Henry V

Henry V is probably the greatest historical play Shakespeare wrote, in my opinion. I know I’ve offended a lot of Hamlet-ites, but I promise I’m getting to him in a later article. But a lot of people don’t realize the greatest aspect of the Henry V story because they haven’t read Henry IV.

Basically, Henry IV is about Henry V (who for the sake of brevity I will refer to as V from now on) as a young man, with a little bit of father-son issues and basically living the college dorm life: drinking, carousing, and wenching with his homies Falstaff (whom Shakespeare writes a couple plays about in his own right, which I think is awesome), Pistol, Bardolf, and Nym. But then Henry IV dies and V is left with the burden of being just about the most powerful king in Europe, absolute power, global domination, that kind of thing. The first thing he does is ditch his drinking buddies and starts hanging out with all the Earls and Dukes and such, which some people interpret as harsh, but seriously guys, can you run a country while you’ve got a druggie still wasted in the bathroom? I mean, the line has to be drawn somewhere…

Anyway, the play starts off with V having his first conference with all the big-wigs of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury is there with a couple of bishops, along with the Duke of Exeter and the great nobles of the country. On a side note: Duke EX, can you eve ask for a better WWE name? but I digress.

Anyway, V has asked the Archbishop to examine his father’s (and consequently HIS) claim to the French crown to see if “I, with right of conscience, make this claim…”  

Archie does the right thing when it comes to medieval kings asking, “Can I have more power?” and answers, “HECK yeah, V, the crown’s totally legally yours!” We learn in the scene immediately before this that Archie is actually just trying to get on the king’s good side to avoid paying some stupid taxes, but V can’t really be blamed for that.

V calls in the French ambassadors in the next room to see if they have the answer to his VERY polite request for the French king to step down and give him the crown which is rightfully his. But then the Dauphin, the French prince, instead of just saying, “No” and puffing a cig’ like Clint Eastwood, has to go and try and pull off some kind of lame practical joke.

Just so you get the idea, here’s an excerpt from the IM session:

V: Hey dde, so can I hve the crwn now? I mn, I’m supposed 2 b king here.

Dauphin: no dude, but hre hve sOme TENNIS BALLs hurhurhr

Wht u say to that, bddy????

……

U still there?

V: im n ur base kllng ur d00dz. Pwnd, n00b.

Dauphin: 0_O?

            Dauphin has signed out of chat. Messages will be sent to his inbox.

V now goes total berserk on the Frogs, assembling one of the mightiest armies ever seen on England. He totally blows off some lame half-attempt of the French to assassinate him, and orders his best friend (who is one of the assassins) to death without so much as batting an eye. And then he sends the King of France a message:

That you divest yourself, and lay apart
The borrow’d glories that by gift of heaven,
By law of nature and of nations, ‘long
To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown…

And just in case they even THINK of messing with him:

Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown
Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it:
Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws...
 

[Shakespeare doesn’t say so, but I imagine the headless corpses of the would-be assassins probably accompanied the letter.]

Well, the King of France, after reading the message, hiccupped, had a heart attack, and soiled his underclothes all at the same time. He then spends the rest of the play pretty much just shaking in the corner like the pussy he is.

King: Think we King Harry strong;
And, princes, look you strongly arm'd to meet him.
The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;
And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths

Yeah, this guys is pretty much FREAKED OUT.  Anyway, V sets off and lays siege to this HUGE town of Harfleur and starts stabbing Frenchmen in the face until they die from it. Once, when his men were less than willing to do something as simple as “charge a GINORMOUS castle bristling with cannons and archers with only swords and a Home Depot ladder” V gets on his horse and shouts

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you!

And then delivers this epic wailin’ electric guitar solo that gets the WHOLE army more psyched up than a Marilyn Manson concert and simultaneously awes the poor French garrison so much that they throw open their gates and beg for mercy.

Then V runs into a problem; It’s a good problem for conquering badasses to have, but a problem nonetheless: He’s been so successful most of his soldiers are garrisoning the French castles he’s captured with his sheer bodacity. He only has like 5,000 soldiers at this little po-dunk town of Agincourt (which I also imagine surrendered to him after just looking at his face). But the French Army FINALLY arrives with a force that numbers “full 3 score thousand.” Besides, they’re all fresh from the spa and nail salons, or whatever it is French soldiers do on their off-days, and V’s dudes are exhausted after capturing all these castles and smashing blunt instruments of death into the spleens of uncooperative snail-eaters. Now, a lesser man would have gone, “Well, dudes, it’s been fun, but a man’s got to know his limitations,” and gone and maybe bartered a few of these castles back in return for his miserable life.

But V just doesn’t roll that way. He just calmly reaches for his sword and plays his +4 Hopeless Cause card and his trusty +10 French Wasting card.

He gets his army gathered, and delivers one of the singularly AWESOME AND EPIC speeches ever delivered. In fact, it is so Awesome I’m pretty sure he slipped in Elven once or twice because the English language just couldn’t handle 20 billion ml of PURE AWESOME all at the same time.

Watch it now. PLEASE. 

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Every time I hear that speech, I am filled with the nearly uncontrollable urge to go and find the nearest war and join it.

Anyway, the French are all smug, and decide to charge across this field to crush this miserably small army. Only problem: Nobody apparently bothered to check the field, and it turned out to be a swamp filled with knee deep mud. That’s not a good mix with men and horses in full armor…

V saw all these Frenchies drowning in a foot and a half of mud, and lined up his archers behind rows of stakes and had them begin raining POINTY INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH FTW on the huddled masses below. But he wasn’t content just to let the archers do all the work. Even when the French began to fall back after loosing a buttload of soldiers, Henry was like, “Dude, it’s only lunchtime; there’s no way we can stop now, we haven’t KILLED enough of these surrender monkeys!!”

Well have we done, thrice valiant countrymen:
But all's not done; yet keep the French the field!

The English then charges balls-out into the melee and generally pound the French into pieces of dough roughly the size of baguettes.

When all is said and done, V sits on a log and takes scope of the losses on both sides

French Dead:

This note doth tell me of ten thousand French
That in the field lie slain: of princes, in this number,
And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead
One hundred twenty six: added to these,
Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,
Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which,
Five hundred were but yesterday dubb'd knights:

The English Dead:

Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,
Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire:
None else of name; and of all other men
But five and twenty.

Like a BOSS. ‘Nuff said.

Well, the next scene is at the French capital where the French king is giving basically half his land and his only daughter to V, so we can assume the French got the message V was trying to send.

Henry then proceeds to romance the French princess who doesn’t even speak his language, but apparently is so debonair and suave that she winds up giving him a passionate kiss at the end of the play.

Which I think only adds to the man’s already insanely and  ridiculously large number of Man-Points.