Shakespeare's 2 History Plays, the Henriad

Throughout these plays, including Richard III, there is a search for national unity is found in Henry V:

The principal theme of Henry V, already approached in its predecessors, is the establishment in England of an order based on consecrated authority and crowned successfully by actions against France (Traversi 187).

The conditions examined by Shakespeare are both moral and political, with the crime of regicide still hanging over the action as a distant memory. However, as Traversi notes, the real subject of the Henriad is somewhat different:

It was the conditions of kingship, as much as its results, that interested Shakespeare in these plays: and these conditions are viewed, by the time the last of them came to be conceived, in a light definitely akin to the tragic (Traversi 187).

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breath no sooner left his father's body But that his wildness, mortified in him, Seemed to die too (I.i.25-28). The change in the leader is a boon to the people, as they recognize. Henry himself attributes the change in himself and his success to God, and here again the support of the church for his rule is a factor. The ruler is in a very real sense the embodiment of the people and the state, and the nature of the ruler becomes a reflection of the nature of the state. The fact that Henry is a wise and just ruler is not only a good thing from the point of view of the people, but it also reflects well on their state and on the continuation of peace and prosperity. In the history plays, notes Traversi, the link between the political and the personal is provided by concentration on the figure of the king: "The problem of the state becomes, in a very real sense, that of the individual at its head" (Traversi 188). For the king, this meant the need to show, through complete and selfless devotion to office, the perfection of his self-control, in exchange for which he demanded and received the unquestioning allegiance of his subjects. Williams disagrees with Stoll about the patriotic content of the play but does state that in
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Approximate Word count = 2012
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)