SOURCE: Mossman, Judith. “Henry V and Plutarch's Alexander.” Shakespeare Quarterly 45, no. 1 (spring 1994): 57-73.

In the following essay, Mossman examines parallels between Henry in Shakespeare's Henry V and Alexander in Plutarch's Life of Alexander.

When Alexander's sarcophagus was brought from its shrine, Augustus gazed at the body, then laid a crown of gold on its glass case and scattered some flowers to pay his respects. When they asked if he would like to see Ptolemy too, “I wished to see a king,” he replied, “I did not wish to see corpses.”

(Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 18.1)

Alexander is an evocative figure. as Suetonius's anecdote shows, he quickly became a potent symbol of kingship in the ancient world, and the passage of time only increased the fascination he held for the medieval world and for the Renaissance. Comparisons between Henry V and Alexander in Shakespeare's Henry V are a case in...