Class, warfare

Time and again throughout Shakespeare’s enormous and beloved body of work, problems of class crop up as evidence of the bard’s preoccupation with upper-crust characters and issues of royalty and leadership. Nowhere are the uncomfortable truths of monarchy or Shakespeare’s affiliation with the aristocracy more evident than in the numerous battle sequences of Henry V. Interestingly, despite passages that seem to heroize the titular monarch as a man of the people and as a king conscious of his responsibilities with subjects’ lives, other elements of the play seem to illustrate the fact that leaders can manipulate their soldiers for their own benefit. Often even in those famous speeches which seem intended to illustrate the democratic and altruistic leanings of the monarch does Harry reveal his true values and assessments of his subjects’ worth to him. While the character of Henry V seems constructed as a noble and conscientious king in Shakespeare, at several points his speeches and interactions with his subjects betray the true manipulative and self-serving nature of his leadership.

Of course, surface readings of Shakespeare’s play would have difficulty identifying these tendencies. Albert H. Tolman highlights in his article “Is Shakespeare Aristocratic?” that “[t]he play of Henry V displays a democratic spirit, even though monarchy is the accepted form of government” (290).¹ Shakespeare and Henry V seem quick to defend the king’s decisions to his countrymen, especially in a key sequence in which the monarch himself fraternizes with his soldiers in a disguise. When taken to task by a soldier, Williams, who argues that the king “hath / a heavy reckoning to make” for all the slain and maimed soldiers who march into battle to secure the king’s interests, Henry offers an analogue to rationalize these inequities. Comparing the relationship between king and subject to that between master and servant or father and son, he argues that “The king is not bound to answer [for] the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant, for they purpose not their death when they purpose their services” (4.1.150–153). The argument implies that there is a significant class difference between royalty and their subjects — which, indeed, there was — dramatic enough to negate any wrongdoing on the part of the royalty so long as their intentions were pure. Sending men hopelessly into battle to fight and die for their selfish interests is justifiable if the king does not intend for them to die. Since serving one’s duty to his king and to his country was among the top honor roles such soldiers could aspire to, it stands to reason that such a rationalization might have stood up in a prior age, and that men like Williams might have accepted it.

While “[t]he play emphasizes the courage of the plain soldiers” (291),¹ King Henry’s highlighting the class differences between himself and his subjects is inconsistent when considered alongside his other speeches delivered to motivate those same solders in other scenes. These famous passages aim to emphasize the camaraderie shared between this king and his soldiers, using imagery like friendship (3.1.1) and brotherhood (4.3.60) to falsely lead his soldiers to believe that he perceives them as equals, as friends or as kin. “He is above his soldiers in place,” writes Tolman about the famous Saint Crispin’s Day speech in Act 4, Scene 3, “but one with them in spirit” (291).¹ He assures the soldiers about to risk their lives in his favor that “he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother” (4.3.61–2), and even convinces them of an even more dubious untruth: that their heroism on that day will reverberate across time. When telling how each of them will one day rehash their adventures to neighbors on future feasts of Saint Crispin, he tells them that

[…] Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered (4.3.51–5).

In so doing, he assumes and attempts to manipulate the notion that these everyday, working-class subjects aspire to historical greatness, aspire to having their names recounted in the context of heroism alongside names of existing aristocratic members of the elite. When taken together, both versions of King Henry’s views of his soldiers are contradictory, although aimed in the same motivational direction. For this reason, it can be argued that the king would say just about anything to first drive up the blood of his soldiers in anticipation of a high-stakes battle and, second, to dodge any of their accusations of the royalty taking advantage of them or using them as pawns for personal aims.

While it seems Shakespeare intended to heroize Henry V through his depictions of relationships with everyday soldiers, in effect he achieved a fair amount of the opposite sentiment. The class system divorcing these two segments of society were insurmountable for the lower castes, and Henry both acknowledges the difference and attempts to erase it by assuring his soldiers that, through bravery and honor, they might become his equal. Whether Shakespeare intended this anti-aristocratic result is open to interpretation, but it is most obviously a symptom of the oligarchical society in which the author lived and wrote. It’s doubtful that Shakespeare was attempting to criticize the upper crust with these select passages, and it’s more likely that these were intended as genuinely motivational passages without any altruistic façade in the interest of subsurface manipulation. Having lived in a system wherein the monarchy was still very much an authority figure and having penned dozens of plays — which, if they didn’t glorify the elite, certainly focused on them — it stands to reason that Shakespeare intended to paint a sympathetic and humanitarian portrait of our king Henry V.

Interestingly, these types of speeches from leaders to their subjects and soldiers have had a profound and lasting influence on Western society and can be witnessed in everything from actual political discourse from Washington, D.C. to Hollywood blockbusters concerned with antagonistic alien invasions. Thankfully, modern man is a bit more critical of our leadership and are less susceptible to these same kinds of manipulation when presented as bluntly and plainly as Henry V’s speeches lay them out. However, evidence supports the idea that such rhetorical devices are still at play at the highest levels of our federal government, with the fear-mongering neoconservative agenda at the outset of the century serving as the most notable and relevant example. Here, citizens were pacified with the rationalization that combat was being undertaken in their interest, ostensibly to protect the homeland and prevent further attacks, when in actuality the purposes for war were much closer to the interests of those selfish leaders guiding it. Much like Henry V, leaders the world over attempt to ease the hard pill of war by diverting attention from its motivations or from the non-participation of its instigators by offering misleading and manipulative rationales to a rapt and easily swayed populace. It may seem cynical to say, but King Henry and George W. Bush likely had similar intentions in mind when they offered contradictory and misleading rhetorical arguments for wars which benefited only their interest. Both would probably celebrate the fact that the “few, [the] happy few” in the oligarchy saw their interests prevail on the backs of thousands of their soldiers and countrymen.