HENRY V AND MEMORY ON SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORICAL PLAYS

Abstract

Shakespeare’s histories stage political events from England’s medieval past. This paper investigates how the histories in general, and Henry V, in particular, relate to the themes of memory, history, and to the invention of a national identity. At least since Ernest Renan, it has been proposed that nationhood does not lie as much in linguistic, ethnic or religious identity as it does in the possession of a collective memory. And memory always entails a particular interpretation of reality. Shakespeare’s histories both engage with Elizabethan conceptions of history and help imagining a collective past by remembering and forgetting historical events.