My Goodreads Review of Henry V by William Shakespeare

This is one of my better early reviews and a Shakespeare one to boot! I was always hit-or-miss with these early reviews, but this one came out well-enough.

Henry V by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

We are often told war is hell, in this play Shakespeare shows us it is cruel too. While you would do good to have some background info on the actual people being portrayed blah, blah, blah, you also would do good with a little guide of Shakespeare's last historical plays Henry IV, Part 1 & Henry IV, Part 2. But even without it you would never the less see how torturous a campaign as Henry V's into France was. This is one of the Bard's better war plays mainly because he is doing it for his patrons the court of Elizabeth I and because it was not as far past as it was now. It would be something akin to the American Civil War in distance and as Henry V of Lancaster was thought to be a direct (dynasty-wise) ancestor of the Tudors this put a real source of patriotic pride in the play.

Henry, who was unruly in his youth, was found to be a very determined, steely, and pragmatic commander-in-chief and he ruthlessly enforced discipline in his small, disorganized, but fanatically determined army.

The French had the advantage of a better organized and armed military, home-field advantage, and well earned degree of confidence. What they did not have was Henry V and they would pay dearly for that.

Like many a Shakespeare play if you do not pay attention closely you miss the subtle contemplations and debates on the ethics of such things as war, will, even if Henry truly has the right and divine grace to challenge for the French crown

"But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy
reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp'd
off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all,
"We died at such a place"; some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the
debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard
there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument?
Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter
for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against
all proportion of subjection."
(And this is his own army asking these questions and making these statements. I never cease to admire a Shakespeare play for that.)

The Battle of Agincourt is the centerpiece of the play. After a soul-rousing speech reminding everyone that the day itself is a feast day (a day of commemoration of a particular saint i.e. St. Valentine, St. Patrick and is usually the day that person died) of saints Crispin and Crispinian and bringing home the point that if they die it will be for country, but he would not ask for even one more man to fight with him and if they DO survive generations will read (and watch) of their heroics on the day not to mention bragging rights and showing up those who were not there (truly awesome speech). He has the whole of the English Army ready for battle. The battle is a hellish and nasty one as per the rules of a 15th century battle and every violation of a rule of war and human rights is very meticulously broken,
"Kill the poys [young boys who accompanied armies in those times] and the luggage! 'Tis expressly against the
law of arms. 'Tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now,
as can be offer't; in your conscience, now, is it not?"
They win miraculously, in part because of the over-powering use of long bows (something they can thank William Wallace for) and a peace treaty that gives the French king's daughter to Henry and makes his heir King of France (spoiler alert it doesn't happen that way thanks to his death, his son's folly, the War of The Roses, and a woman named Joan of Arc).

In hindsight this could be viewed as a tragedy because despite all this hard work, despite all the effort, in-the-end England will never conquer all of France, and the Norman conquest will always dwell in the collective unconscious of the English as the one time (okay second if you include the Romans...) a country subjugated Britain and they never avenged (and no, sports and singing contests do not count nor does D-Day). So, I couldn't help but feel a little bit of pity, as I'm sure the contemporary audience did, for the after knowledge that all of these gains will be wasted by the War Of The Roses, which Shakespeare covered in Henry VI, Part 1.

For reference the visual adaption I saw was Kenneth Branagh's 1989 version so yeah...the battle scene was quite brutal. This movie adaption is a pretty close second for most bloodiest and grittiest adaption of a Shakespeare play in my opinion (with Akira Kurosawa's Ran coming at number one).

View all my reviews

My Review of Henry V (1989) directed by Kenneth Branagh

Mars touches France

This play adapts the last of William Shakespeare's plays on the Wars of the Roses and the Henriad. This is also the first feature film directed by one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of all time Kenneth Branagh. After years acting and directing at the Royal Shakespeare Company, he finally got his way to Hollywood on the start of his run of Shakespeare films. He uses this star-studded cast to tell the story of Henry V using scenes from Henry IV, part 1 & Henry IV part 2 (both which had been adapted by the BBC Television Shakespeare and would be adapted again by the BBC for their Hallow Crown series). This was the first major adaptation of the play since Laurence Olivier's WWII era pro-war adaptation.

This movie comes at the end of the Cold War and unlike Olivier's adaptation is of a distinct anti-war character. We begin the play with the decision and scheme to lay claim to more French land as we were still in the middle of the 100 Years War between England and France. This movie covers England's greatest success in the war (Shakespeare's first and second plays covers England losing that war). It is not an easy victory and it seems every step forward the English make is at great cost and the movie is always questioning and interrogating if this was all worth it in a way that Olivier did not dare do in 1944. Even the climactic St Crispin's Day Speech is delivered by Branagh (playing King Henry) with a sorrow and exhaustion that even the triumphal background music could not hide (this was that late80s-90s era of Hollywood movies being afraid of any scene not having incidental music). The speech made the night before the St Crispin's Day Speech by a soldier to King Henry is the one that I think about a lot: "But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp'd off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, "We died at such a place"; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection." 

One has to be truly amazed at this movie. Shakespeare films marketed towards a wide audience are always risky (as Branagh himself would find out in his latter Shakespeare adaptations), but Branagh nails it here and it would do to great acclaim in the the early to mid 1990s. This play is near the same level as Ran (1985) in the depiction of war in a Shakespeare movie adaptation—Edwin Starr would certainly agree that war is as brutal. The fact is, you can't call yourself a Shakespeare movie fan if you have not yet seen this movie yet.

Shakespeare and Me

Long before I became the bibliophile I am today, I was a young black kid in Prince George's County, Maryland. I was good at reading but was not doing it actively and I was at that age very much into black literature and simply ignored white literature (something that was easy to do in 1990s to early 2000s). Towards the end of my 8th grade year, I read Ralph Ellison and became an official book-reader/book-lover. When I was in high school I started to read books with purpose and read white writers, but I still had little patience for one specific white writer.

For most of my life, the mainstream (i.e. white) culture has pushed Shakespeare in the academy, institution, and pop-culture as the paradigm of institutional power of letters in the Western world. Because of this, I was not encouraged to like him on my terms and like many black people I felt Shakespeare irrelevant to my experience because of how he'd been taught to me throughout my grade school life. I knew the story and the plots and famous quotes of R&J, Hamlet, and Macbeth, but I felt like none of it spoke to me the world I lived in and witnessed. I was still under the mis-teaching of the institutions that taught this (hat-tip to James Loewen).

It was when I got to university that things changed. In between and after classes I use to go to the library because it was quiet, had one of the best bathrooms at the school, and the nicest building. It was a rainy day so I decided (I can't remember why) to watch an adaption of Hamlet that was on YouTube (this was when you could still post movies there) starring Mel Gibson. It entertained me enough, but I realized it was an abridged adaptation. I tracked down the full adaptation by Kenneth Branagh and it knocked the hell outta me. From that point on I knew I would have to really get into Shakespeare on a totally different level and this marked my start.

I had to re-evaluate what I had read before and now look with new eyes on the rest. When I could read and watch these plays for myself, it changed everything. I heard the lyrics and saw the story of people living and dying like folks around my way. I understood that the humanity in Shakespeare and the humanity of the people I knew were not distant at all. The ability to show the great and mighty as regular-ass folks who worry and are as vulgar as we are is one of the great strengths of Shakespeare, but there is more...

His use of language and poetics is what really gets me. He can tell dirty jokes and contemplate all of existence in back to back lines. Shakespeare made iambic pentameter the default verse of the English language and literally invented words that we all use till this day. The influence on all of our favorite writers from him is absolute. He not only showed us he instructed us.  I can go on (will probably have more to say on this), but let me turn it over to another convert to Shakespeare, James Baldwin:

  "The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. He could have done this only through love —by knowing, which is not the same thing as understanding, that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him. It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it —no time can be easy if one is living through it.I think it is simply that he walked his streets and saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that connection. And, though I, and many of us, have bitterly bewailed (and will again) the lot of an American writer —to be part of a people who have ears to hear and hear not, who have eyes to see and see not —I am sure that Shakespeare did the same. Only, he saw, as I think we must, that the people who produce the poet are not responsible to him: he is responsible to them.

 That is why he is called a poet. And his responsibility, which is also his joy and his strength and his life, is to defeat all labels and complicate all battles by insisting on the human riddle, to bear witness, as long as breath is in him, to that mighty, unnameable, transfiguring force which lives in the soul of man, and to aspire to do his work so well that when the breath has left him, the people —all people! —who search in the rubble for a sign or a witness will be able to find him there."

My Goodreads Review of Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

[February 2020]I'm looking back on this old review of mine from many eons ago. This was me when I first started trying to review books "seriously," but it is obvious my craft for literary criticism was not on the same level as my ambition. I am not a big fan of going through my old reviews because of how raw I was and how much it makes me cringe. Me leaving my 20s would write this review of one of my favorite works of literature very differently than the me below who was entering his 20s. I only go through old reviews for proofreading purposes (I was and remain, sadly, a terrible editor of my work) or if they are really good. Most of what I was writing on Goodreads at age 22 was really not good. I am preserving most of it to show how far my growth has come.


From November 2012:
(Well it is the weekend and I have nothing to do so it is time I finally get around to reviewing "the big one")

I think all of us has a favorite Shakespeare play. Often, we consider said play to also be considered the best of his plays hands-down. I usually take such claims with the typical grain of salt because I know the subjectiveness that even the most objective fan can have.
But I will make a confession, I am no better than any of these people and when asked of the best the Bard had to offer I will gladly point to his epic about The Prince of Denmark. Now I will have to argue why I think this is, objectively speaking, the best Shakespeare play ever made.

This is the magnum opus of the stage, in my opinion, simply because every human experience can be found or at some level understood through this play. Now I could list other things that make this play great, but you can easily find those things in all of Shakespeare's plays, good and bad. Because this is a tragedy you will find that all but one person will be left standing, no "good" character that is not a simple sidekick will be spared, women (evil or otherwise) are screwed, young people are screwed, and all evil/asshole characters will be punished only after destroying the "heroic" character...this is all typical Shakespeare. As standard of all long-form Shakespeare plays (this being the longest) we will have the majority of characters giving standard to extended length monologues/soliloquies which shed light on their psychological/mental being, there will be sizable amounts of named incidental characters that you could easily write-out without destroying the overall plot (this play has two of the most famous of those characters), a central theme is being expressed outright or is being hidden below the surface of a more than-acceptable theme, meta-allusions to the art of the theater, and as is standard in all Shakespeare plays dirty jokes (i.e. dick/vagina) abound and are at least a fourth of the dialogue in Hamlet overall. These things are to be expected in every Shakespeare play and I can almost guess the plot to any of his plays by looking out for these and similar attributes that his work has.

But what makes this play stand out is how I never can stop finding new things in it. I can view this play happy, sad, neutral, and otherwise and I still see something new that I could not see before; it is the closes we may have to a modern "revealed" text. I feel that almost every character in this play is in the world we live in right now. And every age can be found in this play.

Of late, I have gotten into the habit of quoting dialogue or verse in my reviews to demonstrate or dissect the work that I am reviewing. But how do I do that here, in a play in which the dialogue and parts of the work are known by heart to people who have maybe never even heard of Shakespeare or at least never heard of Hamlet. Even if that were not the case I find that no matter what page of dialogue I turn to, I do not know what to use. So if I have the very unpleasant choice of picking a "favorite" line of dialogue from this play...alas it can't be done. If I try to fit one quote I will have to fit all quotes! So this review sort of breaks the trend of quoting within a review for me.

One also notices that I have talked of this play but not about it. This is related to my above difficulty with picking quotes for the play. I am not afraid of spoiling this play but I don't feel that my feeble mind can do it justice [right now] and my love for it is so that if I can't raise it up completely I will let the play speak for itself and simply say SEE IT, if you have not seen it keep reading this review until I have made my recommendations than immediately get off of goodreads and WATCH IT. You can have text to follow along with it, but this play has to be watched and then, as I have, find the text that is most suited for you and go into the play again.

Now forgive me but I will cheat in this section by simply posting some of my post from the Shakespeare group that I belong in to advise on the versions of the play I saw and then in the next paragraph I will talk about the book/script of this play that I posses.

"...I first sought it out when I first went to college. I saw the adaption with Mel Gibson available on the internet and while the story had me intrigued I went ahead and did research, etc. and found out that it was an abridged adaptation. So I did next logical thing and brought the Kenneth Branagh version which is the complete unabridged one, which for me was 4 hours of awesome." Now to help qualify and expand on my quote I would recommend to newcomers to check out the the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2011 adaption with David Tennant than if you want the full unabridged play go ahead with the Kenneth Branagh version. This play has had countless adaptions and interpretations over the centuries.

The book I own is a reprinting of the script used by the RSC and it also comes with not just a detailed study of the play (including scene-by-scene analysis), but a detailed analysis on the history of the various performances of the play and Shakespeare himself (and more!) so you can imagine how excited I was just to find out this book exist but the supplements made this book an early Christmas gift for me(given the low price I was able to get for this book).

In the end I am certain I will see many plays that will captivate my imagination but no play will stay with and in me and through me like this play has.

WATCH THIS PLAY!

View all my reviews