HENRY V Prologue: A fresh look.

I hope this will provide an insight into the text for anyone lucky enough to have to study the play.

Many believe that Will played Chorus himself as it was a little bit crucial to get it absolutely right. I think if I could 'Doctor-Who myself ' back to some moment in the past it would be that first performance of the piece at the new Globe Theatre right next door to the famous bear-pit a mere 392 years ago!

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• Prologue to Henry V
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• Shakespeare as Chorus
• History play
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• Fred Proud
• Battle of Agincourt.
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[harryfaber]

I am off to the vasty fields of France, 4.20 from Dover, on Thursday. Like many others, I studied this at school for O Level Eng.Lit. I assumed that this would have been delivered 'Brian Blessed' style, to settle the drunks and riotous assembly into listening to the play, which, I assumed, dealt with a subject still very much in the mind of the audience, just as 'The Somme' might be in the mind of our generation.

[Caspar33]

@harryfaber Yes, of course you're right about that. A bit of bombast would have been in order with a goodly chunk of groundlings among the 1,000 or so there in The (daylight) Globe. All that stuff about the very theatre they are standing in would have caught them right on the spot! France, also, a little like Russia for us during The Cold War, fixed some attention. The plea to work the imagination comes exactly in the right place and thereafter a bit of Pistol, drag french Princesses (contd)

[Caspar33]

@harryfaber 2. and maids in waiting would have allowed some relief. And the Olivier film to do it credit does show us how that worked. And in the same vein to show us the over-lusty French crowing about victory...Amazing to me still to see how he could keep all those balls in the air for well over 4 hours, in the open air (it definitely takes that!) - and have both audiences on their metaphorical or actual toes!! All there in Hamlet's Players' speech. Thanks Harry and have a good trip!

[borisuewetty]

Very good. I say this is the best Fred.

All the best

Kean

[Caspar33]

@borisuewetty Thanks for that....twice over.

[Poemsapennyeach]

My father (step ) ....was a Shakespearian Scholar..prof of lit at Trinity College.. Dublin..James Walton. ..like your reading...not rushed like many...

[Caspar33]

@Poemsapennyeach Thanks Kristine. I only know a handful of the plays really well. This one (2), Merchant (1), the Dream (2), Measure (1),The Shrew (2), Much Ado(1) hands-on that is, as either actor or director, or both. They kinda burrow into the psyche. Wish I'd done more.

[harryfaber]

I rather suspect that he would have been envious of being able to use the techniques of the cinema, and to have extras by the thousand, real arrows and horses.

Shakespeare needed the audience to use imagination, modern media requires that the audience just sits and watches, often preferably without thinking.

[harryfaber]

This is the very essence of 'theatre', couple of weeks time, there will be five year olds all over the nation playing 'Joseph', Mary, the donkey, or, as I did 'first shepherd' (I remember my lines now - Lo, a star!-)

For a 5 year old who wants a pee to act in what is for many 'the greatest story ever', the audience needs to be 'brought to order' and then enlisted to use their imagination whilst following the performance.

I wonder what the Bard would have thought of the 1944 film.

[keanghiero]

Very good. I say this is the best Fred.

All the best

Kean