『ヘンリー五世』における捕虜殺害命令

概要

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Andrew Gurr points out that there are three events in Shakespeare's Henry V which donot exist in The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (1598): the revelation about theconspiracy to kill Henry at Southampton, Henry's assault on the town of Harfleur and hisorder to kill the captives at the Battle of Agincourt. Why did Shakespeare have HenryV issue a command to kill his prisoners? It surely shows one side of his atrocious character.In this paper, I argue that Shakespeare was influenced by the idea of his day- the expansionof his country abroad, which led him to give the order to kill prisoners at the battle. Mysecond proposal in this paper is that Shakespeare wanted to kill laughter in his play.Following his historical plays he turned to writing tragedies, never to return to laughterof the kind found in Falstaff. Before embarking on writing his tragedies, he was determinedto quell the comic elements in his plays. Therefore, after this play he could permit himselfthe cynical wit of Hamlet and other plays, but not the direct humour of earlier works.
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