Metafiction, Henry V, and
Shakespearean Hypermedia
by Ronald Fedoruk
Enter Chorus.
Thus farre with rough, and all-vnable Pen,
3370 In little roome confining mightie men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
hakespeare has always been a very popular dramatist, even during his own lifetime. His value as a writer is obviously due to his genius, but it is increased in the minds of the population because of their familiarity with it. Once a writer's work becomes part of the popular culture it has a great potential to influence that culture simply because it gets repeated regularily and by a significant number of people. The more the text is reiterated, the more credibility it acquires, and eventually it situates itself in the actual history of England and becomes accepted as fact.
Shakespeare might well have felt the need to reassert the story of Henry. As their name "The Lord Chamberlain's Men" indicates, Shakespeare and his company were sponsored by the Crown. In the spirit of "not biting the hand that feeds", it was obviously in the company's interest to present a history that would either flatter the current Queen or at least would help legitimize her reign. Shakespeare's contibution to the regal story is a series of plays extolling the virues of Henry V and VI, whence came Elizabeth's legitimacy, and a play demonizing Richard III, from whose cosanguines might come the only other claim to rule.
The success of theatrical performativity is well illustrated by this example. For over 500 years Richard has been vilified for the murder of his nephews. This poor opinion derives principally from Sir Thomas More's biography (written to legitimize Henry VIII), and Shakepeare's version of the Tragedy of Richard III. Both texts have been either read or performed regularily over generations, so that now the prevailing view is of Richard as the incarnation of evil. This in spite of tantalizing evidence that Richard may in fact have been innocent. And though Henry might have been an able warlord, he did not actually have enough time on the throne to prove himself the paragon that Shakespeare describes. The truth in either case is, of course, secondary, Shakespeare has made the story so compelling, and it has become so well established that we have no desire to contradict it. It has become fact.
Theatre is particularily effective in this regard because performance is always a social event. It needs a performer and audience and is therefore always open to the conspiracy between the two. The present tense imperative of the preformance creates an immediacy that makes the medium transparent and the text authoritative. The actor performing, narrating, demonstrating is a believable and more importantly, enjoyable. Spatial and temporal plasticity makes possible wild leaps of logic. And then there is Chorus. Whenever we are unsure of our participation in creating this story, Chorus is there to set us right.
3375 And of it left his Sonne Imperiall Lord.
Social performance is a copy that instantaneously reproduces
itself by being viewed thus disseminated to others who will
potentially incorporate the performative action into their own
technologies of self.
Henry the Sixt, in Infant Bands crown'd King
Whose State so many had the managing,
That they lost France, and made his England bleed:
3380 Which oft our Stage hath showne; and for their sake,
The ludology/narratology split also misses an important element,
in my view: the role that games play in providing a perceived
In your faire minds let this acceptance take.
Finis.
