22. Marks 600 years since the death of Henry V

A plantagenet, a member of the House of Lancaster, Henry V ruled England and Ireland between 1413 and 1422.

He is perhaps best known for his military success during the Hundred Years War against France, and in particular for his victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

But because this is not just the tutors, we aren't here to talk about King Henry himself, but about Shakespeare's eponymous play,

which tells the period of Henry's life that sees his rise to power and includes his momentous victory at Agincourt.

Today I'll be talking to Duncan Salkard, a meritor's professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance literature at the University of Chichester,

author of Madness and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare, Shakespeare among the Coulter's Ends and Shakespeare in London.

He's a literary scholar who uses a historic approach to not only investigate Shakespeare's work, but the nature of his world.

And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll remember his wonderful episode with me on the London Prison of Bridewell.

If you haven't heard that, search back for it. It's fabulous.

Also joining me today is Alice Smith, a theatre historian whose research looks at the often overlooked roles of women in the establishment and success of the early modern stage.

Alice was a brilliant MA student of mine and of Duncan's, who won a fully funded place at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham to do her PhD, and I'm delighted that she joins us too.

Well, it is an absolute treat to see you both. First of all, for those who are unfamiliar with Henry V's by Shakespeare, we haven't seen it for a while. Could you remind us about it? Tell us about the major characters, what happens?

Well, the play is the fourth, the last in a series of plays that began with Richard II, which he started writing in about 1595.

Henry V is a play written around about early 1599. He's covered Richard II, then Henry IV, Henry IV, and Henry IV II.

Henry V, who is in the previous plays, a young Rascal Rapskallion, who gets involved in all kinds of shenanigans and escapades, and is rather a scurrilous figure, in fact his father feels incredibly let down by his son.

Henry V is a play about reformation, it's about this young Rapskallion being a reformed character, and he is in Act I manipulated by the bishops of Canterbury and Ely to go to war in France.

The reason why he's being manipulated is because something a bit like the dissolution of the monasteries has been proposed by Henry IV, who's now dead, and if Henry V makes good on that, then the church loses a huge amount of land and estate.

Henry is going to go to war, and he's completely committed to this idea throughout the play, almost religiously so.

One of the things about this play is it's about kingship, it's about warfare, it's about invasion, it's about masculinity, but it's also a play about consciousness and thinking.

Henry V is committed all the way through to this objective of winning back lands that he's been persuaded to think, that he has some entitlement to the throne of France, going way back through the generations to Edward III.

In Act II we moved to Southampton, in Act III we were in the fields of Normandy, and the Battle of Agincourt takes place in Act IV, and interspersed with Henry's rather heroic speeches are scenes with ordinary English folk, who are kind of low level characters, and oddly they spend most of their time squabbling on fighting, and they're not particularly appealing either.

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