Overview

For this updated edition of Shakespeare's most celebrated war play, Andrew Gurr has added a new section to his introduction which considers recent critical and stage interpretations. He analyzes the play's double vision of Henry as both military hero and self-seeking individual and demonstrates how the patriotic declarations of the Chorus are contradicted by the play's action. Gurr analyzes the play's more controversial sequences in the context of Elizabethan thought, in particular, the studies of the laws and morality of war written in the years before Henry V. An updated reading list completes the edition.