Metafiction, Henry V, and
Shakespearean Hypermedia
by Ronald Fedoruk
Vouchsafe to those that haue not read the Story,
That I may prompt them:
On 25th of October, 1415, the feast day of Saints Crispin
otice that the historical account of the Battle of Agincourt is written in the past tense, as indeed is most history; the act has been completed, remains complete. Because it is not subject to change, it can be referred to with consistency, and because of this we come to believe that such accounts have greater reliability as fact.
Traditional storytelling practices are very complex around the issue of tense. The Haida poet Skaay opens Raven Travellng with "Hereabouts was all salt water, they say". Or how familiar is the fairy talle beginning "Once upon a time". Both these conventional openings achieve two purposes: to authoritatively situate the story in a distant and unquestionable past; and to invite us into an imaginary environment where we will be asked to suspend our disbelief and/or take part in an active creation of knowing.
Shakespeare's account of the Battle of Agincourt is in the present tense. This switch is not incidental. Regardless of the completion of the actual event sometime in the past, Chorus is presenting this reconstuction here and now, and every time it is performed, it lives anew in the imagination of the audience. It requires consistent recreation and continuous reimaging by successive audiences in order to survive.
The scene illustrates but the idea, not any actual action, in a hymen (out of which flows Dream), tainted with vice yet sacred, between desire and fulfilment, perpetuation and remembrance: here anticipating, there recalling, in the future, in tthe past, under the false appearance of the present. That is how Mime operates, whose act is confined to a perpetual allusion without breaking the ice or the mirror: he thus sets up a medium, a pure medium of fiction. (Mallarm�, Derrida)
We have grown accustomed to the fixidity of the written text. It is always available in essentially the same form to multiple readers even if those readers span several generations and several centuries. The reader can access the text directly, without an intermediate storyteller. The reader is always in the present, while the text can be the past, the present, or the future. Once that relationship is established, it usually stays consistent throughout the story.
In oral communication on the other hand, it is a much more fluid relationship between reader and text. The audience's experience of the text always requires the intervention and meditation of the narrator. The narrator exists in the present along with the audience, and therefore pulls the story into the present as well. In performance, even when the role-identity of the character may be an historical figure, the I-identity of the of the actor is always in the present. We are constantly being pulled by both concepts. Actors may be able to tell us of past events, but they cannot act in the past tense. Chorus may take us on imaginary excursions into the past, but will always relinquish the stage to a scene that takes place in the present tense. Virtual worlds exist in the present tense.
The performance of a play is a reactualization of time, not precisely the time that the author spent writing, but an idealized temporal fragment measured out of his or her lived time and reserved for the play... Spectators, by being present at the play, assume the performance time into their lived time. (Gebauer and Wulf, 202)
As well as the actor, we the audience must always have an I-identity in the present tense. Just as with the construction of space, Chorus may takeover our imagination whenever and for as long as he pleases. But even while we allow this captivation, we are always aware of ourselves in the theatre and we are always aware of the real passage of real time. It is obviously not enough to say that thearical time is the present, if indeed we can be conscious of the passage time at several different rates and several different tenses simultaneously. In discussing the perception of time in sequential art, Scott McCloud draws a similar conclusion: "Both past and future are real and visible and all around us". (McCloud 104)
Theatrical time is really virtual time: "so swift a pace hath thought" (2865), and armed with with this insight, Shakespeare creates several varied, sometimes overlapping, temporal fragments, expanding and contracting time as the occasion requires it. Though most scenes are performed at a tempo that replicates the lived time referred to by Gebauer and Wulf, in Henry V Shakespeare shows us at least three ways to manipulate time.
The first is an obvious device for the playwright: if you want to adjust time, just tell us. We have already discussed that Chorus continually expects instant sceneshifts from Southampton to France then to London, "Turning th' accomplishment of many yeeres / Into an Howre-glasse"(31). Just as this direction works to compress our spatial awareness, it equally can alter our temporal awareness, instantly changing the percieved duration and our situation in either the past or present. The cinematic equvalent is the wavey, misty, crossfading special effect that signals the flashback or the memory sequence.
At the other extreme, in Act IV, Scene 1, Henry has a long soliloquy on the heavy and thankless yoke of leadership. The soliloquy is really a time-out, allowing the natural progression of the plot to stop for a while so that Henry (and we the audience) can reflect on an important thematic point. The speech takes some minutes to perform and expresses at great length an idea that, were it left unvoiced, might only occupy a few seconds' thought.
After his famous "band of brothers" speech in Act IV, Scene 3, Henry leaves the stage. He returns in Scene 5 to hear the results of the St. Crispian's Day battle which, with the exception of the short rather comic encounter between Pistol and a French Soldier, has happened offstage and out of our knowledge. The battle apparently and conveniently took exactly the same amount of time as Scene 4; an entire campaign waged in the length of time it takes for the French Soldier to bribe Pistol.
At the very least we must abandon the strict cause and effect linear notion of time. Virtual time is elastic; a conspiracy that is only possible with the complicity of the audience. The rules for this conspiracy is laid out in the Prologue, "Admit me Chorus to this Historie"(33).
and Crispinian, Henry lead his small, exhausted English army
against the might of the French chivalry at Agincourt. An
estimated 5,000-6,000 English troops opposed a massive
and of such as haue,
2855 Which cannot in their huge and proper life,
Now we beare the King Toward Callice: Graunt him there; there seene, Heaue him away vpon your winged thoughts, Athwart the Sea: Behold the English beach 2860 Pales in the flood; with Men, Wiues, and Boyes, Whose shouts & claps out-voyce the deep-mouth'd Sea, Which like a mightie Whiffler 'fore the King, Seemes to prepare his way: So let him land, And solemnly see him set on to London. 2865 So swift a pace hath Thought, that euen now You may imagine him vpon Black-Heath: His bruised Helmet, and his bended Sword Before him, through the Citie: he forbids it, 2870 Being free from vain-nesse, and selfe-glorious pride; Giuing full Trophee, Signall, and Ostent, Quite from himselfe, to God. But now behold, In the quick Forge and working-house of Thought, How London doth powre out her Citizens, 2875 The Maior and all his Brethren in best sort, Like to the Senatours of th' antique Rome, With the Plebeians swarming at their heeles, Goe forth and fetch their Conqu'ring Caesar in: As by a lower, but by louing likelyhood, 2880 Were now the Generall of our gracious Empresse, As in good time he may, from Ireland comming, Bringing Rebellion broached on his Sword; How many would the peacefull Citie quit, To welcome him? much more, and much more cause, 2885 Did they this Harry. Now in London place him. As yet the lamentation of the French Inuites the King of Englands stay at home: The Emperour's comming in behalfe of France, To order peace betweene them: and omit 2890 All the occurrences, what euer chanc't, Till Harryes backe returne againe to France: There must we bring him; and my selfe haue play'd The interim, Preliminary evidence suggests that the perceived timing of an by remembring you 'tis past. Then brooke abridgement, and your eyes aduance, 2895 After your thoughts, straight backe againe to France. Exit.
the same way that virtual memory provides an abstraction of
real memory.
event changes if you caused the event.