by William Shakespeare

By 1598, near the end of his first decade as a playwright, William Shakespeare had written a number of plays that dramatized England’s recent past. These plays concerned the struggles for control of the English throne that ravaged the country between 1399 and 1485. Henry V was the last of this set of plays to be written, and the only one that does not concentrate on the seizure of the English throne; rather, the triumphant reign of King Henry V, with its crowning jewel, the subjugation of the French at the Battle of Agincourt, provides the focus of the play. The play highlights a critical stage in the consolidation of authority under the English monarch.

Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place

The struggle for the English Crown. The reign of Henry V (1413-1422) constitutes one of the high points of the...