Henry V

by Shakespeare

First published 1600

Amazon

3.8(54,398)

Newly established as king, Henry V presses an English claim to the French crown and leads an invasion across the Channel. The campaign moves through the siege of Harfleur, the hardships of a depleted army and the approach to Agincourt, where the English face a much larger French force.

Shakespeare combines battlefield drama, diplomacy and the voices of common soldiers with the king’s carefully staged public leadership. Victory strengthens Henry’s position and leads to the Treaty of Troyes and his courtship of Katherine of Valois, but the play also exposes the costs of conquest, the pressures of command and the gap between patriotic rhetoric and wartime experience.