They give us the quality of Henry V; they are full of the spirit of the play. In fact, the play would not be itself without them. To see now how characteristic of Henry V are such passages, think of some extracts from Characterother plays. From Hamlet, for instance: Guildenstern. Prison, my lord! Rosencranz. Then is the world one. istic qualities of plays. Hamlet. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst. Rosencranz. We think not so, my lord. Hamlet. Why then, 't is none to you; for there's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so to me it is a prison. That is characteristic of Hamlet; it gives us character and philosophy; we do not need the proper names to tell us where it comes from. But we have nothing of this in Henry V. To take something from Romeo and Juliet: - It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree : Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. That has the note of passion which is characteristic of Romeo and Juliet, and this is lacking, too, in Henry V. Take something from A Midsummer Night's Dream: And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, That has the fancy and the poetry that we associate with A Midsummer Night's Dream. And finally take something from Henry IV: Falstaff. My lord, the man I know. Prince Henry. I know thou dost. . Falstaff. But to say I know more harm in him than in myself, were to say more than I know. That he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned if to be fat is to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved, etc. : That has the humor of Falstaff and is full of the spirit of the whole piece. Passages like these are characteristic of the plays they come from; they give a taste of their quality. We might almost say there is nothing like them in Henry V; at least the chief characteristic of Henry V is very different from any of them. We have here then a striking characteristic of the poetry of our play. It is rhetorical, declamatory poetry. It is, in the main, spirited, vigorous, sonorous, Character- moving poetry. If it has nothing quite so of Henry V. fine as the finest of Shakespeare's declamatory passages, yet it has much that surely is very fine. istic quality We shall not suppose that Henry V is peculiar in this respect. We have seen that the rhetorical character was a dramatic quality of the time; all plays Rhetorical had something of it. It was particularly quality common to all the histories. common in the historical plays, the chronicles of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It was most natural that this should be the case. These plays were generally meant to present some episode of English history in such a way as would appeal strongly to an English audience. Character, humor, passion, philosophy, charm, these things by the nature of the case could not be the main thing in such plays. The main thing was to appeal to the patriotic pride that in Elizabeth's day ran strong in the heart of every Englishman. And this was to be done, under the circumstances of the theatre, not, as would be the case to-day, with the aid of elaborate costume and scenery, but simply by heightened and ennobled speech. The best of Shakespeare's plays are full of it, but he was not the inventor of it. Marlowe may have the credit-more, at least, than any one else for elaborate theatrical rhetoric, though his chief play, Tamburlaine the Great, is not an English chronicle play. His Edward II is almost as much a declamatory piece as Tamburlaine, though it lacks the long set speeches ; and so is Richard II, in which Shakespeare seems to have been influenced by Marlowe's way of writing. For the purpose of poetic appreciation, however, we need not know whether Shakespeare invented or followed; the main thing is that we should get to know and appreciate the quality which Henry V presents more purely than the other historical plays. Apprecia It is easy, of course, to look through the play, read the elaborate speeches, and recognize their rhetorical character. It may not be so easy to enjoy them. If, however, we would really appreciate the Elizabethan drama, we must get to feel at ton of this home in this rhetorical declamatory world. It will be useful, then, to note the chief examples of this poetic rhetoric and remark what seems most important about each. rhetorical quality. First, for various reasons, may come the so-called choruses. The chorus was a traditional fea The ture in the drama of the Greeks and Romans. Choruses. There it served various purposes, but it was especially a means whereby the dramatist could speak directly to the audience. It was natural, therefore, to use it to give in narrative an account of things that could not well be presented by the actors. It was common also in those plays before Shakespeare which were written with classic models in mind. Thus Gorboduc, written about 1565 by Sackville and Norton, is not unlike a Latin tragedy, and indeed is, in its dramatic character, directly imitated from Seneca. It has a regular chorus between the acts. But so has the Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd, which is not at all classic in its general character. Shakespeare, as a rule, does not use the chorus. Sometimes he has a prologue, as in Henry VIII, or an epilogue, as in the second part of Henry IV. In Henry V there are choruses between the acts called prologues to the acts. In Pericles there are choruses between the acts and also in the middle of Acts IV and V. In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare may have meant to have choruses between the acts, but actually there is only a prologue, and a chorus between Acts I and II. Generally Shakespeare accomplishes the purpose of the chorus in some other way. The chorus, however, is very appropriate to the rhetorical character of the English historical play, and perhaps Shakespeare had something of the sort in mind when he planned Henry V. It is worth mentioning that so great a Shakespearean actor as David Garrick chose the part of Chorus when he presented Henry V. He understood that the characteristic quality of the play was its sonorous trumpetflourish, and that this quality inhered essentially in the choruses. It is also worth noting that when Mr. Mansfield presented the play in New York, Chorus was so presented as to attract everybody, indeed astonish everybody by its appreciation of the possibilities of the part. the Chorus To examine the choruses, then; they usually narrate matters that cannot be presented dramatically. Such are in the main the prologues to Acts II, III, IV, V. But they also point out particularly the Function of dramatic means of which they are so im- in Henry V. portant a part. Thus the prologue to Act I urges the audience to take the play as a stimulus to the imagination rather than as an adequate reproduction of what has taken place. So in the prologues to Act III, 11. 33, 34; IV, 11. 49-53; V, 1-6. These show us the mood in which we must put ourselves to appreciate the play. We must not expect a realistic truth to nature; let us rather be ready to be inspired and aroused by imaginative language. In their narrative parts these choruses are fine examples of declamatory poetry; in the rest they form an admirable criticism upon the poetry which gives the main quality to the play. tained Other long speeches in Shakespeare are of two kinds. Some are what might be called elaborations of general themes. They are entirely appropriate to their places in the play, but they are not really necessary to other susit as they stand; they have quite an inde- speeches. pendent interest. Taken from their places they are almost as effective as they are in their places. Such speeches, for instance, are the well-known "All the world's a stage," or Mercutio's fantasia on Queen Mab, or Falstaff's disquisitions on honor or on sack in Henry IV. Of this kind in Henry V are: 1. The Archbishop of Canterbury's spirited Independent description of the Polity of the Bees, I, ii, 183- speeches. 213. The speech is a development of the last words of |