them anymore.

He had pretty much the same reaction to the news of Bardolph's crime (although there were fewer lines for it to fit into, so it felt shorter and less noticeable) - they cut the description and had him come onstage, and Henry just kind of looked at him- sad, and I kind of got the sense he wished there was any other way out, but couldn't see one. He finally said "We would have all offenders so cut off" and Bardolph walked slowly to the other door, handing his pair of scissors sword back to Chorus as he passed. Only after the door closed did Henry keep going with "and we give express charge" as though he'd just remembered it.