Overview
The vitality of Shakespeare's second tetralogy
of history plays has ensured its endurance for more than four centuries.
Brilliant in the way it relates high life to low life - against Henry
V's stirring "Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!" echoes
Falstaff's "Give me life, say I" - it is rich in its characterisation,
memorable in its rhetoric, crafty in its plotting. Cedric Watts, who has
been lecturing on Shakespeare for 40 years, argues that this is not
simply a sequence of wonderfully dramatic, entertaining plays; it is
part of England's cultural identity, and continues, even now, to
contribute to the shaping of that identity.