SOURCE: Hall, Joan Lord. “Themes.” In Henry V: A Guide to the Play, pp. 77-93. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Hall highlights the complexities of Henry V's principal themes: order versus disorder, the nature of warfare, and the requirements of kingship.

Image patterns are often a clue to a play's underlying concerns. In Henry V the garden metaphor sets ordered fertility against disorderly chaos; images of blood (symbolizing both familial ties and violent destruction) project a multifaceted concept of war; and the extended personification of “ceremony” in the King's troubled soliloquy before Agincourt expands on the key issue of kingship. These three central themes—the importance of order in the nation, the ambivalence of war, and the challenging nature of kingship—emerge from the play's development of plot and character as well as its language.

As might be predicted in a play that Shakespeare...