Henry V, Julius Caesar, and the building of the Globe:

Together with a deficient setting at the ageing Curtain, the absence of Falstaff from Henry V gave Shakespeare much to apologise for, which may explain the unusual employment of a conciliatory chorus for that play.114 _{The most substantial indication of a date for the play,} which allows us in part to assign its probable first performance to the Curtain–despite the surmise that it was intended to inaugurate the Globe–is the sharply topical reference embedded in the speech given by the chorus at the start of act 5. Shakespeare incites the audience imaginatively to associate the homecoming of King Henry from Agincourt with major events past and present:

But now behold, In the quick forge and working-house of thought, How London doth pour out her citizens.

The Mayor and all his brethren, in best sort,

113 _{“Obs. corruption of cognizance n., a badge, etc.” (“cullison, n.” OED). This citation of Q1}

is taken from Irace, ed. The First Quarto of Hamlet.

114 _{On the rarity of choric figures in Shakespeare's works other than in Henry V: “Apart from}

the prologues to Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida, and the Ancient Gower of Pericles, there are only the opening Rumour painted with tongues and the apologetic Epilogue to 2 Henry IV” (Gurr, King Henry V 6). The Two Noble Kinsmen also employs a prologue and an epilogue.

Like to the senators of th'antique Rome With the plebeians swarming at their heels, Go forth and fetch their conqu'ring Caesar in– As, by a lower but high-loving likelihood, Were now the General of our gracious Empress– As in good time he may–from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broachèd on his sword, How many would the peaceful city quit, To welcome him!

(Henry V 5.0.22-34) The “General of our gracious Empress” is the Earl of Essex, who departed on a military expedition on behalf of the Queen to suppress rebel forces in Ireland on 27 March 1599.115 _{Commenting on the striking} transparency of this allusion by Shakespeare, Gary Taylor has described it as “the only explicit, extra-dramatic, incontestable reference to a contemporary event anywhere in the canon” (7).116 _{Although the} involvement of Essex in this venture had been rumoured since November 1598, his appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was finally confirmed only in January, so we are on safer ground in supposing that Shakespeare wrote at least this passage after the Christmas season of 1598-99. Craik states that “Henry V was acted between March 1599, once it was generally known that Essex was going to Ireland, and September of that year,” but he adds the proviso that the choruses may have been late additions to a play written somewhat earlier. Craik himself, however, sees the choruses as “an integral part of the design” (3). The date of the Earl's disgraced return to England on 28 September 1599 is sometimes cited, as by Craik, as a terminus ante quem for composition of Henry V. Yet Essex had “encountered the first blasts of Elizabeth's anger” already in July, upon repairing to Dublin following a botched foray to Munster, so it is likely that his failures were public knowledge by midsummer 1599 (Williams, P. 368). Taylor thus concludes that “completion of Shakespeare's play can be firmly dated from January to June 1599” (5).

The above details allow us to suppose that Shakespeare put the finishing touches to Henry V in the early months of 1599, most likely March and April, and had probably initially intended for it to be first

115 _{See note 95 above.}

116 _{Craik addresses–and swiftly dismisses–an alternative explanation of the allusion that has}

performed at the Globe that summer.117 _{Its conditions of production and} performance, however, were far from ideal, with Gurr citing several signs of discontinuity in composition:

Characters are introduced and then abandoned […], the Chorus tells of the army shipping from Dover when he has already announced the port as Southampton (3.0.4), and he ignores the comic characters who open Acts 2 and 5, so that their arrival makes nonsense of his announcements about the locality and the passage of time. (Gurr, King Henry V 2)

Another indication of a problematic production process for Henry V may be seen in Act 4, where the Chorus excuses the “ridiculous” representation of the battle of Agincourt that is to follow:

And so our scene must to the battle fly, Where O for pity, we shall much disgrace, With four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous, The name of Agincourt.

(Henry V 4.0.48-52) From what we can discern in the extant texts, not so many as “four or five most vile and ragged foils” ever appear, and the battle takes place offstage. As mentioned at the start of the present chapter, such an apology might serve to elevate its subject matter irrespective of where it is staged, but the absence of even an attempt at a major battle scene in the play suggests that what had been planned for the Globe was cut for the Curtain. This incongruous apology may be another indicator of textual alteration on account of working conditions, and it supports the notion that Shakespeare's dramaturgy was confined by the “girdle” of the old playhouse.

The more likely play to have been Shakespeare's first offering at the Globe is Julius Caesar. As mentioned in the Introduction to this

117 _{In her article entitled “The Globe and Henry V as Business Document,” Melissa D. Aaron}

suggests that, just as the Chamberlain's Men staged Jonson's Every Man Out Of His Humour at the Globe to follow Every Man In His Humour at the Curtain, Henry V–as the sequel to the successful 2 Henry IV–might have been planned to open the Globe, as it “would encourage a reluctant audience to travel and see the brand-new theater in Southwark, in the same way that Every Man In might have served as an appeal to come and see Every Man Out” (280).

study (34), it was seen performed there by Thomas Platter on 21 September 1599, and this was not necessarily its first performance. Therefore, Henry V and Julius Caesar were probably written consecutively over the few months which spanned the building of the Globe. These plays may thus be seen as bookends to two very different periods in Shakespeare's career: that of controversy and uncertainty at the Theatre and Curtain between 1596 and 1599, and that of professional security and great artistic development at the Globe between 1599 and 1608. As such, it should be noted that the troubled textual history of Henry V, with its excisions and alterations caused by turbulent political and professional circumstances, contrasts with the “unusually clean” text of Julius Caesar, which was first published in the 1623 Folio and contains remarkably few errors (Humphreys, Julius Caesar 73). Moreover, where Henry V asks its audience for forgiveness, Julius Caesar is unapologetic and ambitious in its staging. Act 5 of Julius Caesar delivers what act 4 of Henry V does not attempt, insofar as its stage directions, in act 5 of the Folio text, call for armies to pass over the stage. We may infer that Shakespeare's enlarged cache of dramatic resources, at a playhouse presumably custom-built to his specifications, enabled him to set his sights higher than the strained conditions surrounding Henry V had allowed. The notion that Julius Caesar was a success on the stage is supported by words of praise–at Jonson's expense–many years later, from Leonard Digges (1588-1635):

So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare, And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were, Brutus and Cassius: oh how the Audience

Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence, When some new day they would not brooke a line, Of tedious (though well laboured) Catiline.118