A Little Touch of Harry in the Light: Henry V at the New Globe

Summary

With the play’s many direct appeals to audience members to piece out its imperfections with their thoughts, Shakespeare’s Henry V was a fitting choice to open the inaugural season at the new Globe, the meticulous replica of the original built with the primary goal of recreating the active dynamic that seems to have existed between the players and audiences in Shakespeare’s time. In the afternoon performance I attended (29 August 1997), the spectators were indeed, as Artistic Director Mark Rylance wrote, ‘recognized and empowered in their creative role as imaginers of the drama’, and a large portion of them responded with enthusiasm. When the Chorus asked at the outset, ‘Can this cock-pit hold / The vasty fields of France?’ (I Cho. 11–12), a rousing swell of ‘Yeahs;!’ came in answer. In this the audience was affirming not only its role as participants in the imaginative recreation of past military glory - which is the role in which the original audiences were cast - but also a parallel role of recreating the past glory of Shakespeare’s Globe from what the Chorus would call ‘mock’ries’ (4 Cho. 53), and which, to critics of the new Globe project, reek of amusement park cheesiness. The vocal members of the audience were affirming, that is to say, their intention of overcoming the various strains involved in the imaginative labour demanded of them by the play itself and the particular circumstances of its current performance.