This activity will involve students in a physically active reading of dialogue from the play. At the beginning of Act IV, King Henry wraps himself in a cloak to disguise his identity while he walks among his troops the night before the final battle at Agincourt. The King moves from camp to camp listening to his men as they nervously await the battle ahead. During his walk, he comes across three soldiers. John Bates, Alexander Court, and Michael Williams. The three enlisted men discuss their reluctance to go to war at which point King Henry interjects and engages in an active debate of a soldier’s duty to their king and a king’s to his soldiers.
- First you will pair students into groups of two. Each student will have a copy of the conversation as is reproduced for your convenience below or found within the text from Act IV, scene I, lines 86-230.
- Students should do a cold read of this conversation at least once. This can also be done as a class, but the important thing is that students get an idea of what the content of the speeches are.
- Within their pairs, each student will decide or be designated as reading either King Henry or Williams dialogue with them both supplying John Bates’ brief lines.
- As the two students read through the debate they should “Snap” or “Zing” their opponents paper playfully when they feel that they are winning the argument or have just made a very good point. Safety is priority in this exercise, so avoiding language such as calling this motion a “slap” should be avoided. In general though, students will relish and enjoy the opportunity to snap their partner’s paper and it could lead to a bit of competition to see who wins their argument.
- The next step is to have the students swap roles. Have the student who read for King Henry now read for Williams and vice versa. Having already seen how their classmates interpreted where Snaps and Zings were appropriate, students will typically repeat similar movements in the text with a snap; however, they will also pick up on many more places where a snap or a zing may be appropriate or even realize how if they change their inflections and delivery of the dialogue that more snap worthy moments could be present.
Important for Students to Take Away from this exercise:
- Henry and Williams’ debate raises many philosophical questions about the morality of war and where a subject’s duty lies to a higher authority. With the contemporary frame and allusion to American warfare and politics, this debate should raise student’s awareness of the ambiguous distinctions that are made in justifying war and violence. While it could be interpreted that King Henry ultimately wins this argument, since Williams is humiliated and forced to apologize for his remarks later in the play, there is still ambiguity whether or not Henry would have won this argument had he not been the king. Just as their conversation concerns the privilege of royalty versus the condition of the common man, the outcome of this quarrel makes a distinction in class utterly apparent.
Enter three soldiers, JOHN BATES, ALEXANDER COURT, and MICHAEL WILLIAMS
COURT
Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which
breaks yonder?
BATES
I think it be: but we have no great cause to desire
the approach of day.
WILLIAMS
We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think
we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?
KING HENRY V
A friend.
WILLIAMS
Under what captain serve you?
KING HENRY V
Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.
WILLIAMS
A good old commander and a most kind gentleman: I
pray you, what thinks he of our estate?
KING HENRY V
Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be
washed off the next tide.
BATES
He hath not told his thought to the king?
KING HENRY V
No; nor it is not meet he should. For, though I
speak it to you, I think the king is but a man, as I
am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the
element shows to him as it doth to me; all his
senses have but human conditions: his ceremonies
laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and
though his affections are higher mounted than ours,
yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like
wing. Therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we
do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish
as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess
him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing
it, should dishearten his army.
BATES
He may show what outward courage he will; but I
believe, as cold a night as ’tis, he could wish
himself in Thames up to the neck; and so I would he
were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.
KING HENRY V
By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king:
I think he would not wish himself any where but
where he is.
BATES
Then I would he were here alone; so should he be
sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved.
KING HENRY V
I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here
alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men’s
minds: methinks I could not die any where so
contented as in the king’s company; his cause being
just and his quarrel honourable.
WILLIAMS
That’s more than we know.
BATES
Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know
enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if
his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes
the crime of it out of us.
WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at
such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.
KING HENRY V
So, if a son that is by his father sent about
merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the
imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be
imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a
servant, under his master’s command transporting a
sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in
many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the
business of the master the author of the servant’s
damnation: but this is not so: the king is not
bound to answer the particular endings of his
soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of
his servant; for they purpose not their death, when
they purpose their services. Besides, there is no
king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to
the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all
unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them
the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder;
some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of
perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that
have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with
pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have
defeated the law and outrun native punishment,
though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to
fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance;
so that here men are punished for before-breach of
the king’s laws in now the king’s quarrel: where
they feared the death, they have borne life away;
and where they would be safe, they perish: then if
they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of
their damnation than he was before guilty of those
impieties for the which they are now visited. Every
subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s
soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in
the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every
mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death
is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was
blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained:
and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think
that, making God so free an offer, He let him
outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach
others how they should prepare.
WILLIAMS
‘Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon
his own head, the king is not to answer it.
BATES
But I do not desire he should answer for me; and
yet I determine to fight lustily for him.
KING HENRY V
I myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed.
WILLIAMS
Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but
when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we
ne’er the wiser.
KING HENRY V
If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
WILLIAMS
You pay him then. That’s a perilous shot out of an
elder-gun, that a poor and private displeasure can
do against a monarch! you may as well go about to
turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a
peacock’s feather. You’ll never trust his word
after! come, ’tis a foolish saying.
KING HENRY V
Your reproof is something too round: I should be
angry with you, if the time were convenient.
WILLIAMS
Let it be a quarrel between us, if you live.
KING HENRY V
I embrace it.
WILLIAMS
How shall I know thee again?
KING HENRY V
Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my
bonnet: then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I
will make it my quarrel.
WILLIAMS
Here’s my glove: give me another of thine.
KING HENRY V
There.
WILLIAMS
This will I also wear in my cap: if ever thou come
to me and say, after to-morrow, ‘This is my glove,’
by this hand, I will take thee a box on the ear.
KING HENRY V
If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.
WILLIAMS
Thou darest as well be hanged.
KING HENRY V
Well. I will do it, though I take thee in the
king’s company.
WILLIAMS
Keep thy word: fare thee well.
BATES
Be friends, you English fools, be friends: we have
French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon.
KING HENRY V
Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to
one, they will beat us; for they bear them on their
shoulders: but it is no English treason to cut
French crowns, and to-morrow the king himself will
be a clipper.
Exeunt soldiers
Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the king!
We must bear all.
Common Core Standards Fulfilled Through this Activity
English Language Arts Standards Reading: Literature
K – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. K.1, K.10
1st – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 1.4, 1.9
2nd – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 2.3, 2.6
3rd – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 3.1, 3.3
4th – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 4.1, 4.4, 4.7
5th – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 5.1, 5.3, 5.4, 5.6
6th – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 61., 6.4, 6.6, 6.7
7th – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 7.1, 7.4, 7.6
8th – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 8.1, 8.4, 8.6
9th/10th– CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 9-10.1, 9-10.2, 9-10.3, 9-10.4
11th/12th – CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL. 11-12.1, 11-12.2, 11-12.3, 11-12.4, 11-12.6,
Detailed Information on Common Core Standards can be found at: http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/
OSU Henry V 