Henry V (2 of 3)

[danpaulrose]

This guy is a master... I have had a number of fine Shakespeare masters lecture me while I was lucky enough to have them in my youth.. He reminds me of my late father, who was a Catholic... Well done. L' Chaim. Paul, the singer, gets it... who was my father's best friend while alive? A small Jewish guy from Iowa.

[danpaulrose]

L' Chaim, Paul. He walks it like a Jesuit. Master. Paul is a wizard... no wizard, true wizard, know they are such... that's what makes them special.... this knowledge is special. I love it.

[morrigan]

This is, shall we say, a late comment, but your genealogical discussion around the 29:00 mark is completely wrong. John of Gaunt and Edward the Black Prince were brothers with Edward being the eldest male and John of Gaunt being (I believe) the third eldest surviving male. The Black Prince having predeceased his father, Edward III, his son became Richard II. Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, was the son of John of Gaunt. Thus he was also a grandson of Edward III, albeit from a younger son, and certainly not his nephew.

[patricksullivan]

Henry V was definitely not written around 1599, but much earlier. Late 1583 or very early 1584. There are two clues that are dispositive regarding the date. 1. The Greek Chorus is obviously responding to Philip Sidney's criticism in his monograph, 'In Defence of Poesie' (virtually a line by line refutation of Sidney). Further, Act III, scene 7, which is unnecessary to move the plot of the play along, has a clear mockery of Sidney's obsession with horses and horsemanship. The 'Dolphin' is even shown bragging that he has written a sonnet to his horse. Guess who also wrote a sonnet to his horse; in Astrophel and Stella, #49. Sidney was killed fighting the Spanish in 1586 in the Low Countries, so mocking Sidney would not have been appropriate after that happened.

But the real, clue is the line in the Greek Chorus at the beginning of Act V, when Shakespeare writes:


As, by a lower but by loving likelihood
Were now the general of our gracious empress,
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broachèd on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him!


That's a reference to the Earl of Ormond, Thomas Butler's successful mission to Ireland to put down the rebellion led by the Irish Earl of Desmond. It is definitely NOT a reference to the Earl of Essex's spectacularly failure to do the same in 1598. Butler's Irish allies captured Desmond, behind enemy lines. Not wanting to risk trying to bring him back to their camp safely, they chopped off his head and carried it back, giving Ormond Desmond's head on the point of a sword. Ormond then sent that back to England, with a note of explanation of what had happened. Shakespeare seems to have read that note; 'rebellion broached on his sword' . This took place in November 1583, but Ormond didn't return to England until May 1584. This is one of few pieces of evidence we have for a definitive date of composition of a Shakespeare work.

[jamesduggan]

The professor brings out how Shakespeare expresses the varied duties of he who would be king without underscoring the essential dynamism of a character who risks everything.

[forbeswinthrop]

Dear Dr. Cantor: As I am sure you know, it is inaccurate to conflate French and Norman ancestry as you did around the 26 min mark. I understand that the meaning of such terms as "French" is historically inconstant, but is there not a clear distinction between the ethnic/national provenance of the Normans and those of the French (whose ethnicity was an admixture of Germanic, Celtic, and some Roman remnant)?