SHAKSPER 1999: Re: Henry

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 04/24/99 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0737  Saturday, 24 April 1999.

[1]     From:   Ed Taft <TAFT@MARSHALL.EDU>
        Date:   Friday, 23 Apr 1999 12:01:18 -0400 (EDT)
        Subj:   Henry

[2]     From:   Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Friday, 23 Apr 1999 09:12:06 +0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.0723 Re: Henry

[3]     From:   Dana Wilson <dana_wilson@yahoo.com>
        Date:   Friday, 23 Apr 1999 09:19:41 -0700 (PDT)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.0723 Re: Henry


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Ed Taft <TAFT@MARSHALL.EDU>
Date:           Friday, 23 Apr 1999 12:01:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject:        Henry

Peter Hadorn writes that "Shakespeare removes all the military strategy
and any actual fighting. The effect is to make Henry's victory seem
providential." I see what Peter means, here, but I wonder if in fact
Shakespeare gives his audience a choice: we can think that God was on
Henry's side if we wish, OR we can ascribe the victory to (1) Henry's
clear strategy of banking of the overconfidence of the French and (2)
the power of his rhetoric before battle ("We few, we happy few"). Isn't
Henry's use of psychology the main reason why he wins, at least in the
play?

--Ed Taft

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Friday, 23 Apr 1999 09:12:06 +0000
Subject: 10.0723 Re: Henry
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.0723 Re: Henry

Dear Peter,

Thanks for your expansion on your earlier message to this list.  And, to
begin with, I would agree with your point that religion is often used in
the play, as a means of lending metaphysical sanction to human
activities.  I take it that this is what you mean by "mystification", a
term which, if memory serves, originates in the work of Marx as a
totalizing explanation for all religion everywhere as the opiate of some
class or other in the service of some other class.  Would I be correct
in paraphrasing you by saying that while the efforts at mystification by
the characters in the play seem to fail, they're superceded by such
efforts on the part of the author?  Thus, while Henry's material,
political motives are unveiled, in a familiar materialist move, the
author's own political motives are re-covered by making God fight on the
side of the English.  Henry may be a politician, even in the Elizabethan
sense expounded so long ago by Mario Praz, but the English victory can
still be Providential.

The problem, in my humble opinion, is that the self-righteous certainty
which mystification provides is the very opposite of the Anfechtungen
which Luther describes.  The last part of your quotation from Kelly
seems to support this: "Shakespeare . . .  completely dramatized the
characters, and so eliminated all the purportedly objective providential
judgments made by the histories upon historical characters, the kind of
reflection which would be valid or pertinent only if made by God
himself."  (304-05)

Only God can provide grace, and grace is by definition unearned.  For
characters to try earning it by good works, sacred crusades or in
Henry's case, building chapels, is hopeless. Declaring oneself forbidden
merely avoids the angst which accompanies sin, and leads to ever-greater
self-righteousness.  It would, moreover, be a political gesture in every
meaning of the term, invoking the divine only as a transcendent sanction
for one's material motives, and using this sanction to justify oneself
(!) both to oneself and to those around you.  Recognizing oneself to
have been blessed, on the other hand, would be a humbling experience,
reinforcing one's own sinfulness and helplessness-"nakedness", Luther
would say.  The self-effacement of Henry's refusal to take credit for
the victory, seems much more in keeping with the humility by which a
sinner accepts grace, than with the self-aggrandizement
(self-fashioning?) by which the self-righteous mystify their selfish
motives and aspirations.

In my mind, the play doesn't first demystify and then remystify.  On the
contrary, it removes the comforting metaphysics of a Christian,
providentialist universe, in order to renovate the existential and
ethical crisis central to the experience of faith, sinfulness and
forgiveness.  This is what I take Rudolf Bultmann to mean by
"demythologizing" in his famous essay.

I hope that I've been reasonably clear.  Thanks again for your note.

Cheers,
Seán.

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Dana Wilson <dana_wilson@yahoo.com>
Date:           Friday, 23 Apr 1999 09:19:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 10.0723 Re: Henry
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.0723 Re: Henry

I am new to the forum and I am coming in medias res as it were to this
thread; though, I am moved to reply to Taft, Hadorn, and Weiss.

In H5, following the battle of Agincourt, Harry says give credit for
this victory to none but god.

I am working on a theme comparing Harry's victory to that of Gideon.  I
think Harry's remark, in Act IV, sc iii, to "give passport and ducets
for transport to any who fears to die in his company" echoes of Gideon's
decision to send away 19 in 20 of every men who applied to fight with
him.

This interest lead me to consider the archetype of Gideon's trumpet.  In
Act IV, sc ii, I read "blow on them. The vapours of valour will
overturn...sound the trumpets".  Later in the same scene, Bourbon
remarks that before such a tatter bankrupt host he holds the field only
for his colors.  He says the only booty he can expect, or indeed desire,
is the banner from a trumpet.

I am spinning in my mind an argument by which to connect the archetype
of Gideon's trumpet with the French word "tromperies".  In Act V, sc ii,
Katherine says "les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies".
Taking the french, "tromperies" to be one of shakespeare's word-plays,
it could be connected and add evidence to the arguments of the French as
effette in their finery or trumpery.

Peter Hadorn draws attention to Harry's statement "O god, thy arm was
here," for me this line refers to an arcane type of religious dialectic
which Shakespeare may have known.  This dialectic taught in the
universities proceeds from two contradictory statements, "God is
everything that can be known" and "God is nothing that can be known".
>From this base, scholastics would try to logically determine whether god could be excluded from having hands or feet, &c.. The good book explicitly states that god has both a face and an ass, and other body parts are implied, as for instance ears and eyes as god is said to be able to hear prayers and see need.  As a fact, our American Mormons claim in their book of Aethyr that God has, not only a finger, but a whole arm.  I suppose they might take Henry's words to mean that a living god walked in the flesh among the lines of Agincourt on St.  Cripin's day.

My own opinion is that the glove-gage exchanged by Harry and Bates is
the key to understanding the lop-sided English victory.  Bates tells
Harry that his words are treasonable and he has as good as hung
himself.  This has caused me to speculate whether this living god wasn't
in fact the avatar of some miraculous intelligence.

In Act V, sc i, Glower says to Fluellen, "I have seen you glecking and
galling at this gentleman twice or thrice, you think because he can't
speak English, he can not handle an English cudgel".  Without stage
direction it is impossible to be certain who "this gentleman" is.  On my
reading, he is a Welshman who literally cannot speak English.  If so, is
it so far fetched to imagine that he was actually a French spy and at
Fluellen, the clown, has mistaken French for Cornish or Welsh?  I find
some evidence for this definition of "divine intelligence" in Act IV,
sci.  The exchange between Henry and Pistol about the factionalism
between Cornish and Welsh, officer and popular is suggestive, to say
nothing of intriguing.

Yours in the work,
Dana E. Wilson


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