Confused and Concerned

[pukicho]

I love how you created a "pukicho community" with the new feature only to make it invite-only, invite no one, and post two drawings and you saying "heh"

What the fuck is pukicho community

[lipstickhamlet]

people who have only read henry v posting about hal being bisexual because of scroop... people who have only read henry iv posting about hal being bisexual because of ned poins.... we should hold hands. we should unionize

[linkloki]

three generations of fathers, sons, and the inescapable loss of personhood

[lipstickhamlet]

support group in the afterlife for historical figures who were depicted inaccurately by shakespeare and it's henry v complaining he wasn't that bad in his youth, joan of arc disappointed but not surprised by the english, cassius being mad that brutus was called honorable but not him, and king macbethad mac findláech sitting there white knuckled and doing the kubrick stare into space

[linkloki]

Henry VI's plot is basically: for the first time ever! The king is a person! This is very bad news.

[rose--tempest]

shakespeare plays as troubled birds, 1/?

king lear

romeo and juliet

as you like it

1 henry iv

hamlet

henry v

macbeth

the tempest

titus andronicus

taming of the shrew

[heartofstanding]

catherine de valois and henry v + tumblr posts

[orlaite]

Polish poster for Henry V (1944) dir. Laurence Olivier by Jozef Mroszczak

[lipstickhamlet]

every day i get angrier that the hollow crown didn't keep the same actors across multiple plays (what on earth are you doing a continuity-based adaptation for then.) but especially with aumerle, because i would've killed thousands and more to see aumerle standing by richard ii's side throughout his fall then promising 'redemption' in his last appearance after begging henry iv for his life, then returning older and wearier but still unmistakably the same man in henry v to die fighting for hal at agincourt. the reason no production has done this yet is because i would end up on the news.

[une-sanz-pluis]

As many of you probably know, my favourite contemporary image of Henry V is the portrait of him either presenting or receiving Thomas Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes in BL Arundel MS 38. This one:

Well, yesterday @shredsandpatches pointed out to me a fun detail to the right of the illumination. Someone, probably a later reader, sketched Henry's head in the blank space to the right of the portrait.

Can't believe we never noticed that before!🤯

[deamondclaw]

do you ever think about how in the henriad/english histories the power struggles of each play are reflected in the narrative focus on each of the main characters?

like in richard ii there is a pretty equal amount of scenes centred on richard/on bolingbroke. we go back and forth between them and see the same events/lines from both perspectives because the play is about their fight for control of both the narrative and the throne. in henry vi, as power gradually shifts away from the lancasters, the play basically becomes Richard iii the Prequel. henry isn't even dead yet, and after that there are 2 york kings, but we already know who the person with actual power is.

and I think henry iv does it best. bc henry spends almost the entire play accusing hal of usurping him, of plotting to replace him while he's still alive. and while that is mostly henry's paranoia and mistrust of hal talking - most productions of henry iv are based on the idea that the main character of that play is, in fact, hal.

then there's falstaff, who is constantly trying to get himself a better position in life by getting closer to hal and by placing himself at the centre of major political events (like killing percy). basically - fighting to make more of the plot about him. Player Kings w/Ian Mckellen as falstaff decided to actually make falstaff the main character over hal, which changes the themes of the play completely and shows us hal in a very different light. without changing anything in the text - just through theming, music, emotion, emphasis, and staging. and it works so well. because the text is already constructed as a 3-way power struggle between 3 main characters who are all trying to tell you that this play is actually about them and their journey.

meanwhile, no one can argue that plays like henry v, or richard iii, are about anyone other than their namesakes. henry v doesn't randomly feature a ton of scenes about the dauphin, because he doesn't pose an actual threat to hal's control of england or of the narrative. richard iii isn't king until act 4 but he remains the main character throughout - because he has all the power.

I think about that.

[linkloki]

Life hack! If you want to know what brand of "something's wrong" someone is, just ask them who their favorite character in the Henriad is!

There is no way you like any of those people for normal reasons

[chiropteracupola]

there's no rule saying you can't turn medieval kings into magical girls.

[helsinore]

Originally inspired by @fweet-prince, requested to be put on tumblr for @suits-of-woe @sowelimosiwa @lipstickhamlet

The Callout

Post Crab Rave, Babe

Shut Up Boomer (Top 10 Most Tragic Anime Betrayals Right Before Getting Blocked)

[linkloki]

There are so many ways to read Henry V, but one that I've been thinking about a lot lately is focusing on it as a story being constructed around Henry after his death.

Because Hal isn't just dead, he's a dead soldier. (Even if he died after the war was over, we see him as a soldier by the way the story is told.)

There's such a fundamental loss of personhood in that (one that isn't present in just being a soldier), that works so well with the themes of the play. I did, unfortunately, lose some friends to war- and I always found it kinda horrifying watching those stories being created.

They all have to be heroes, of course- what happened in their last moments is truly irrelevant, and that means they have to be soldiers forever. Every flaw is sanded out, every doubt or regret is swept under the carpet. It doesn't matter if they wanted to be there or not, or if they should have, or if they did the right thing. It doesn't matter who they were before either- at least, it's not a part of *this* story, because we aren't talking about the person, we're talking about the hero.

Doesn't that sound kind of familiar when thinking about the Henriad?

So I think it’s very interesting to see HV as an unreliable narrative through that lens. We saw Hal, we know Hal- this story is not about him. Henry V isn't Hal not only because his character made an in-universe choice to change, but also because the story can't let him be.

I think this works especially well when you look at scenes like when Henry commands the killing of the hostages. He does it twice, each time for a different reason- isn't it interesting to think of it as the story blurring as it tries to fit that moment into a heroic narrative?

Idk if it's my favorite reading but I do think it's an interesting way to look at it

[lipstickhamlet]

william shakespeare kind of miku binder jefferson'd henry v if you think about it

[timelordbusiness]

Sobbing, shaking, crying

What do you mean there's no fandom for the Shakespeare play Henry V