Shakespeare's Henry V (1990, Michael Bogdanov) pt 3 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.

Chorus - Barry Stanton
Henry Prince of Wales - Michael Pennington
Paul Brenner as Pistol,
Colin Farrell as Bardolph
John Dougall as Nym
June Watson as Mistress Quickly
Ian Burford - Exeter
Philip Rees as Sir Thomas Grey
Hugh Sullivan - Canterbury
Ben Bazell - Westmoreland

Director Michael Bogdanov

Commentary By Herbert Arthur Evans:

A play on the same subject, entitled "The famous victories of Henrye the Fyft, conteyninge the honorable battell of Agincourt", had been acted more than ten years previous, but Shakespeare seems to have made little use of it. He drew his material almost entirely from Holinshed's "Chronicle", and in many of his scenes followed his original with great closeness. Professor Barrett Wendell, in his suggestive book on Shakespeare, has called attention to the skill with which the dramatist has transmuted the lifeless prose of the Chronicle into the " vigorously sounding rhetoric" of the play. Holinshed writes: "Hugh Capet, who usurped the crowne upon Charles duke of Lorraine, the sole heir male of the line and stock of Charles the Great." Shakespeare's rendering of these lines in Act I, Scene 2, 69-71, is as follows: —

" Hugh Capet also, who usurp'd the crown
Of Charles the duke of Lorraine, sole heir male
Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great."

The dramatist does not hesitate to desert his authorities, however, whenever he feels it to be necessary. In Act I, Scene 2, for example, he represents the speech of the Archbishop as being made to the king himself, though Holinshed asserts that it was delivered in Parliament. Again, he represents Bedford, Westmoreland, and Warwick as present at Agincourt, though, according to the "Chronicle", they were not. These slight divergences from fact do not impair the essential truth of the drama as a picture of the times, and they enable the poet to gain in dramatic effect. On the other hand, the comic portions of "Henry V" are of Shakespeare's invention. Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, the Hostess, and the Boy do not belong to the world of Holinshed at all, but carry us back to the vivid scenes of Henry IV. The genius of the dramatist likewise cuts loose from his authority in Act II, Scene 2, where the king unmasks the conspirators. The main facts are found in Holinshed, but they are so expanded, so skilfully manipulated, by Shakespeare that the scene is practically the product of his own invention. The scene describing the wooing of Katharine owes nothing to the Chronicle.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Shakespeare
• King-Henry-V
• Michael-Pennington
• play
• theatre
• English-history
• HenryV

[TheImpossibleMan]

God DAMN I love how this cast brings this scene to life. These are the funniest Pistol and Nym I've ever seen.