HENRY V
ENTER PROLOGUE.
All modern editions head this opening scene as “Prologue. Enter Chorus.” The First Folio omits the word chorus. In the four subsequent acts, “enter chorus” is used.
CHORUS.
Admit me Chorus to this history.
In ancient Greek plays the chorus consisted of several performers, but in Shakespeare’s time the number is reduced to a single personage, who enters before the beginning of a play and explains or comments upon different events which are to follow in course of the narrative. In reality, he serves the same purpose as the speaker of the prologue. In other passages the word is used as synonymous with prologue, but in this quotation the word bears the original meaning as applied to Attic tragedy, in which the chorus, chanting the choral odes, passed in review the episodes which had taken place upon the stage, and also prepared the audience for scenes which were to follow. The tragic chorus of a Greek play numbered fifteen members, who entered the orchestra (dancing place) three abreast. Between the acts they recited choral odes, accompanied by a dance movement. In the dialogue between the chorus and the actors, only the coryphæus, the leader of the chorus, acted as spokesman.
MORRIS DANCE.
Therefore I say ’tis meet we all go forth
To view the sick and feeble parts of France,
And let us do it with no show of fear;
No, with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun Morris Dance.
II, 4, 25.
The Morris Dance was a popular element in the village May games, and, although with no literary associations, it may claim equal popularity with the dumb-shows and motion plays of the sixteenth century. A painted window at Betley, in Staffordshire, has a representation of these village dances, which include six Morris dancers, with a Maypole, a musician, a fool, a crowned man on a hobby horse, a crowned lady with a flower in her hand, and a friar. This window dates from the reign of Edward III. Sometimes, included amongst the dancers, was a dragon, and, no doubt, the rider of the hobby-horse personated St. George. A reference to the hobby-horse occurs in “Hamlet,” where Hamlet exclaims, “O for the hobby-horse is forgot,” referring to the omission of that living property from the show, which was fast becoming obsolete at the end of the sixteenth century. The Morris Dance proper consisted of six personages, each dancer wearing a broad garter below the knee. There are two sets of figures: in one handkerchiefs are carried, in the other short staves are swung and clashed. Sometimes the dancers sing to the air of an old country dance. There is always a fool, who carries a stick with a bladder and a cow’s tail. The music is that of a pipe and tabor, played by one man. The name is a corruption of “Moorish,” and is immediately derived from the Flemish “morriske dans.” The reason for this name is that the performers blacked their faces, but whether they derived the name because of their Moorish appearance or dressed up to represent Moors is undecided.
CUE.
Now we speak upon our cue. And our voice is imperial.
ACT. SCENE. STAGE.
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Prologue, line 3.
PLAY.
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.
Prologue, line 34.
Linger your patience on, and we’ll digest
The abuse of distance; force a play.
Prologue II, line 32.
For if we may, we’ll not offend one stomach with our play.
Prologue II, line 40.
Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring devil i’ the old play, that every one may pare his nails with a wooden dagger.
IV, 4, 73.
The devil was supposed to keep his nails unpared from choice, and therefore to pare them was considered an insult. The character of the “Devil” was a feature from the old Miracle and Morality plays.
Edward the Black Prince
Who on French ground play’d a tragedy.
I, 2, 106.
PLAYHOUSE.
There is the playhouse now, there must you sit.
Prologue II, line 36.
PROLOGUE.
ENTER PROLOGUE. PROLOGUE I.
Prologue, like your humble patience pray.
Prologue I, line 33.
SCENE.
The scene
Is now transported, gentles,
To Southampton.
Prologue II, 34.
Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.
Prologue II, line
Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought.
Prologue II, line 1.
And so our scene must to the battle fly.
Prologue IV, line 48.
STAGE.
A kingdom for a stage.
Prologue I, line 3.
Which oft our stage hath shown.
Epilogue, line 13.
PROMPT.
Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story
That I may prompt them.
Prologue V, line 2.
THIS WOODEN O. SCAFFOLD. COCKPIT.
O, for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention;
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene,
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the part of Mars; and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles, all
The flat, unraised spirits that hath dar’d
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object; can this cockpit hold
The vasting fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
SCAFFOLD.
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth.
In mediæval times the ecclesiastical plays were usually performed in churches or chapels upon temporary scaffolds erected for that purpose. The term survived even to the seventeenth century in the sense of a platform, or stage, on which theatrical performances took place. This is the only instance in which Shakespeare uses the word.
COCKPIT.
The name applied to a theatre and the pit of a theatre, deriving its name from a pit or enclosed area usually of a round formation in which gamecocks are set to fight for sport.
THIS WOODEN O.
All the early Elizabethan theatres were constructed in a circular or octagonal shape. An uncertainty prevails as regards the theatre intended. Quite possibly the reference might be to the newly erected Globe, which was opened in the summer of 1599, about the time “Henry V” was written, and was under the management of Shakespeare and his fellow actors belonging to the Lord Chamberlain’s company. Some critics favour the Curtain Theatre, in Shoreditch, as the original house in which “Henry V” was first produced.
HENRY VI
PART I.
This play is of doubtful parentage. Many would ascribe it either singly or in conjunction to Greene, Peele, Marlowe, Nash, and Shakespeare. It appears in the First Folio amongst the collected works of Shakespeare, and for that reason is admitted in the Shakesperean canon of modern editions. There exists grave doubts whether Shakespeare ever wrote a single line of this composition. This play was written as early as 1590, thirty years before Heminge and Condell, the editors of the First Folio, issued their book. Perhaps Shakespeare revised the work of others, and thus it appeared in its latest form under his name. The altering of a play by another hand without acknowledgment did not constitute in those days any literary offence, although at times an author objected to his work being so treated, and was not mealy-mouthed in proclaiming the fact. An excellent instance of this tampering with another’s property can be read in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, 1592, where he denounces Shakespeare in no measured terms “as an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers,” in reference to his treatment of the three parts of “Henry VI.” Greene may have been mistaken in identifying Shakespeare as the author. Every critic understands by the “only Shake-scene in the country” as referring to Shakespeare. The entire question is one of the most difficult problems in Shakesperean studies.
HEAVENS.
Hung be the Heavens with black.
I, 1, 1.
The heavens were part of the stage buildings. It was built over the stage in shape of a sloping roof. The stage being open to the sky, it protected the actors against the inclemency of the weather, and also acted as a sounding board. An illustration of the “heavens” can be seen in De Witt’s drawing of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596. Contemporary documents prove that all the theatres were provided with this necessary commodity. Cotgrave, in his French and English Dictionary, 1611, has under the word “volerie,” a robbery, also a place over a stage, which we call the Heaven. In Hatzfeld and Darmsteter’s Modern French Dictionary there is no reference to such a meaning as given by Cotgrave, but under the word “volet” one definition is given as a kind of shutter before a window.
Hung be the Heavens with black.
I, 1, 1.
When a tragedy was played, the stage was draped with black; many references to this custom are found in contemporary authors. In Sidney’s Arcadia, 1598: “There arose even with the sun a veil of dark clouds, before his face, had blacked all over the face of heaven, preparing as it were a mournful stage for a tragedy to be played on.” In Marston’s The Insatiate Countess: “The stage of heaven is hung with solemn black. A time best fitting to act tragedies,” and in A Warning for Faire Women, 1599: “The stage is hung with black, and I perceive the auditors prepared for Tragedy.”
PLAYED. PART.
Pucelle hath bravely play’d her part in this
And doth deserve a coronet of gold.
III, 3, 88.
MASQUERS. REVEL.
Tell false Edward, thy supposed king,
That Lewis of France is sending over masquers
To revel it with him and his new bride.
III, 3, 224.
This passage is repeated in IV, I, 94:
At my depart these were his very words:
“Go tell false Edward, thy supposed king,
That Lewis of France is sending over masquers
To revel it with him and his new bride.”
Masquers were those performers who took part in a masque. As a rule they were gorgeously costumed. The performers were chiefly chosen for their agility and grace in dancing. In later years a dialogue was added to the masque, which the masquers took part in.
There are no theatrical allusions either in Part II or Part III of “Henry VI.”