SOURCE: "The Historical Challenge," in Misrepresentations: Shakespeare and the Materialists, Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 46-63.

In the following excerpt from a chapter in which he challenges historicist and materialist readings of Henry V, Bradshaw argues that members of an Elizabethan audience would have responded in a variety of ways to the play's presentation of history. Depending on their principles, their personal interests, and their political sympathies, the critic contends, some would have embraced the Chorus's version of events and Henry's justifications of the war, but others would have noticed the play's skeptical questioning of the "official" account.

Critics have argued at length about Henry's motives for going to war with France, and whether he is right or wrong to do so. Such arguments usually polarize into pro-Henry and anti-Henry readings, in which the critical assumption that we need to establish what view the play "really" takes produces incompatible...