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Henry V by Anthony Brennan, and: William Shakespeare The Problem Plays by Richard Hillman

1995; University of Western Ontario Libraries; Volume: 21; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/esc.1995.0012

1913-4835

Marie H. Loughlin,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

this book from cover to cover. Those who do, however, especially given the fine introduction that contextualizes the individual essays, will find such a reading a valuable metacritical exercise, since the book offers an overview of what the study of ritual practice can contribute to a reading of Shakespeare and his age. l e a n o r e lieblein / McGill University Anthony Brennan, Henry V. Twayne’s New Critical Introductions to Shake­ speare (New York: Twayne, 1992). xliv, 127. $19.95 cloth. Richard Hillman, William Shakespeare The Problem Plays. Twayne’s En­ glish Author Series. Ed. Arthur F. Kinney (New York: Twayne, 1993). xiv, 185. $19.95 cloth. Anthony Brennan’s Henry V is a thorough and exemplary exploration of this play’s various stage and screen incarnations that concentrates specifically on charting the radical transformation of its reputation from jingoistic national pageant to “an exciting, complex, ambiguous and disturbing account fully responsive to current political anxieties” (xi). Brennan proceeds to give a full and strongly focussed account of stage and screen productions of the play, an account that demonstrates that these opposing readings are made possible only through radical cuts to the text. Brennan’s lively and brisk analysis proceeds act by act, offering a se­ ries of provocative close readings in the context of how various productions have cut, rearranged, and directed each scene in order to smooth out the play’s inherently ambiguous attitudes toward war, patriotism, kingship, and specifically the figure of Henry himself. For example, in his analysis of the frequently and drastically cut “Salic law” speech in i.2, Brennan points out that “to play the archbishop’s argument as a comic scrap-heap of dynas­ tic rubbish” is a serious mistake since the uncut version of the speech is a stunning example of “what people always do in wartime, they select or twist the evidence and self-righteously ignore any details that conflict with their claims” (27-28). If the clerics are frequently presented in stage and screen productions either as comic fools or as Machiavellian manipulators of a young and inexperienced king, Shakespeare also orders the events of the first scene to demonstrate that they “are being manipulated in an even fur­ ther reaching strategy of the king’s” (22), allowing him to take on “the role of reluctant figure needing persuasion to take on weighty responsibility” (22). The impressive knowledge shown by Brennan about contemporary stage and screen productions, then, allows for striking rereadings of Henry V s 486 most problematic scenes, from the speech at Harfleur to the hanging of Bardolph to the killing of the French prisoners. In each case, we see not only that “Henry is more than a Machiavellian thug and less than an unambiguous ideal king,” but also that his progress through France “remind[s] us of the effect and cost of the king’s skills in shaping his own image” (45). However, for all Brennan’s skill in approaching the essentially ambiguous nature of Henry, his treatment of some of the minor characters, such as Fluellen, seems oddly unsatisfying. While rightly noting that Fluellen’s lines are frequently cut in order to make him seem less neurotic and obsessed with “his beloved ‘disciplines of war,’ ” Brennan tends to underestimate Fluellen’s contribution to the play’s conflicting discourses of nationalism. In claiming Henry as a fellow Welshman, Fluellen complicates the king’s attempt to forge a united army through a seamless construction of Englishness. Brennan’s Henry V is not only an immensely useful book for introducing undergraduates to the pleasures and possibilities of production-criticism, but also a work that constantly surprises and challenges the specialist. While in the “Editor’s Note” to Richard Hillman’s William Shakespeare The Problem Plays, Arthur Kinney indicates that this study of Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure is “easily accessible to the reader first approaching these plays and forcefully original for those who know the plays well” (vii), it is actually less successful than Brennan’s work in accomplishing this aim. Hillman’s arguments for the re­ configuring of our definitions of genre and his assertion that the Problem...