In an English sentence, meaning often depends on how words are placed. “The dog bit the boy” and “The boy bit the dog” mean very different things. Shakespeare frequently shifts his sentences away from more usual English arrangements. Often his purpose seems to be to create a rhythm he seeks, sometimes to emphasize a particular word, or to give a character a distinctive way of talking. In a good staged performance, the actors articulate the sentences so that the meaning is clear. In reading for yourself, do as the actor does. That is, work out the sentence structure for yourself; when you become puzzled by a character’s speech, check to see if words are being presented in an unusual sequence.
Look first for the subject and verb. Shakespeare often places the verb first (e.g., instead of “He goes” we find “Goes he”) or places the subject between the two parts of a verb (e.g., instead of “We will go” we find “Will we go”). In Henry V, there is an inverted subject-verb construction in the Chorus’s “should the warlike Harry . . . assume” (instead of “the warlike Harry should assume”) as well as in “Are now confined two mighty monarchies.” Canterbury’s “Then go we in to know his embassy” is another example of inverted subject and verb.
Frequently, Shakespeare places the object before the subject and verb (e.g., instead of “I hit him” we might find “Him I hit”)—a sequence that can be more difficult for us to follow. Canterbury’s “The Gordian knot of it he will unloose” is such an inversion (the normal order would be “He will unloose the Gordian knot of it”). Another example is King Henry’s “His present and your pains we thank you for,” where the normal order would be “We thank you for his present and your pains.”
Shakespeare also separates words that would normally appear together. When Canterbury says, “his wildness, mortified in him, / Seemed to die too,” the phrase “mortified in him” separates the subject (“his wildness”) from its verb (“seemed”). Another example comes in King Henry’s lines: “or else our grave, / Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,” where the normal construction “our grave shall have a tongueless mouth” is interrupted by the phrase “Like Turkish mute.” Canterbury uses a similar construction when he says “King Pepin, which deposèd Childeric, / Did, as heir general, being descended / Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair, / Make claim and title to the crown of France,” where the basic sentence elements (“King Pepin did make claim and title”) are separated by several interrupting phrases.
In order to create for yourself sentences that seem more like everyday English, you may wish to rearrange the words (“his wildness seemed to die,” “our grave shall have,” “King Pepin did make claim.”) The sentence will usually gain in clarity but will lose its rhythm or shift its emphasis.
Rearranging crucial words is a good way to understand passages that separate basic sentence elements by long interruptions—a structure that is sometimes used in Henry V. When the Bishop of Canterbury is justifying his offer of so much Church wealth to King Henry, he uses such an interrupted construction:
For I have made an offer to his Majesty—
Upon our spiritual convocation
And in regard of causes now in hand,
Which I have opened to his Grace at large,
As touching France—to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.
Here the basic sentence elements (“I have made an offer to his Majesty to give a greater sum”) are interrupted by several sweeping phrases that characterize the formal rhetoric of the Bishop. A similar pattern occurs in the Chorus to Act 2. There a space is opened up between subject and verb for an epiclike catalog of names and titles, and then opened up a second time between the two parts of the verb for wordplay on gilt/guilt:
...three corrupted men—
One, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, and the second,
Henry, Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,
Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland—
Have, for the gilt of France (O guilt indeed!),
Confirmed conspiracy with fearful France,
And by their hands this grace of kings must die.
In Henry V, such long interrupted sentences are used frequently, sometimes to catch the audience up in the narrative and sometimes as a characterizing device.
In other sentences, Shakespeare simply holds back basic sentence elements, delaying them until subordinate material to which he wants to give greater emphasis has been presented. This kind of delaying structure is used in the public speeches of Henry V, as, for example, Exeter’s when he presents the King of France with Henry’s claim to the French throne:
That you may know
‘Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim
Picked from the wormholes of long‑vanished days
Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,
He sends you this most memorable line,
In every branch truly demonstrative,
Willing you overlook this pedigree,
And when you find him evenly derived
From his most famed of famous ancestors,
Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held
From him, the native and true challenger.
Here the subject and verb of the first main clause are delayed for three and a half lines, and then the subject and verb of the second main clause are held back for two lines after the conjunction “And,” which marks the beginning of this second main clause. Stripped down to its basic elements, the sentence would read, in “normal” word order: “He sends you this most memorable line, and he bids you then resign your crown and kingdom.” King Henry uses a simpler version of the same word order when he is threatening Harfleur with destruction:
For, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the batt’ry once again,
I will not leave the half‑achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie burièd.
This time, as the subject and verb are again delayed, the emphasis at the beginning of the sentence falls on Henry’s self-characterization as a soldier inclined to begin the battery again.
In many of Shakespeare’s plays, he omits words and parts of words that English sentences normally require. In Henry V, however, these omissions are extremely rare and seem to be used to affect the tone of the speech or for the sake of speech rhythm. For example, when Ely asks Canterbury, as they are discussing how to stop Parliament from appropriating the Church’s wealth, “But what prevention?” the words “is there” are omitted from the end of his question, which thereby seems breathless and all the more anxious. Or, to take another example, in response to Henry’s question “May I with right and conscience make this claim [to the French throne]?” Canterbury appears to express utter decisiveness and great conviction with the words, “The sin upon my head, dread sovereign.” This mood is established through the omission of much of the familiar saying that Canterbury is here made to employ, a saying that in fuller form would exceed iambic pentameter: “If your claim be sinful, may the sin be upon my head [i.e., may it be my responsibility], not upon yours.”
Adapted from Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (editors), the New Folger Library Shakespeare edition of Henry V. © 1995 Folger Shakespeare Library
