The Archbishop is analogous to the Bishop of Rome, conjuring up the justification for war and regime change. The speech by the Archbishop reveals the ambiguity and the blending of recent English history with that of medieval memory. But perhaps the most important is when he tells Henry that Salic Law forbids a woman from ever inheriting the throne, “No woman shall succeed in Salique land.” The Archbishop conjures up the most technical, bordering on absurd, pretexts for war. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed, / and justly and religiously unfold / why the Law Salique that they have in France / should or should not bar us in our claim.” The Archbishop then gives a long and tedious, and banal, speech about the technicalities of Salic Law in what is one of the most boring and snooze-worthy speeches in the great plays of Shakespeare. When Henry gathers with the bishops and they exchange the necessary pleasantries, Henry asks the Archbishop of Canterbury to explain why he has claims to the throne of France: “Sure we thank you. Fearing the loss of their established customs, the churchmen assume the role of conjuring up a justification for a war against France-which has long been on the mind of Henry. This reflects the angst and anxiety of the clergy in the turmoil of the Reformation. The play opens with the bishops of Canterbury and Ely fretting over a possible church tax. “Then should warlike Harry, like himself, / assume the port of Mars and at his heels, / leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire / crouch for employment.” In the choral introduction to Henry V the chorus sings that Henry will bring not peace, prosperity, and fertility’s blessings, but “famine, sword, and fire.” If the measure of a good ruler is presiding over hearth and home with a hearty fire and good stew, then Henry is no such king. It is interesting to note, as other Shakespeare scholars of the past have, that there is much irony interwoven into a play about one of England’s most celebrated monarchs. The chorus might ask us to imagine the field of Agincourt, since they were incapable of reproducing such a spectacle on stage: “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / the brightest heaven of invention: / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, / and monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”, but the movement of Henry V was certainly drawn from very recent memories and experiences, not distant ones. Elizabethan anxieties and fears over legitimacy, succession, and religious sanction for conquest are all present. The play may have been about one of England’s most beloved kings, but a very close inspection of the play reveals that it is not simply a memoriam to Henry V, but a drama concerning the politics of usurpation and war, the throes of which England had just been under. Henry V was written about a decade after the tumultuous events that preoccupied early modern English civilization. The Spanish Armada was defeated and a world historical shift occurred: the New World was no longer going to be the sole domain of the Spanish Habsburgs, but was now open to the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic peoples who would bring Protestantism, Common Law, and the militia tradition of the right to bear arms to the Americas. In 1588, Spain, with the blessing of Papal sanction, attempted to conquer England through claims of inheritance and marriage tying the Habsburg dynasty to the crown and throne of Albion.
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Shakespeare cannot be separated from the context and times in which he lived.
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While we may find such political legitimacy rooted in the rule of law and how leaders treat their citizens instead of lineages and lines of succession, the principle remains the same: There are those whom we deem illegitimate, and those we deem legitimate. Like our forebears, we still hold to notions of political legitimacy. What we call regime change the medieval and early moderns called usurpation.
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What hath Shakespeare to do with the politics of regime change? Given the long and unsuccessful history of what we call regime change, from the installment of the Shah over Persia, to the Bay of Pigs, to Libya, one questions the sanity of anyone who routinely calls for “regime change.” Yet long before our modern failures exposed the foibles of those who lust for power and and the foolishness of political usurpation, the great bard of Anglodom provided wisdom enough for those who consider venturing into foreign lands.