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In her Introduction to the 1999 Penguin Books published texts of Henry V, Claire McEachern writes that Henry V is both ''the capstone and the keystone of Shakespeare's engagement with the English history play.'' This play, McEachern continues, ''portrays a high, and perhaps unique, moment in English national history, when it represents a country both internally unified and internationally victorious.'' Structurally, McEachern points out, ''Shakespeare signals'' a ''contrast between ideal and real perspectives on political community.'' He does so through the use of a Chorus before every act. It is through the Chorus, McEachern writes, that Shakespeare sets up the ideal, ''relentlessly optimistic and positive in presenting future events.'' This contrasts with the scenes that follow, which often conflict with that positive attitude, such as depicting treason and battles that must be fought. ''But if Shakespeare refuses to let the ideal vision of warfare and national unity stand unmolested, at the same time he insists, in an inspiring and rousing rhetoric, on the ennobling capacities of participation in a myth of unity and union.'' McEachern emphasizes the power of the dramatic monologue that King Henry delivers at Agincourt right before the battle. ''Henry produces what is undoubtedly among the most spine-tingling of calls to battle in Shakespeare or anywhere else.''

In concluding her critique of the play, McEachern writes, ''The idealizing pressures of Henry V may at times cloy and coerce; but we ultimately forgive the play its glorifications, not only because we too crave a world where the underdog is the victor, few of the good guys die, and the hero gets the girl, but because we also know . . . that such things are all too rare and fleeting.''

Harold C. Goddard, in his book The Meaning of Shakespeare, begins his analysis of Henry V by summing up other critics' comments. ''There is near-unanimity among critics that Henry V is not a marked success as a play,'' Goddard begins. Some critics, Goddard goes on, have written that Shakespeare's play ''contains much that is splendid and picturesque, these merits cannot atone for [the play's] intellectual and dramatic poverty.'' This is not, however, Goddard's opinion. Goddard writes: ''Before accepting these judgments as final, it is worth noting the presumptive unlikelihood that Shakespeare would have produced a poor play, or even a second-rate one.'' Goddard is of the opinion that critics who have written against this play might have overlooked Shakespeare's intentions, because Henry V was the ''culminating play of his great historical series.'' The critics who relegate this play to such a low position, at this time of Shakespeare's writing career, Goddard continues, seem to believe that ''Shakespeare more or less goes to pieces as a playwright and substitutes pageantry and patriotism for his proper business, drama.'' Goddard dispels this thought. He states that telling a story about a hero-king is a difficult task. ''To tell it and to keep the piece in which you tell it popular calls for more than courage. Shakespeare did as life does. Life places both its facts and its intoxicants before us and bids us make out of the resulting clash what we can and will.''

Goddard continues, ''God does not indicate what we shall think of his world or of the men and women he has created. He puts them before us. But he does not compel us to see them as they are. Neither does Shakespeare.''

S. Schoenbaum, writing in his book Shakespeare, His Life, His Language, His Theater, points to some of the criticism of this play, too. Schoenbaum, unlike some other critics, found the contradictions between the Chorus that glorified Henry and the actions of the king in the play to be inviting.

In such contraries does criticism rejoice, and by admitting subversive countercurrents, Shakespeare invites liberty of interpretation. Each reader and viewer must decide for himself [sic] whether the hero is an exemplary Christian prince or a self-righteous imperialist, or some combination of both, and his play a sublime testimonial to national purpose or an exercise in wonderfully eloquent but essentially meretricious jingoism--or any of the innumerable gradations between these polarities.

Maurice Charney, writing in his All of Shakespeare, states that ''the emphasis in this final play of the Major Tetralogy is on the heroic celebration of Henry as the ideal English king.'' Charney found much to enjoy in this play; but one particular part was the soliloquy that Henry delivers in act 4, scene 1, on kingship. ''There is no speech on kingship in Shakespeare more glorious than this one,'' Charney writes.

References:

1) Charney, Maurice, All of Shakespeare, Columbia University Press, 1993.

2) Goddard, Harold C., The Meaning of Shakespeare, University of Chicago Press, 1951.

3) McEachern, Claire, ed., ''Introduction,'' in The Life of King Henry the Fifth, Penguin Books, 1999.

4) Schoenbaum, S., Shakespeare: His Life, His Language, His Theater, Penguin Group, 1990.

5) Shakespeare, William, The Life of King Henry the Fifth, Penguin Books, 1999.

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