Work, work your thoughts

« Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more ! » : Harry of England's rallying cry has never ceased to resonate with forceful energy to the ears of spectators far beyond the backdrop of the Anglo-French Hundred Years'War. The climax of Shakespeare's two tetralogies, which also coincided with the opening of the newly-built Globe theatre in the summer of 1599, Henry V has galvanized its audiences with its vibrant chorus and its war scenes alike, while also exploring the heroic self-fashioning of a Christian king who may or may not be the noble soul that he aspires to be.

Henry V has often been regarded as a patriotic work. Yet for all its emphasis on camaraderie, honour, power and 'vasty' ambition, Shakespeare's history play resounds with the heart-rending echoes of personal loss and political division. Its compelling rhetoric, its ambivalent treatment of warfare, and its blend of humour and violence together with the complex socio-political issues at work, account for its global popularity in a post-Brexit world, on 'unworthy scaffold[s]' as much as on the Hollywood screen.

Following the recent inclusion of Henry V in the Agrégation syllabus in France (2021-2022), this volume seeks to provide new perspectives on the play and to question a variety of issues relating to politics, cultural representations, gender, class, aesthetics, materiality, and adaptation. Its four parts highlight the richness of the play and reflect recent critical trends in early modern drama studies.