SOURCE: "Henry V," in Shakespeare's Political Drama: The History Plays and The Roman Plays, Routledge, 1988, pp. 114-38.

Below, Leggatt considers possible readings of the play, its depiction of war, and its portrait of political authority. He invokes the need for audiences to be engaged as well as skeptical, particularly with respect to appraising Henry, whom the critic sees as a man motivated by obedience—the same virtue that Canterbury cites as the means of keeping all parts of an ideal nation working in harmony for a common purpose.

Henry V presents the anatomy of a war. We see the causes and the aftermath, the leaders and the common soldiers, the heroism that lives in legend and the grumbling, sickness, and petty crime that generally do not. Only strategy and tactics are underplayed. Shakespeare is more interested in the feelings and imaginations of his characters than in the way...