Academic
Exchange Quarterly
Winter 2002 ISSN 1096-1453 Volume 6,
Issue 4
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source rather than this on-line version which may not reflect
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Henry V, the Gulf War, and Cultural Materialism
Dr. Kevin Ewert,
Dr. Ewert is Assistant Professor of
Theatre at Pitt-Bradford, and also the General Manager of the Unseam’d Shakespeare Company in
Abstract:
This paper is
about the difficult relationship between visions of the future and known
history in Shakespeare’s Henry V; it
is also about finding a way to make cultural materialism comprehensible to
undergraduates. Three particular moments
of historical/cultural schism are analyzed: between the play and the history it
represents, when the final Chorus steps forward and tells us that everything
Henry has won will shortly be lost; between the play and its originary moment,
where a hopeful vision of the Earl of Essex returning victorious to London from
Ireland is dashed only months after the play premiered; and between a modern
victor in a modern battle, in a series of articles in Forbes magazine using Shakespeare’s play to “understand” the Gulf
War. These three moments are linked, in
order to offer a template for using the relationships of texts to historical
moments for teaching a cultural materialist perspective to undergraduate
students of Shakespeare.
Henry V,
the Gulf War, and Cultural Materialism
This paper is about the difficult
relationship between visions of the future and known history in Shakespeare’s Henry V.
It is also about teaching cultural materialism to undergraduates. Henry V
ends with Henry's total victory crowned with a number of visions of future
peace and prosperity. Then the final
Chorus steps forward and tells us what history -- and the Elizabethan stage --
already knows: that everything this theatrically resurrected but historically contingent
Henry has won will shortly be lost. But
there is another schism between visions and history in the play. The Chorus at the beginning of the last act
contains a vision of the Earl of Essex, "the general of our gracious
empress", returning victorious to London from Ireland; for Shakespeare's
audience, this vision was soon to suffer the same fate as the famous victories
of Henry V, where high expectations end in ignomy and civil unrest. As I was preparing to teach Henry V for an undergraduate class on
Shakespeare, I came across a third vision of victory that came into conflict
with a historical outcome. Forbes magazine published an article
just after the Gulf War comparing George Bush's extraordinary military triumph
to Shakespeare's dramatization of Henry's victory at Agincourt, complete with
visions of a nation united under a strong and wise and successful leader. A year later, Forbes published another article that effectively served as the
final Chorus in Henry V, recognizing
that Bush lost the election just as the English eventually lost what they had
gained in France. I would like to link
these three visions, in order to offer a template for using the relationships
of texts to historical moments for teaching a cultural materialist perspective
to undergraduate students of Shakespeare.
In Terence Hawkes’ cultural
materialist dictum, “we mean by Shakespeare” (3) – a Shakespeare play
doesn’t have one singular inherent true meaning, but rather picks up meanings
and often is made to mean particular things at particular historical and
cultural moments. Similarly, current
Performance Studies practitioners point out that theatre always has “excessive
contextuality” (Jackson 89). The theatre
event is not a hermetically sealed, aesthetically stable and controlled
artifact but rather is implicated within, even bursting with its own cultural,
historical, social, and political contexts, those “constellations of elements
that comprise its habitus and its field” (Savran 93). Perhaps not surprisingly, in anticipation of
both of the points above, Ralph Berry concludes his 1981 production history of Henry V by stating “what happens to [Henry V] in the future will no doubt be
determined less by directors than by history” (81).
We see within the play itself that
theatre and history have an uneasy relationship. Theatre can raise the dead, although the
Chorus, ever modest, says they are only “flat, unraised spirits” on this
“unworthy scaffold” and that it is the audience who must do much of the work to
“piece out our imperfections with your thoughts” (Prologue 9, 10, 23). Perhaps this is slightly disingenuous: from
all indications, Shakespeare’s company was pretty good at what it did. Still, if theatre raises the dead it also has
to kill them off again, as the final Chorus does for Henry. The end of the play proper is filled with
visions for a glorious future; the French King starts the vision as he gives
away his daughter:
King Charles Take her, fair son, and from her
blood raise up
Issue
to me, that the contending kingdoms
Of
France and England, whose very shores look pale
With
envy of each other's happiness,
May
cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction
Plant
neighbourhood and Christian-like accord
In
their sweet bosoms, that never war advance
His
bleeding sword 'twixt England and fair France.
(5.2.332-40)
The French Queen concurs, and
develops the vision further:
Queen Isabel God, the best maker of all
marriages,
Combine
your hearts in one, your realms in one!
As
man and wife, being two, are one in love,
So
be there 'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal,
That
never may ill office, or fell jealousy,
Which
troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage,
Thrust
in between the paction of these kingdoms,
To
make divorce of their incorporate league;
That
English may as French, French Englishmen,
Receive
each other, God speak this “Amen”!
(344-53)
And, fittingly enough, Henry
himself has the final word to cap this vision for the future:
King Henry Prepare we for our marriage -- on which day,
My
Lord of Burgundy, we'll take your oath,
And
all the peers', for surety of our leagues.
Then
shall I swear to Kate, and you to me;
And
may our oaths well kept and prosperous be!
(355-9)
But the characters’ future vision
is a theatrical soft ball lobbed towards the final Chorus, who knocks it out of
the wooden O into the historical future already past and the theatrical sequel
already played:
Chorus Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned
King
Of
France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose
state so many had the managing,
That
they lost France and made his England bleed,
Which
oft our stage hath shown ... (Epilogue 9-13)
That final Chorus might be seen as
reluctant, ironic, sobering, or as a bit of a sucker punch, but the final
result is the same: the vision of a glorious future espoused within the fiction
is met and deflated by more history and another play. The relationship between theatre and history
remains, if now for a different reason from that suggested in the opening
Chorus, an uneasy one.
Between the play and its originary
historical moment, there is another uneasy relationship. The Act 5 Chorus contains “the only explicit,
extradramatic, incontestable reference to a contemporary event anywhere in the
[Shakespearean] canon” (Taylor 7):
Chorus Were now the general of our gracious
empress,
As
in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing
rebellion broached on his sword,
How
many would the peaceful city quit,
To
welcome him! Much more, and much more
cause,
Did
they this Harry. (5.0.30-5)
In order better to make the point
about the historical Henry’s post-Agincourt reception in London to the
contemporary London audience members he is addressing at the play’s historical
moment, the Chorus talks about our gracious empress, Elizabeth, and the General
now in Ireland, who is the Earl of Essex, and suggests an equivalence in terms
of high expectations, victory, glory, honour, and a grateful and celebrating
nation. This reference rather precisely
dates the writing of the play at early in 1599.
Essex left for Ireland on March 27, 1599, by midsummer the success of
the expedition was in doubt, and on September 28, 1599, Essex returned to
London in shame, defeated (Taylor 5).
Less than two years later in February 1601, after a failed rebellion
that most pointedly did not stir the London crowds, the former general was
executed by his no longer gracious or grateful empress. The topical reference and hopeful vision from
the moment the play was written tells a very different story shortly
thereafter; perhaps not so strangely enough, it is a change in story very
similar to that effected by the final Chorus on the historical Henry. Like the golden boy Henry and all his
achievements, Essex too is sucker-punched by history, this time from an
epilogue outside the bounds of the play.
The contemporary equivalence itself becomes historically contingent.
Between the play and its life in
the early 1990s, there may be seen yet another uneasy relationship. Under the
leadership of George Bush -- no initial needed at the time -- US forces fought
the Gulf War in February/March 1991.
Shortly after that stunning victory, an article appeared in Forbes Magazine, using Shakespeare’s
historical play to better understand the current events. “Miracle in the desert: to grasp the full
miraculous measure of the US victory in the Gulf,” the article tells us, “you
have to go back and read Shakespeare’s Henry
V” (Novak 62). The article makes a
number of detailed comparisons between the Gulf War and Shakespeare’s play, and
points up some startling equivalencies, starting with the same number of
casualties on the winning side. Henry
reads the lists after the battle and finds four “of name” and “of all other men
but five and twenty” (4.8.103-4); Forbes
points out that “US forces leading the Great Coalition threw half a million
soldiers against deeply entrenched Iraqis, and in four days emerged triumphant
at the cost of but 29 Americans killed in the assault” (Novak 62). The article ends with the recognition that in
both cases providence must have been on the side of the victors: “O God thy arm
was here ... and be it death proclaimed throughout our host to boast of this,
or take that praise from God which is his only ... God fought for us” says
Henry (4.8.104, 112-14, 118); Forbes
concurs with “above all, though, this nation owes thanks to God ... God gave us
our ‘Saint Crispin’s Day’ and we should thank Him for it” (Novak 63). In between the math and the moral certainty,
a number of further equivalencies are drawn:
Like Bush, Henry V was mocked by his foes as too weak and soft to fight. Like Bush from Aug. 2 until Mar. 2, Henry V grew in purpose and in stature from the first moments of his expedition until its bloody climax. Like Bush, Henry V was fond of terms like "kind" and "gentle," but fiercely resolute for vindication of the right. Like Bush, before the battle Henry V prayed mightily -- knowing well the probability of slaughter, massacre and abject failure (Novak 63).
The article also points to an
equivalence in the ability to rise above domestic problems: “Moiling, muddling
and malaise on domestic policy have not been unknown to this Administration.
But not in this case, not during these seven months” (Novak 63). A further equivalence might be seen in the
two leaders’ powers of persuasion: “George Bush sized up Saddam Hussein almost
instantly. Then slowly, ever so slowly,
he persuaded the rest of the world to see reality as he did” (Novak 63). One of the most interesting equivalencies
comes in a verbal echo of the “band of brothers” speech: a vision of the
future, where Henry tells his men that
Then
shall our names
Familiar
in [the] mouth as household words --
Harry
the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick
and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester --
Be
in their cups freshly remembered.
(4.3.51-5)
becomes in the Forbes article an equally exuberant list
of future heroes: after the President’s “inspired leadership” we have “the
reassuring figure of Dick Cheney at Defense; the strategic sense of General
Colin Powell; ‘Stormin' Norman’ Schwarzkopf, who executed the final ‘Hail Mary’
offensive thrust, and ... Iowa's General ‘Chuck’ Horner, who masterminded a
brilliant air campaign” (Novak 63). The
comparisons between the Gulf War and Henry
V all make the case that this is a high point for a grateful nation.
For a two-page magazine article,
this is a fairly thorough reading of the play; it is, of course, not exactly
complete. Like the triumphant Henry in
the play, and like Essex in Ireland in the reference,
Bush-as-Henry/Gulf-as-Agincourt comes to be rewritten, to mean by Shakespeare
again but differently, as we shift the cultural and historical context forward
once more.
What does this article leave
out? More history in the future that it
doesn’t yet know, and that final Chorus in Shakespeare’s play. The workings of American politics supplies
another equivalency between Bush and Henry, and less than two years later, Forbes magazine supplies the missing Shakespearean
Chorus. Just as Henry’s glory and
achievements lasted but a “small time” (Epilogue 5), so to with George
Bush. Less than two years later, Bush is
out of office, and after the great victory comes a sobering letdown. “Small time, but in that small most greatly
lived/ This star of England” says the final Chorus of its historically
contingent hero; “despite his reelection defeat,” Forbes assures us, “former president George Bush has won a special
place in history for what he did to prepare for and prosecute the Gulf War”
(Forbes Jr.). Bush lost the reelection
and, in 1993, Forbes can recognize
the contents of Shakespeare’s final Chorus: “of course, the 15th-century French
eventually routed the English” (Forbes Jr.).
Should one wish to compound the irony – or at least explore the
possibilities for yet another historically contingent equivalence at the moment
I’m writing this paper – ten years later the great leader’s son is
contemplating a move against the same, apparently rejuvenated enemy. We can but hope we don’t find ourselves in a
further series of equivalencies with Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays.
Cultural materialism encourages us
to look carefully for the places – the faultlines, to use Alan Sinfield’s term
– where the aims of an ideology or a power structure may reveal themselves to
be incomplete. In the first Forbes article, the ringing endorsement
of the power status quo leaves room to be undone, even in its own chosen
literary template. The text of Henry V remains uncontained by a single
or singular reading; the ideology of Bush-and-America triumphant, like the
ideology of Henry-and-England or Essex-and-England triumphant, is revealed as
susceptible to historical contingencies and alternative readings.
From a cultural materialist perspective,
a play by Shakespeare is both implicated and embroiled in often complex ways in
its own historical and cultural moment, and can also generate more meanings,
can be made to mean more things, as it is reproduced at other historical and
cultural moments. The question of how a
play means often opens up into a wider question of how a culture means -- how a
society may rehearse its ideologies, anxieties, and desires through
performances, critical readings, or even what passes for a general
understanding of Shakespeare’s plays at particular historical junctures. The fictional world of a Shakespeare play,
once locally embodied on the stage or in a popular magazine, provides
opportunities for examining and/or shaping the actual conditions of the
audience’s world. In the case of Henry V, the play acts as a magnet,
picking up what is in the air – although, of course, the winds always shift and
that air keeps changing. I hope that
these three visions in and of the play, and in each case their historical contingency,
might provide a useful way to make the ideas of cultural materialism more
comprehensible to undergraduate students of Shakespeare, who may not always
know a Terence Hawkes from a handsaw.
Works Cited
Berry, Ralph. Changing Styles in Shakespeare. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981.
Forbes Jr., Malcolm S.
“They Can’t Take This Away From Bush.”
Forbes 1 Feb. 1993: 25.
Hawkes, Terence. Meaning By Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 1992.
Jackson, Shannon.
“Professing Performance.” TDR 45 (Spring 2001): 84-95.
Novak, Michael.
“Miracle in the Desert.” Forbes 1 April 1991: 62-3.
Savran, David.
“Choices Made and Unmade.” Theater 31.2 (2001): 89-95.
Shakespeare, William.
Henry V. Ed. Gary Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Sinfield, Alan. Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the
Politics of Dissident Reading.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Taylor, Gary. Introduction. Henry V. By William Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. 1-74.