Love is Patriotic... Wider Reading 16: Henry V

It is a commonly held belief that Shakespeare's Henry V was the first to be performed at the new Globe Theatre in the spring of 1599. Since then, the story of the victor of Agincourt has been performed and adapted many times, with the dashing king as a prominent historical figure. Many types of love are explored within the play, the most obvious of which is patriotism and love of one's country. When Henry calls for his army to "Follow [their] spirit, and upon this charge / Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!" they are portraying their strength in terms of their love for England and its king. During the play Henry also experiences the loss of many of his friends and family members, who he remembers gratefully as loving him as a man despite his high status.

Henry's wooing of Katherine - or as he calls her, Kate - at first superficially appears to be the charming comical awkwardness of a soldier talkinh to an aristocratic lady. But Katherine knows that "the tongues of men are full of deceits", and for all his insistences on lacking eloquence Henry's speech is lengthy and highbrow. Katherine asks, "Is it possible dat I sould love de enemie of France?". To the king, and probably most others, the match with Katherine is a marriage of national conquest, not of human love. Henry is obliged to answer that he is not the enemy of France - quite the opposite. That this marriage is about rapacity for land rather than love is clear from Henry's rhapsodizing about France itself. At best, after some banter about the language barrier, "I love thee cruelly", he protests, letting slip a Janus-faced adjective. He believes calling her "a good soldier-breeder" is an appeal to maternal instincts.

After substantially more dissertation from Henry, Katherine punctures the hypocrisy of all this - the pretense that any fate is in her hands - by noting that the match is entirely up to her father. Although the Princess and Alice insist it is not French custom for ladies to kiss before marriage, Henry kisses her. The French nobles return, and Burgundy explains Katherine's resistence as maidens' natural modesty regarding Cupid. Henry declares, "Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces". Historically, Henry married Catherine de Valois on 2 June 1420. Here, it may not be so much a marriage as a rape dressed up in ceremony. With the French conceding all, the "conquest" is achieved and all look forward, incorrectly as the audience knows, to a lasting peace.

Henry v - Quotations