Shakespeare's Henry V (1990, Michael Bogdanov) pt 8 of 17

Shakespeare's "King Henry V" from "The War of the Roses" (English Shakespeare Company, UK, 1990) is a direct filming, from the stage, of Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington's 7-play sequence based on Shakespeare's history plays.


Andrew Jarvis as the Dauphin,
Clyde Pollitt as the King of France,
Ian Burford as Exeter,
Hugh Sullivan as Constable of France,
King Henry - Michael Pennington
Sion Probert as Fluellen,
Paul Brenner as Pistol,

Director Michael Bogdanov

Commentary By Herbert Arthur Evans:

This double feature of Henry V, namely, the focussing of attention on the king and the contrasting of the opposed armies to the disparagement of the French, is very striking. One cannot help feeling that Shakespeare's object in writing the play was not so much the developing of a well-knit historical drama as the stimulating of patriotism by the glorification of a national hero in King Henry V, and in rousing national pride generally by a contrast between British character, with its seriousness, its simple honesty, courage, vigor, and patriotism, on the one hand, and French conceit, arrogance, and instability on the other.

In Englishmen of 1599, whose recollections of the Spanish Armada were still vivid, and whose pride in the power of British arms and in the enterprise of British seamen was great, Englishmen of the period of Raleigh, Drake, and Frobisher, such a stage representation must have roused immense enthusiasm. Looked at in this way, Henry V has a new significance.

Though it is a poor play, it is a splendid spectacle. Though it is a loosely jointed drama, it is a stirring epic. The subject is England's greatness and the greatness of England's king. For hortatory rhetoric nothing in dramatic literature has ever equalled Henry's first speech before Har- fleur; for a restrained yet vivid picture of the horrors of war nothing has ever surpassed his address to the governor ; and the manly dignity of his replies to the herald, and the combined humility and nobility of his soliloquy in the camp, represent the poet at his best.

A well- known critic has called Henry V " the dull play of a great artist." Probably few will agree with this judgment, for though the play has obvious faults, the impression that it leaves on most of those who read it and m those who see it on the stage is that of a splendid md blood-quickening spectacle.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Shakespeare
• King-Henry-V
• Sion-Probert
• play
• theatre
• English-history
• HenryV