The “Breaches” of Shakespeare’s The Life of King Henry the Fifth

The argument of this essay involves documenting the presence of dilation in Henry the Fifth. Rhetorical dilation suits Shakespeare’s presentation of Henry as a heroic king, chiefly in the staging of his reconquering France in the spirit of his great-grandfather, Edward III. Nevertheless, the playwright qualifies the heroic swellings in this play whose virile monarch made it appealing to Londoners dissatisfied with aging, childless Queen Elizabeth by introducing into it literal and figurative breaches of various wholes, whether a national boundary or an army. Rifts in these entities often possess social overtones with political implications for England’s national expansion and ethnic inclusion, as well as for the possibility of imperial rule elsewhere. Finally, the presence of breaches in a dilated entity provides a way of understanding how the notoriously discordant elements in Henry’s character—his capacities for Machiavellian intrigue, heroic valor, and Christian piety—can coexist without the denial of or preference for any one of them.