#henry v

[heartofstanding]

computer show me henry v bloody

computer show me henry v covered in blood

computer show me henry v completely and utterly drenched in blood

[ludovicus-ichabod]

[ludovicus-ichabod]

[ludovicus-ichabod]

Prince Hal 👑

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Just Shakespeare shower thoughts.

Ok, SO: If you're going to do the tennis ball joke from Henry V onstage, I think you play it one of two ways. The first way, you have exactly two tennis balls delivered to Henry. It becomes a way for the Dauphin to literally say, "you're so little a man and so little a king that not only am I happy to hand you your own pathetic excuses for testicles, but then I will then give them a gentle tap with my tennis racquet and you will be completely and utterly destroyed." This then gives Henry the opportunity to fire back with, "oh, that's funny. Wait till you see the big brass gunstones that drag the ground when I walk. And just because you were such a dick about this, I will use them to utterly destroy France." The visual jokes, of course, write themselves, particularly if your actor has a viciously funny comedic edge. Hell, give Henry a Mao table with little figurines and have him yeet one of the balls at the French figures (bonus points if they somehow low-key explode when hit).

The second way is less about the masculinity of the respective royals' man bits and more about the heel-face-turn from farce to horror. In this method, you have just a STUPID number of tennis balls be delivered. I'm talking baskets. Bushels. Bins. Bags. So, so many fucking tennis balls. The Dauphin is no longer the crown prince of France, he's a guy in a math problem who invested way, way too much time time money in this joke. I want so many tennis balls onstage that it is a goddamn HAZARD. I want people finding tennis balls in their pockets like, "wait how the fuck did this get here!?" I want them to run out of space on every surface and start putting them on the floor. I want Henry to stand up from his goddamn throne and have someone put a basket of tennis balls on it so he can't sit back down. Every. Tennis. Ball.

And then. And then when Henry digs into that speech and turns those balls to gunstones, it's no longer your bitter ex-boyfriend taking revenge in the weirdest way possible, it's an arsenal of every cannonball that Henry is going to rain down on France. It is wrath raining death and destruction down on an enemy nation and because you can SEE the scale, it stops being funny real quick and becomes the ominous herald of the war to come.

And wither way you do it, I think you also have Henry just ALWAYS be fidgeting with a tennis ball for the rest of the play. Lord Scroop betrayed him? Yeet a tennis ball in fury. Have to hang Bardloph? Roll that ball between your palms or squeeze it till your knuckles go white. Talking to your men in disguise the night before the battle? Build rapport with that goddamn tennis ball. Trying to woo Katherine? Juggle that tennis ball, baby!

Anything to keep in the forefront of Henry's and the audience's mind that that is where it started. A joke taken seriously that ended in the death of traitors, innocent boys, and way too many soldiers.

[paintingsandhistory]

King Henry V

Artist: Unknown Artist

Date: Late 16th century

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Henry V of England

Henry V (11386 – 1422), also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine from 1413 until his death in 1422.

Did you know? Henry V was the first king of England since the Norman invasion to use English as his primary language. His predecessors had all preferred French.

On October 25, 1415, an English army of 6,000 defeated a 20,000-strong French force against all odds. Playwright William Shakespeare immortalized the scene, giving Henry a stirring speech to his men.

The king won a series of victories in France, capturing Caen and Rouen, and in 1420, under the Treaty of Troyes, married Catherine, daughter of French king Charles Vi, was made French regent, and was recognized as heir to the French throne.

He had proven himself a great warrior during a raucous youth in which, as a teenage Prince of Wales, he led the battle against Welsh rebel Owain Glyndwr, and was involved in ambushes, a midnight fight in a London tavern, and practical jokes at court.

He famously put all his pranks behind him on becoming King - and even declared that none of his former friends could come within ten miles of him. Posed to unite the English and French thrones, he died at only thirty-five of dysentery contracted in the siege of Meaux, near France.

[une-sanz-pluis]

Both Henry’s concern with the secrecy of his correspondence and the limited knowledge of the vernacular on the continent are evident in the capture and treatment of Raoul le Gay, a twenty-eight-year-old French priest, during the Agincourt campaign of 1415. Le Gay was captured on 16 August by seven English scouts, who evidently thought that they had caught a spy. Nevertheless, they were unable to converse with him, since they knew no French and he no English. Two days later, a young Englishman was able to talk to le Gay in Latin. However, when the young man turned to speak to le Gay’s guards in the vernacular, the only word that the le Gay could understand was ‘drinch’. Thereafter, le Gay was taken to the earl of Dorset, who questioned him in French. On 27 August, le Gay was then passed on to Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, who two days later gave him a letter in Latin to take to Jean Fusoris, an astrologer in Paris. The letter told Fusoris that the English had landed with 50,000 men and sufficient victuals to sustain a six-month siege of Harfleur, adding that Fusoris was not to mention his own or Courtenay’s name in his reply, as the matter was a secret from everyone except the king, ‘who is most discreet, as you know’. However, le Gay was an ineffective agent, and was caught by the French on the following day in Montivilliers, where they realised that he was carrying secret correspondence for Fusoris. Accordingly, Fusoris was arrested on 6 September, thrown into the gaol at Little Chatelet, and the next day charged with high treason. On 18 September, an official was dispatched to bring le Gay himself to Paris, where he was imprisoned for three months, and examined on 14 and 21 December. The whole episode reveals Henry’s belief in the importance of secrecy and discretion; the inability of Latin to provide that secrecy, since Courtenay’s letter to Fusoris was easily read when intercepted; and the seriousness of indiscretion’s consequences, with English agents being imprisoned.

Samuel Lane, "The Adoption of the English Language by Henry V", The Fifteenth Century XX (The Boydell Press 2024)

[linkloki]

After finishing The Prince, I'm glad to inform y'all-

Hal, Henry V, our beloved boy, is the platonic ideal of machiavellianism. In any production set after 1532, that is his favorite book.

Henry Bolingbroke is very much not a machiavellian. He has a very different political philosophy, that, let's be real, worked for him better than most other kings in the saga. Would he be better off if he followed some of Machiavelli's advice? Sure, but he wouldn't because he's not that person.

Niccolo Machiavelli would consider Richard III extremely stupid. Dick 3 is just an ass and that doesn't make him Machiavellian. He and Machiavelli excited toguther on earth for 16 years and the fact that they didn't get into a fistfight during that time is solely due to geography.