A Question of Authorship
The Famous Victories of Henry V and Henry IVAlicia Grossbauer 2009
As Literature evolves, one can read many authors, poets, and playwrights, some of which are more memorable than others. One of the greatest and most common is one from many centuries ago and is no other than William Shakespeare. His plays date back as early as the late sixteenth century and have been popular to a variety of ages since publication. He is one of the most influential authors of all time and can take credit for plots in today’s entertainment, from Disney’s 1994 animation, The Lion King to Gil Junger’s 1999 film, Ten Things I Hate About You, to Andy Fickman’s 2006 film, She’s the Man. Although Shakespeare is credible and well known, there is question as to whether or not he is the author of another piece of literature known as The Famous Victories of Henry V. There has been a great deal of debate on this topic. If Shakespeare was not the author, he “borrowed” the plot to write I Henry IV, II Henry IV, and Henry V, but if he was in fact the author, he simply used The Famous Victories of Henry V as an outline for a much lengthier version known as the Henry Trilogy. By studying both I Henry IV and The Famous Victories of Henry V, one may wonder if William Shakespeare was the creator, or borrower.
The question of Shakespeare’s authorship is posed in many different ways. The first question comes about when one looks at the dates of publication. The Famous Victories of Henry V is one of four plays to be written in a period of time, “three of the four were initially anonymous; the third, The Second part of Henrie the Fourth, bore the words “Written by William Shakespeare” on the title page (Jimenez). Another had the words “Newly corrected by W. Shake-speare” on it while “the authorship of the earliest, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, has never been established” (Jimenez). If Shakespeare was not the author of The Famous Victories of Henry V, Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, may be able to take credit. Other evidence shows that the four plays, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (1598), The History of Henrie the Fourth; With the battell at Shrewsburie, betweene the King and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the North (1598), The Second part of Henrie the Fourth, Continuing his Death and Coronation of Henrie the Fift (1600), and The Cronicle History of Henry the Fift, With his Battell Fought at Agin Court in France (1600) were written by the same man. “No scholar made a serious attempt to identify the author of The Famous Victories and to assess its relationship to the Shakespearean trilogy 1928, when the Oxfordian B.M. Ward asserted that it was written by Edward de Vere, and that it was the source for his Henry IV and Henry V trilogy” which is why the works are so similar (Jimenez).
These two literary works are very close in content, both with some of the same scenes and characters, not to mention an almost identical plot. Some are “convinced this anonymous play, published as an anonymous 1598 quarto…comes from Shakespeare” (Delahoyde). The similarities are found early on. It is interesting that the second scene of Henry IV, Part 1, is very close to the first scene of The Famous Victories of Henry V. When looking at the Shakespearean trilogy as a whole, it is also interesting that “the fifty seven scenes in the Henry plays are a logical expansion of the twenty scenes in The Famous Victories” (Jimenez). In 1954, C.A. Greer wrote and published an essay on the similarities, only to find that fifteen elements with in the plays are the same, some of them being, “the robbery of the King’s receivers; the meeting of the robbers in an Eastcheap Tavern; [and] the reconciliation of the newly-crowned King Henry V with the Chief Justice” (Jimenez). He also established that “not only are fifteen plot elements common to The Famous Victories and the Henry plays, they all occur in the same order” (Jimenez). Also, every scene in The Famous Victories is in a way used in Shakespeare’s plays.
So much has been written on Henry IV, in different plays, and by different authors because of such fascinating characters. King Henry IV may not have been the best king, but he is one people have found to be interesting. He had a “flawed title to his crown, blood on his hands, and debts in his pockets…a shrewed polititian and a competent soldier” (Saccio). He remained “king of England for nearly forty years” and was incompetent in politics and subject to occasional mental derangement” (Saccio). Also, popular characters help to make a play what it is, to keep the audience interested, and for more versions to be written to include them as well. “What gives 1 Henry IV life as a play and hope for mankind is the vitality of its two leading figures, both of whom must finally be sacrificed for political purposes” (Manheim). With different versions of King Henry’s story, readers can understand events through different characters, like the similarities and differences between 1 Henry IV and The Famous Victories of Henry V.
Henry the Fourth, Part 1, opens with Henry Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, wondering how he got to be King, so he must take a journey to the Holy Land. Trouble begins when his son, Hal, is found wasting his time in taverns with one of his friends, Sir John Falstaff, who is a fat drunk. Three categories of characters come together for battle at Shrewsbury. There are King Henry and his council, a group of rebels, and also the comedic characters, Prince Hal and his group, including Falstaff. King Henry is upset with Hotspur because he refuses to do as the King orders and does not turn the prisoners over to the King to be used for ransoms. The King is trapped in a highway robbery by Falstaff and his friends, while Prince Hal is drinking and thinks about the time when he will become King, and does not play a direct role in the robbery. He later returns all of the money that was stolen from his father because he wants to show him that he can be a loyal part of the royal court. He then commands Falstaff to go to battle at Shrewsbury. Prince Hal proves that he can be noble when he takes matters of the battle into his own hands and he will fight the rebels for the land. At battle Falstaff is still stealing money and claiming he has killed Hotspur when in actuality Prince Hal killed him. Henry IV ends with the battle when the King wins and is now able to execute an enemy, Thomas Percy, but still must fight the Archbishop of York, which is continued in Henry IV, part 2.
The Famous Victories of Henry V opens outside of London with the Prince asking how much money his friends have with them. A report was made about the Prince’s friends stealing money. The Prince guarantees his friends that half of the stolen money will be used that night at the tavern. Shakespeare “encountered some trouble” and “renamed this character as Falstaff in the versions of Henry IV we now have. But both characters also seem to have been somewhat based on Sir Nicholas Dawtry, in service to the Queen” (Delahoyde). The report leaves the Prince and his friends arrested. The King learns of his son’s arrest and does state that he is “a rude youth”, but they have locked up his son without royal permission (Satin). Next there is question about the robbery itself. The “Clerk reports that the robbery took place on May 20 in the fourteenth year of Henry IV’s reign” because “there was no May 20 in the fourteenth year of Henry IV’s reign since he died too soon (Delahoyde). When the Prince is losing an argument about the robbery, he punches the judge in the ear and is arrested, which is left out in the Shakespeare play. In jail he brags about what he did and thinks about when he will take the crown from his father. The King asks his son why he behaves the way he does and the response he gets is that he is unworthy of that life. They play continues and is grounds for Henry IV, Part 2.
These two plays are versions of the same story, only told in a different way. There are some differences, but mostly similarities between this anonymous play and the one by William Shakespeare. The question of authorship has been going on and on for more than two hundred years, and many more to come. There is no way of telling the true author of The Famous Victories of Henry V, but the date it was published may or may not be of some importance. It was printed in 1598, right around the time of the printing of Henry IV, Part 1, and the writing of Henry IV, Part 2. Shakespeare is one of the most well known playwrights, with his plots still being borrowed today, and maybe he did the same, by borrowing a plot from another playwright.
WORKS CITED
Bevington, David, ed. The Necessary Shakespeare. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2005.
Delahoyde, Michael, Dr. “The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth”. Washington
University. 1 November 2008 <http://www.wasu.edu/~delahoyde/shakespeare/victories.html>Jimenez, Ramon. “Shakespeare’s ‘Prince Hal’ Plays as Keys to the Authorship
Question”. Shakespeare Fellowship. 10 November 2008 < http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/jimenez5.htm>Manheim, Michael. The Weak King Dilemma in the Shakespearean History Play. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1973.
Saccio, Peter. Shakespeare’s English Kings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Satin, Joseph. Shakespeare and His Sources. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966.