Chapter Synopsis of Henry V - Study Guide by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare has the King speak in deliberately involuted metaphors here, i.e. they are turned in upon themselves; so mercy is ‘suppressed’ just as the treason is, and their reasoning is turned into their own persons as unnaturally as dogs hounding their masters, the traitorous nobles being the dogs and King Henry the master.

The gracious strength the King displays here echoes through the final scene of the act, as his envoy Exeter dominates the stage and the Dauphin has his "Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt" flung back in his face. The momentum of the drama builds without needing the English King to be present to respond in person because he has exhibited every newly adopted quality of which his courtiers have boasted, and has the French King on the back foot.

In the two Henry IV plays, humour was used superbly through the character of Falstaff to break up the specifically historical scenes and develop a more natural rhythm and sense of life. The comedy is delayed in comparison in Henry V but still provides a welcome change of pace in the first and third scenes of the second act as the old crew of Falstaff react to their figurehead’s death and prepare swaggeringly for the coming war, the excuse Shakespeare requires to press them into comic service again. As with much of Shakespeare’s comedy, it is easier to appreciate its physicality and farce in the modern theatre than on the page, as the low diction is less clearly marked than was the case for the original audience. Once again, however, the scenes serve to throw into relief the main thrust of the action, and offer a reassuring angle of the common man in the examination of the business of war.

Act III

Once again, the Chorus serves to hasten the presentation of a long drawn-out campaign along, with its insistently imperative tone and demonstrative image-making:

"Play with your fancies, and in them behold

Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing…

A city on th’inconstant billows dancing,

For so appears this fleet majestical,

Holding due course to Harfleur."

The war is now engaged in earnest and Henry’s famous line "Once more unto the breach…" propels the audience into the thick of the fighting. The speech is gloriously martial, a patriotic war cry made famous by Laurence Olivier in his 1944 film. The sentiment is taken up afresh at the start of the second scene by Bardolph, only for the other Eastcheap fellows to lag behind more cautiously, until the Welsh captain Fluellen (an anglicized spelling of Llewelyn) beats them into activity. The boy gives a quick character assessment of his companions before a lighter tone once again reasserts itself with the heated conversations of the diverse British officers: one English, one Irish, one Welshman and a Scot, all fighting, unusually for the time, in the same army, though unable to keep from each other’s throats.

The siege of the French town of Harfleur has not been wholly straightforward, as the captains’ talk of mining suggested, and King Henry’s speech now encourages its surrender with dark threats:

"…in a moment look to see

The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand

Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters

Your fathers taken by the silver beards,