HENRY V: The King’s use of dissimulation and lying

Throughout the whole of the play King Henry V plays to the naïveté of the people who populate his country in order to gain from them what will ultimately benefit him. At the very start of the play the reader is given an insight into the theatrical presentation that Henry will put on by a look into his past as told by the Bishop of Ely in Act 1 Scene 1: “And so the prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness[SM1] ;”

Henry’s young adult years were spent gallivanting about with apparently little attention paid to matters of the kingdom and learning to rule. So successfully did Henry’s reputation precede him that the Dauphin failed to take him seriously in his quest for the throne of France.

But more than fool the Dauphin Henry learned to fool his own people. He knows that the only way to end the civil strife his country was accustomed to was by launching a war against France. "Be it thy course to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, May waste the memory of the former days."

Henry, looking to fool his people into following him into an unjust war asks the Bishops for a reason they will buy and believe in. In Act 1 Scene 2, after the solution is presented to him, Henry responds in such a way that the audience is made to understand that Henry knows the reasoning is merely a guise and not a true and just reason for waging war. “For we will hear, note and believe in heart That what you speak is in your conscience wash'd As pure as sin with baptism.”

Sin washed pure with baptism is a sin that we deceive ourselves into believing we are absolved of, for as our minds will not forget a sin that we have committed we are not truly pure. Only a purity as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden would a conscience that is truly clean.[SM2]

In Act 2 Scene 2 Henry once again uses the trickery he learned in his youth to turn the three traitors into the judges of their own fates. The King asks Cambridge, Scroop and Grey what to do with a hypothetical prisoner that he needs advice in punishing. It immediately follows that he presents the three with the knowledge that they intended to kill him in exchange for money from the French.

The King’s use of dissimulation and lying continues throughout the play but is put into a literal scene in Act 4 Scene 1 when he dons a cloak and wanders amongst his troops pretending to be a common soldier. This is preempted[SM3] by the fact that his troops are growing sickly and he understands that in their weekend[SM4] physical condition there may be growing discontent amongst the troops. The kings suspicions are confirmed when he happens upon Williams:

“But if the cause be not good, the King him-

Self hath a heavy reckoning to make…

There are few who die well that die in battle.

…Now, if these men do not die

Well, it will be a black matter for the King that led

Them to it…”

The troops confidence in the king is shaken. Henry needs to find a new way to steel their hearts. This leads to King Henry’s prayer later in the scene. This prayer is the ultimate in deception in that he is now turning to God who may be used as a scapegoat if all does not go in his favor. “Take from them now The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them.”

The King has now convinced himself that if they loose[SM5] , it was God’s will. Furthermore, those who die, die because God didn’t back them and not because Henry sent them to battle. In the end Henry succeeds in fooling himself most of all[SM6] . For as we look at history, the British did not maintain control of France and it was all for vain.