Henry’s most remarkable speech in this scene is the plea to God not to take revenge on him for his father’s sin in deposing King Richard II. He lists the various things he has done in an attempt to make amends: reburying Richard’s body in Westminster Abbey, and paying for regular prayers and masses for Richard’s soul. He concludes:
More will I do,
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after ill,
Imploring pardon.
This is perhaps the moment when we see the private man, as opposed to the efficient politician, most clearly. ‘More will I do’: it sounds almost as if he is trying to do a deal with God. That would be typical of the political operator that we have seen in the public scenes; but then there is a strange dying fall, as if Henry feels that all his efforts will be in vain — not the most positive frame of mind to face the confident French at Agincourt. But characteristically he sets such doubts aside, pulls himself together, and concludes: ‘The day, my friends, and all things stay for me.’ He is thus able to inspire the troops with his ‘Crispin day’ speech — and also able, in the midst of battle, ruthlessly to order the killing of the French prisoners (because they have become a military encumbrance). In the next scene, Fluellen discovers that the deserters from the French army have massacred the baggage-boys, ‘wherefore the King most worthily hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner’s throat. O ’tis a gallant King.’ This provides an interesting echo of the tennis balls scene. In fact, the killing of the prisoners happens before the discovery of the killing of the boys; Fluellen, like his King earlier, attributes a subsequent motive to an event that has already taken place.
In Henry’s wooing of the French princess, there is certainly charm and humour, but also an undertow of that practical sense of political realities that Henry always shows. For the Princess of France is ‘our capital demand’; and towards the end of the scene he says that he wants her to ‘prove a good soldier-breeder’: this is surely a tough and unromantic thing to say. Did Kate ‘prove a good soldier-breeder’? In the Epilogue, the Chorus calls Henry ‘this star of England’, but also points out that his son was Henry VI, ‘whose state so many had the managing/That they lost France and made his England bleed’: the marriage of Henry and Kate led eventually to the Wars of the Roses. So it is interesting that even the Chorus ultimately bears witness to the unheroic aspects that we have seen throughout the play: in its closing moments, legendary ideals and practical realities finally come together.
Roger Warren
Designing Henry V
Designing an epic like Henry V could be an assault course. Just when you think you’ve leapt one hurdle there’s then a ditch, then a river and then something nasty round the bend.
In many respects the story is simple: it’s linear, dynamic and serves the central character’s journey — but that’s also a design challenge. How do you make a space that helps the ensemble keep up the pressure, turn the screw, win the day?! Edward Hall and I will spend many a meeting with script and sketchbook and, together, imagine a world that seeks to honour Shakespeare’s intentions but in a contemporary visual language.
We have conceived an interior space, a bunker, a barracks; fortress England, in which the darkest fears and proudest euphoria of a soldier’s imaginings can be shared across a darkened room. Ed and I sit in front of the carefully crafted model of our production’s scenic world…now what? Discussion, debate, speculation, frustration occasionally but with Propeller, always satisfying – call this ‘work’?!
I drew a full sequence of storyboard images that scope the dramatic landmarks of the production before the company rehearse. They can start as doodles in the margins of my script and notes in Ed’s, emerge from our individual copies and become a third, shared vision for the production that we can present and hopefully inspire the ensemble of performers and the team that are Propeller Theatre: to recruit our company.
The scenes change shape through the rehearsal process but the concept seems to hold up. Part-gym-part-parade ground: the designed ‘tool kit’ for the story is tested to the max by the boys in the rehearsal room, itself perhaps a parallel for the retold fable that is England, and tested ‘Once more…’ for the audience.
The key to unlocking this production undoubtedly lies in how we allow the audience to ‘make imaginary puissance’. There are objects in the space that help us to remind the audience that Shakespeare is dealing with ideas first, and immersion second. Take the two punch bags that we’ve placed on either side of the stage, for example. The scene in which Pistol wrangles, beats and torments his French prisoner for a promise of ransom won’t be effective if the audience are asked to witness a stage fight — it won’t be real in any sense. So how does the scenic world help the Propeller ensemble ‘do real’, do violent actions that the audience can stitch together with the dramatic situation? Two masked chorus thrash the punch bags with the full force of baseball bats whilst the characters make actions and reactions without full contact — it’s the audience that piece the two with their imaginings of pain with every thwack.
The creation of women is openly declared, constructed, architectural and, of course, a design opportunity. Princess Katherine has the interval to prepare her image but [with Propeller] in full view of the audience. She applies make up, is bathed, accompanied by the chorus of troops and is presented with her anachronistic late Elizabethan dress — she is dressed for her role politically, poetically and theatrically.
The all-maleness of the company stimulates our collaborative process and makes clearer the onstage game of tag that characterises good ensemble work, a game without the complication of blatant sexual chemistry. Depictions of gender can be reserved and deployed as simply another stylistic idea serving the narrative rather than a sideshow of naturalistic voyeurism.
The audience is constantly reminded that the actors are (very skilfully) pretending — which in turn requires the audience to collaborate in the pretence. The audience is therefore a crucial part of the ensemble. If they can agree to suspend their reality as the actors do and the scenography contextualizes the game, then anything’s possible — leaps in faith, time, space and conventional storytelling logic. I design ‘plastic’ worlds in which this can fluidly happen.
Michael Pavelka
Scale model of the set design
The Process of the Music for Henry V
There are many different types of musical styles in our production of Henry V. What unites them all is the earthy root of thirteen male actors performing it together to create an effect: to communicate something to the audience at a particular time. A Chorus both theatrical and musical. Whether creating an ecclesiastical atmosphere for the first scene between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely, or the lager-fuelled party of Pistol, Nym and Mistress Quickly, the power of having thirteen blokes all singing and moving together is a great storytelling force.
The trick is to harness what we have. We sat around on Day One and established whether anybody could play anything, and then Edward Hall said we needed a Te Deum and Non Nobis. Having played and written for piano and guitar in various shows, I said I’d give it a go. Others pitched in with what they could do. So we ended up in differing parts of the show with tap dance, accordion, saxophone and guitar all pootling away alongside four-part harmony choral singing.
We
