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Shakespeare's Henry V

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The play can easily be found online. There have been several movie adaptations. Kenneth Branagh's 1989 version is very good. Shakespeare, however, can be difficult to comprehend. To help you follow the text here is my synopsis of the play.

Henry V can be read in a number of ways. Some regard the play as a story of the ideal Christian king. Every scene illustrates some aspect of the perfect king: he is religious, compassionate, just, a noble man, able to communicate with the common man, and so on. Some see Henry as a leader who must balance his personal emotions with the demands of being a just leader and a public figure. Others see a king who claims to be Christian and just, but who is cruel, ruthless, and hypocritical. Norman Rabkin, in his article "Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V" (Shakespeare Quarterly, 28: 279-296, Summer, 1977) argues that you can see the play in several different ways. Just like an optical illusion that appears to be a rabbit, turns into a duck, and then back to a rabbit as you stare at it, Henry V can seem to be several different people.

Is Henry V the just king or the ruthless king? Are our leaders driven to act in ruthless ways while losing their humanity? As Rabkin puts it: " ... can the manipulative qualities that guarantee political success be combined in one man with the spiritual qualities that make one fully open and responsive to life and therefore fully human? Or to put it more accurately, can political resourcefulness be combined with qualities more like those of an audience as it sees itself?" (p. 281).

Shakespeare leaves the question of Henry's character open to interpretation. Rabkin argues that Henry V is interpreted and staged in different ways: "We are made to see a rabbit or a duck. In fact, if we do not try obsessively to cling to memories of past encounters with the play, we may find that each time we read it it turns from one shape to another, just as it regularly does in production" (p. 285).

Perhaps Shakespeare is dealing with a basic dilemma of leadership. As Rabkin says: "In this play, Shakespeare reveals the conflicts between the private selves with which we are born and the public selves we must become, between our longing that authority figures can be like us and our suspicion that they must have traded away their inwardness for the sake of power. (p. 296)"

Questions to consider:

1. Discuss Henry V as an example of a charismatic leader. What is the dark side of Henry's charisma?

2. What is often not discussed in studies of charismatic leaders is the ambivalence a leader may feel in the leadership role. In other words, leaders, like the rest of us, suffer from self-doubt. Does Henry V suffer from self-doubt?

3. Some commentators have argued that Henry V is supposed to represent the ideal Christian king. Each scene is said to reveal some aspect of the ideal leader. What were the ideal properties of Henry's leadership? What were the flaws of Henry V?

4. Shakespeare is legendary for being ambivalent about the characters and concepts, such as leadership, in his plays. No hero is without flaws; no motive is completely pure. How did he show ambivalence towards leadership in this play?

This page last modified on 1/12/09