War, Agriculture, and Poetry in Henry V
Shakespeare’s Henry V has been the
departure point for literature on topics ranging from psychology to state
formation to fashion (and
how it reflects/affects culture), but the content of Henry V as a text is
nothing if not a story about battle. The type of war waged between the French and English in Shakespeare’s play
is highly ceremonial, and the loss of lives predicted by both sides before the actual battle occurs is
(fore)told as necessary for the further survival of each land. There’s a
distinction here between land
(ground occupied) and Land (the Kings’ states and the cultures within those
borders). The treatment and
regulation of War as Practice in Henry V draws a link between war’s violence
and agriculture, as both are predicated on vivisections. Cultivating the soil, running forward
with swords, spears, arrows. The idea across both is to cut something open
while it is alive, as a means towards
controlling it.
Warfare is presented in agricultural terms as early as the Prologue. Before the play even begins, the Chorus tells the audience to “think, when we talk of horses, that you see them/ printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth” (Prlg. 27-28). The warhorse carries soldiers and brings them to each other; the horse’s hooves are also important mark-makers. Footprint dimples physically alter the landscape, exposing them as recording tools for History. The hoof’s imprint, here, is dutifully received by the Earth (or, that’s how one should think they see it). The lines of print pounded into the ground by masses of galloping horses liken the pre-war field to the loosened, irregular texture of tilled soil, waiting for seeds to be thrown down.
Agriculture and war require vivisections that are particularly well-timed, skillful, and precise. The timing of a blade swing will determine who from which side will die. In the field, seeds need to be disseminated at just the right moment to ensure a fruitful harvest. There is planning ahead and proper form. Even today, across American vernacular, we find see in the field being used as a phrase to refer to a state of violence. But the field, somehow, is a nostalgically peaceful place. The very act of vivisection fuels agriculture and war, and it could be the act that makes those practices a focal point in human activity. Cutting-through secures power, and removes doubt surrounding one’s agency. For many, it is reassuring.
In Act III’s prologue, the Chorus tells that audience that “the shrill whistle” of war “doth order give/ to sounds confused,” indicating war’s value as an organizational (and agricultural) tool (3.10-11). The battle sound doesn’t just give order to the confused soldiers; it is the Whistle, a tool and metaphor for the human organizational power, bringing order to the natural realm (in a shrill, violent way). The obsession with subsuming the natural world within one’s sphere/domain of power is couched in people’s efforts to wage war in and cultivate land. Yet, before that conquering goes underway, there is a fundamental divide constructed between whatever Human points to and whatever Nature points to.
War’s justification often requires one group to build a Human/Nature wall (which is also a dualism, since it is the wall and only the wall which creates a fake dualism), and to de-humanize another group so they may be lined up, cultivated, and harvested by the Real People. The idea of nature as fundamentally lesser than the human mind feeds the ego with the possibility of conquering. It leads us to agriculture, where we put into order and make efficient natural processes of the ground.
When the urge to control (and destroy) extends from person-land towards the person and another, an essential irony in the man/nature binary is exposed: War as population control, war as cultivation of the cultural spirit (and here, even the etymological connection laying bare between cultivation and culture), war as an agriculture of the people, where blood spilled in honor fertilizes and strengthens the Land. These diverse components point towards the inseparability of man and nature. People are in love with this distinction, between the noble faculties of Man’s Mind and the lowly illogic of nature. They would kill you before letting that wall collapse. Henry V insists on showing that they are the same. Again, people look out on the Sun over the field with peaceful nostalgia. What is peaceful about what has been done to land, or to people? About what is constantly happening? They only want to dominate nature, and their neighbors.
The French King, in Act IV, “longs to eat the English” and “will eat all he kills” because the line between human and nature has been blurred through violence. He becomes confused, launching into a frenzy where harmony could be recognized. Because both the soldier-citizen and the crop and livestock have been born and bread from the same soil in the same way (3.7.93-94). King Henry calls on his men, the good “yeomen,/ whose limbs were made in England” to “show us here/ the mettle of your pasture,” cementing the analogy between soldier and crop (3.2.26-29). The worth of the English soldier’s land, their very strength and humanity, is to be determined by how effectively they will be able to fertilize it with the blood of the French (as
well as their own). The limbs or the English soldiers are pictured as disparate parts, sprouting from the ground. The Lands of France and England themselves are symbolized unitarily through agricultural terms as well: gardens, vineyards, withering flowers, and so on (3.5.4, 5.2.37, 5.2.40).
War, in Henry V, takes on a ceremonial and religious quality that deepens its likeness to agriculture, going beyond itself as a method of conflict-resolution between ruling groups. Early on, King Henry ensures his cabinet that “we are not tyrant, but a Christian king,” and that, when going to war, Englishmen’s thoughts should be only of the French, “save those [thoughts] to God, that run before our business” (1.2.249, 1.2.315-316). Going to war, for Harry, is no more than a means of validating his Christianity, and thus his authority, which is bestowed to him through a Christian god. The played-up feud between the thrones, the anger towards the French that is supposed to fuel the English soldiers’ resolve to kill them all, must take a back seat for the thoughts of that god and one’s duty towards it. The ceremony-- both of murdering and of dying, is what will edify the English kingdom as righteously Christian.
Henry’s prophecy that “either our history shall with full mouth/ speak freely of our acts, or else our grave” is expressed ambivalence (1.2.238-239). For him, it is of less importance which side really comes out on top, and more important that the war in general take place. History will do what it may, speaking of acts and graves, but the task at hand is to conduct a war ceremony, the rites of which are both sacrificial murder and amicicide. Like planting and harvesting, each with their own festivals and events for their respective cultures and seasons, war needs to happen for History to be full-mouthed.
King Henry suggests at one point that they “close the wall up with our English dead,” which comes off as sardonic, but which is also a real signifier for the security that the sacrifice of war is meant to provide (3.1.3). Losing some of their own soldiers in martyrdom means honorable blood has been let out, enriching the soil and fortifying England’s borders. The Dauphin, too, remarks that “‘twere more honor some were away” in reference to the death of his own soldiers (3.7.77). And, in Act V, scene II, right after this monumental battle, relations between the King of France and King Henry return to cordiality. The green thumb and the red thumb are sought after by both sides. The sacrificial, fertilizing nature of war is believed in by both peoples.
I feel there is a particularly masculine arrogance to this ceremonial, fertilizing idea of War. The obsession with organization and cultivation in agriculture hints at a belief that the soil of the earth is not fertile enough unless there is something (a person, a tool) to fertilize it (literally, to make it fertile). A similar obsession is at play when believing a culture cannot have merit, or that a people cannot be strong, if they don’t directly experience dying or killing another to fertilize the spirit. There is an additional corollary at play in the sexualization and subjugation of women. Boy (not even namedtheBoy in the play, just the objective, universal form of the word) says that people like Pistol and Nym, fools of the narrative, “could not be man” ever in his eyes because Pistol has “a quiet sword” and Nym “never broke any man’s head but his own” (3.2.30-42). Without having ever enacted a vivisection upon another person, they literally cannot be considered men, and are made throughout the entire play as the dumber characters of the lot.
War and Agriculture are organizational tools, fulfilling a sense of control. They become rituals and affirmations, ceremonies towards knowledge and possession of a thing, against uncertainty. The prologue to Act IV is an ominous, premonitory night, where darkness fuels doubt and makes soldiers on both sides fearful. King Henry, in the morning, proclaims that when doubt is removed, “the organs, though defunct and dead before,/ break up their drowsy grave and newly move/ with casted slough and fresh legrity” (4.1.20-23). It’s a fear of the dark that demands knowledge in its most aggressive forms-- in hacking and slashing, and neutralizing the threat.
Warfare is presented in agricultural terms as early as the Prologue. Before the play even begins, the Chorus tells the audience to “think, when we talk of horses, that you see them/ printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth” (Prlg. 27-28). The warhorse carries soldiers and brings them to each other; the horse’s hooves are also important mark-makers. Footprint dimples physically alter the landscape, exposing them as recording tools for History. The hoof’s imprint, here, is dutifully received by the Earth (or, that’s how one should think they see it). The lines of print pounded into the ground by masses of galloping horses liken the pre-war field to the loosened, irregular texture of tilled soil, waiting for seeds to be thrown down.
Agriculture and war require vivisections that are particularly well-timed, skillful, and precise. The timing of a blade swing will determine who from which side will die. In the field, seeds need to be disseminated at just the right moment to ensure a fruitful harvest. There is planning ahead and proper form. Even today, across American vernacular, we find see in the field being used as a phrase to refer to a state of violence. But the field, somehow, is a nostalgically peaceful place. The very act of vivisection fuels agriculture and war, and it could be the act that makes those practices a focal point in human activity. Cutting-through secures power, and removes doubt surrounding one’s agency. For many, it is reassuring.
In Act III’s prologue, the Chorus tells that audience that “the shrill whistle” of war “doth order give/ to sounds confused,” indicating war’s value as an organizational (and agricultural) tool (3.10-11). The battle sound doesn’t just give order to the confused soldiers; it is the Whistle, a tool and metaphor for the human organizational power, bringing order to the natural realm (in a shrill, violent way). The obsession with subsuming the natural world within one’s sphere/domain of power is couched in people’s efforts to wage war in and cultivate land. Yet, before that conquering goes underway, there is a fundamental divide constructed between whatever Human points to and whatever Nature points to.
War’s justification often requires one group to build a Human/Nature wall (which is also a dualism, since it is the wall and only the wall which creates a fake dualism), and to de-humanize another group so they may be lined up, cultivated, and harvested by the Real People. The idea of nature as fundamentally lesser than the human mind feeds the ego with the possibility of conquering. It leads us to agriculture, where we put into order and make efficient natural processes of the ground.
When the urge to control (and destroy) extends from person-land towards the person and another, an essential irony in the man/nature binary is exposed: War as population control, war as cultivation of the cultural spirit (and here, even the etymological connection laying bare between cultivation and culture), war as an agriculture of the people, where blood spilled in honor fertilizes and strengthens the Land. These diverse components point towards the inseparability of man and nature. People are in love with this distinction, between the noble faculties of Man’s Mind and the lowly illogic of nature. They would kill you before letting that wall collapse. Henry V insists on showing that they are the same. Again, people look out on the Sun over the field with peaceful nostalgia. What is peaceful about what has been done to land, or to people? About what is constantly happening? They only want to dominate nature, and their neighbors.
The French King, in Act IV, “longs to eat the English” and “will eat all he kills” because the line between human and nature has been blurred through violence. He becomes confused, launching into a frenzy where harmony could be recognized. Because both the soldier-citizen and the crop and livestock have been born and bread from the same soil in the same way (3.7.93-94). King Henry calls on his men, the good “yeomen,/ whose limbs were made in England” to “show us here/ the mettle of your pasture,” cementing the analogy between soldier and crop (3.2.26-29). The worth of the English soldier’s land, their very strength and humanity, is to be determined by how effectively they will be able to fertilize it with the blood of the French (as
well as their own). The limbs or the English soldiers are pictured as disparate parts, sprouting from the ground. The Lands of France and England themselves are symbolized unitarily through agricultural terms as well: gardens, vineyards, withering flowers, and so on (3.5.4, 5.2.37, 5.2.40).
War, in Henry V, takes on a ceremonial and religious quality that deepens its likeness to agriculture, going beyond itself as a method of conflict-resolution between ruling groups. Early on, King Henry ensures his cabinet that “we are not tyrant, but a Christian king,” and that, when going to war, Englishmen’s thoughts should be only of the French, “save those [thoughts] to God, that run before our business” (1.2.249, 1.2.315-316). Going to war, for Harry, is no more than a means of validating his Christianity, and thus his authority, which is bestowed to him through a Christian god. The played-up feud between the thrones, the anger towards the French that is supposed to fuel the English soldiers’ resolve to kill them all, must take a back seat for the thoughts of that god and one’s duty towards it. The ceremony-- both of murdering and of dying, is what will edify the English kingdom as righteously Christian.
Henry’s prophecy that “either our history shall with full mouth/ speak freely of our acts, or else our grave” is expressed ambivalence (1.2.238-239). For him, it is of less importance which side really comes out on top, and more important that the war in general take place. History will do what it may, speaking of acts and graves, but the task at hand is to conduct a war ceremony, the rites of which are both sacrificial murder and amicicide. Like planting and harvesting, each with their own festivals and events for their respective cultures and seasons, war needs to happen for History to be full-mouthed.
King Henry suggests at one point that they “close the wall up with our English dead,” which comes off as sardonic, but which is also a real signifier for the security that the sacrifice of war is meant to provide (3.1.3). Losing some of their own soldiers in martyrdom means honorable blood has been let out, enriching the soil and fortifying England’s borders. The Dauphin, too, remarks that “‘twere more honor some were away” in reference to the death of his own soldiers (3.7.77). And, in Act V, scene II, right after this monumental battle, relations between the King of France and King Henry return to cordiality. The green thumb and the red thumb are sought after by both sides. The sacrificial, fertilizing nature of war is believed in by both peoples.
I feel there is a particularly masculine arrogance to this ceremonial, fertilizing idea of War. The obsession with organization and cultivation in agriculture hints at a belief that the soil of the earth is not fertile enough unless there is something (a person, a tool) to fertilize it (literally, to make it fertile). A similar obsession is at play when believing a culture cannot have merit, or that a people cannot be strong, if they don’t directly experience dying or killing another to fertilize the spirit. There is an additional corollary at play in the sexualization and subjugation of women. Boy (not even namedtheBoy in the play, just the objective, universal form of the word) says that people like Pistol and Nym, fools of the narrative, “could not be man” ever in his eyes because Pistol has “a quiet sword” and Nym “never broke any man’s head but his own” (3.2.30-42). Without having ever enacted a vivisection upon another person, they literally cannot be considered men, and are made throughout the entire play as the dumber characters of the lot.
War and Agriculture are organizational tools, fulfilling a sense of control. They become rituals and affirmations, ceremonies towards knowledge and possession of a thing, against uncertainty. The prologue to Act IV is an ominous, premonitory night, where darkness fuels doubt and makes soldiers on both sides fearful. King Henry, in the morning, proclaims that when doubt is removed, “the organs, though defunct and dead before,/ break up their drowsy grave and newly move/ with casted slough and fresh legrity” (4.1.20-23). It’s a fear of the dark that demands knowledge in its most aggressive forms-- in hacking and slashing, and neutralizing the threat.
WORKS CITED
Shakespeare, William. The Life of Henry V, edited by the Folger Shakespeare Library, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York, 1995.