Shakespeare's Henry V (1990, Michael Bogdanov) pt 5 of 17 Video

Shakespeare's "King Henry V" from "The War of the Roses" (English Shakespeare Company, UK, 1990) is a direct filming, from the stage, of Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington's 7-play sequence based on Shakespeare's history plays.

Andrew Jarvis as the Dauphin,
Clyde Pollitt as the King of France,
Ian Burford as Exeter,
Hugh Sullivan as Constable of France,
Chorus - Barry Stanton

Director Michael Bogdanov

Notes by Richard Grant White (W.) and Edward Everett Hale:

line 10. "gulf" means here something like a maelstrom which sucks in waters. Cf. IV, iii, 82.

25. "morris-dance": a dance in which the performers were dressed in fantastic costumes and assumed fantastic characters. W.

27. "fantastically"; i. e. as by one ruled by fancy or fantasy or, as in the next line, the humour of any moment.

30. This slight difference of opinion indicates real factions at the French court

102. "in the bowels of the Lord": taken right out of Holinshed. W.

Prologue. This prologue gives us a fine description of what could not have been presented on Shakespeare's stage, — the embarkation of the King and his army, and the state of England left behind. We have a good example of Elizabethan poetry in place of what in a modern play might easily be spectacular realism.

9. whistle of the boatswain.

14. rivage = bank. (Fr.) W.