SOURCE: Salomon, Brownell. “Thematic Contraries and the Dramaturgy of Henry V.” Shakespeare Quarterly 31, no. 3 (autumn 1980): 343-56.

In the following essay, Brownell affirms the unified design of Henry V by presenting a scene-by-scene analysis of the drama in relation to its theme of “private cause” versus “public good.”

That Henry V provokes radically different responses from its modern interpreters is well known. For every critic willing to accept the play at face value as heroic drama, there is another determined to find it an ironic satire of Machiavellian militarism. But controversy fails to daunt Shakespeareans who are newly attracted to the play, each intent upon developing an interpretation that reasonably accounts for the largest measure of evidence. No exception, I here offer my own view that Henry V is a coherent dramatic work, an imaginative unity with a form totally integral with its meaning.

This is not to obscure...