Shakespeare uses dramatic irony as one of the main stylistic devices to unveil the false morals and weaknesses of the main characters. Using dramatic irony, Shakespeare attacks the low morals of characters and the inability to improve critical situations and life around them. Dramatic irony is based on the key themes which are order, war, and kingship, so it helps readers to understand the humor and irony of the situations. Shakespeare’s Henriad portrays the King and his military mission, thus the author raises questions rather than providing clear answers. Dramatic irony is used by Shakespeare to unveil the personal failures of the characters to see the reality and the world around them because of narrow-mindedness and shortsightedness.
In Henry IV, Part I, Shakespeare depicts the impossibility to maintain order and strong power in a country famous for its military strengths and political unity. In Henry IV, Part I, which first introduces readers to the Prince who will become Henry V, three groups or centers of interest reflect on one another through a pattern of repetition with variation (Taylor 83). Taylor King Henry and his court; Prince Hal, together with Falstaff and his Eastcheap friends; and the rebels, with the focus on Hotspur as their leader. All these characters converge at the battle of Shrewsbury, which establishes Hal as the true heir to the throne when he kills Hotspur, the imposter Harry. Before that, scenes alternate among the three groups in a purposeful, contrapuntal design. Act I begins with the King in council, switches to Hal and Falstaff in the carefree world of Eastcheap, and then, in scene iii, presents the confrontation between Hotspur and the King that results in the coalition of the Percies against Henry (Champion 34). All the way through the drama we are encouraged to make thematic connections among these central figures: “A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true to one another!” [II. ii. 27-28]), reflects on how the rebels plan to steal the kingdom from Henry after they have helped him, as their former ally Bolingbroke, to wrest the crown from King Richard. As the action develops, Hal and Hotspur vie for center stage, with Hotspur often stealing the show in the theater; the King, preoccupied with the rebels and his fraught relationship with his son, cuts a less dynamic figure.
For, bear ourselves as even as we can,
The King will always think him in our debt,
And think we think ourselves unsatisfied
Till he hath found a time to pay us home. (1.3.279).
This scene portrays that political leaders and the king cannot trust each other and cannot come to an agreement (Champion 94). The dramatic irony is the Henry IV is left alone and has no one to talk to. he has to accept the important decision alone deprived support and understanding of the relatives and friends.
Cousin, on Wednesday next our Council we
Will hold at Windsor. So inform the lords.
But come yourself with speed to us again.
For more is to be said and to be done
Then out of anger can be utterèd. (1.1.102-106)
In Henry V, however, the pattern is different, for the spotlight rests firmly on the King. He speaks more lines in the play than any other character, and he initiates the dominant action. Although it is possible to analyze five plot strands centering on different groups–Henry and his comrades, the French ruling class, the Eastcheap crew, the British soldiers (Fluellen, Gower, Williams), and Princess Katherine –none of the final four is truly developed as a subplot; the action of the play is fully grounded in Henry’s war enterprise. Whereas Henry IV, Part i crosscuts frequently among its three dominant groups, Henry V progresses in a more linear fashion. Some critics have found the play episodic, a sequence of ceremonial scenes rather than a tightly organized, causally connected plot. There is strong momentum in the grand design, the building blocks that move the action forward: Act I, Henry’s decision to go to war against France; Act II, the preparations for the campaign and the unmasking of the traitors at Southampton (Champion 73).
The dramatic irony is that because Henry revives an old, somewhat tenuous claim to the throne of France, the war is not strictly necessary. Only by sleight of hand can he turn the French into the initiators; the campaign is more a political opportunity for him to prove his prowess as a leader and a conqueror. Nevertheless, Henry is not depicted as an aggressive warmonger (Champion 49). It is Canterbury who, for pragmatic reasons, urges Henry to “unwind your bloody flag” while Exeter reminds him to emulate his ancestors, the “lions” of his “blood.” Acknowledging both the “waste” and the responsibility incurred, Henry’s vision of war is sober:
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops
Are everyone a woe, a sore complaint
‘Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords
That makes such waste in brief mortality. (I. ii. 24-28)
The climax of the play is the victory at Agincourt and the denouement, or comic resolution, is the marriage as a seal of unity and peace between England and France. Henry V is the only one of Shakespeare’s history plays to end, like his comedies, with the fulfillment of marriage. In addition to this linear momentum, the play, as Brownell Salomon has argued, gains coherence through its pattern of alternating scenes demonstrating selfish “private cause” (among the French aristocrats and the Eastcheap men) versus “public good” (in Henry and his followers) (Champion 34).
The French have the stage to themselves for five complete scenes as well as one long sequence at the beginning of II. iv before the entrance of Exeter. Yet these scenes do not build into a subplot because France is never presented as an energetic antagonist; instead of initiating important new phases of action, the French simply react to the progress of Henry’s campaign (Taylor 83). The French also accentuate Henry’s prowess because they can offer nothing equivalent (Champion 59). Even the first sequence, where the French take center stage and the Dauphin dismisses Henry as “shallow” (II. iv. 28), helps reinforce the idea of Henry’s greatness rather than contriving to belittle it. The French King’s recollection of the battle of Crécy and Edward the Black Prince’s triumph there–his respect for Henry as a “stem / Of that victorious stock” (62-63)–directly echoes Canterbury’s invocation to Henry to recall his mighty ancestors (I. ii. 102). Each speaker evokes exactly the same historical moment: King Edward III standing on a hill, smiling at his son’s victory over the French at Crecy. This spot of time is indelibly etched on the folk memory, English and French alike. Similarly, the Constable’s horticultural image of how, before becoming king, Henry covered “discretion with a coat of folly; / As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots / That shall first spring and be most delicate” (II. iv. 38-40) is close to Ely’s explanation of how the “strawberry grows underneath the nettle” (I. i. 60) to account for Hal’s apparently sudden transformation into a great king. The King’s speech personifies drops of blood as bitter complainants, but Williams goes further in imagining how the dismembered body parts of those killed in war will rise up in protest on the Day of Judgment. The apparent contradictions in Henry’s response to war–compunction coupled with sublime indifference or even callous acceptance–point to a central ambivalence in the way that war is presented. The question of the King’s responsibility for lives lost in war, introduced in Act I. Henry cannot completely argue away his nagging sense of shedding “guiltless drops” of blood by separating the state of the individual’s soul from his “duty” to go to war for his king, as he attempts to do in his conversation with Williams (Gurr 49). Then, as the war conflict develops, alternating scenes are arranged so that the French come across as arrogant dilettantes, overconfident of success, while the English are humble and serious about their endeavor. The impatience of the French to fight, their refrain of “Will it never is morning?” (III. vii. 6), contrasts with Bates’ conviction that Henry would rather be “in the Thames up to the neck” (IV. i. 117) than on the verge of battle.
In Shakespeare’s Henriad, the theme of war encompasses more than heroic excitement and violent bloodshed. Hard work and drudgery are also required in any military campaign. The dramatic irony is that war is not necessary and beneficial for the country but the kings are involved in military campaigns (Taylor 83). In Henry V, with his consternation that the mines at Harfleur are not “according to the disciplines of the war” and his pride at the “excellent discipline” of his compatriot Exeter at the bridge, Fluellen represents the military man’s meticulous attention to detail (Gurr 73).
War is exhausting. Branagh’s movie adds to the text by showing the slog through mud and rain as part of the campaign’s horrors (Gurr 82). Exhaustion emerges from the halting rhythms and monosyllabic weight of the speech in which Henry addresses Montjoy at the end of this scene. What at first glance appears to be flat, even repetitive verse gives a clue to Henry’s underlying emotions: He is bracing himself, presenting a bold front to the French despite being terribly weary. He admits that “My people are with sickness much enfeebled, / My numbers lessened” (III. vi. 90), In all plays, war is depicted as exhilaration and opportunities for courage, juxtaposed with its horrors, grinding weariness, and inhumanity, build into a complex vision, a questioning of whether war can ever be fully justified (Taylor 44). Balanced situations serve mainly to provide foils for the King (cowardice versus bravery, for example), but they may also encourage us to perceive certain features, such as aggression and acquisitiveness, which are shared by both parties, and thus to reassess our overall picture of Henry. Pistol’s cynical parting words to the Hostess, “Trust none; / For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes” (II. iii. 51-52), mirror Henry’s terrible disillusionment (Gurr 23). Not all the parallels between Pistol and Henry enhance the King’s image. Yet Pistol is usually so unscrupulous and predatory that we are not, in general, encouraged to interpret his actions as a sustained critique of the King’s enterprise; particularly toward the end of the play, they are the shadow that makes Henry appear all the brighter. While the opportunistic approach of the Eastcheap crew does lend the war a darker perspective, these characters never radically undermine Henry V’s cause in the way that Falstaff’s memorable soliloquy near the end of Henry IV, Part i cuts through pretensions to glory in battle. Most critics agree that they provide what Larry S. Champion calls “divergent angles of vision:” or burlesque of the war effort, rather than a damaging undercutting of the military heroics.
In sum, dramatic irony helps Shakespeare to portray the lack of strategic vision and inability of the kings to rule effectively. Shakespeare encompasses much portraying all kings s shrewd leaders who are coldly ruthless when they foresee danger for the army but also as furious, spontaneous avengers in the camp, to the point where they are no longer required to be temperate or magnanimous.
Works Cited
Champion, L. S. Perspective in Shakespeare’s English Histories. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.
Gurr, A. (ed.), Henry V. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Taylor, G. (ed.), Henry V. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Shakespeare, W. Henry V. (eds). Braunmuller, A.R., Orgel, S. Penguin Classics; New edition, 1999.
Shakespeare, W. edt. René Weis; Henry IV. Oxford University Press, 1997.