To What Extent Do You Agree That Shakespeare Presents Henry as ‘the Mirror of All Christian Kings’?

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Harrison Simmons To what extent do you agree that Shakespeare presents Henry as ‘the mirror of all Christian Kings’? During Henry the fifth Henry can be thought of in many different ways, however an older audience would respond very differently to modern audience. Henry could be seen as many different things by a more modern audience, such as: “the mirror to all Christian Kings” or he could be interpreted as a brutal and immature king. I believe that towards the start of the play Henry is portrayed as a very young and new king as you could tell he is very inexperienced. In the Chorus Henry is made known to be “war like” and is even compared with the “God of mars” who is the god of war and naturally would be the victor in all his wars. In an older audience this would be observed as very strong and a value only a great and majestic king would possess. On the other hand a modern audience might not find this a strong asset because attitudes to war have changed, such as being able to win a war with minimal casualties when in the olden days you would be a strong leader when you killed the more humans. A modern audience would see a king who got involved in a vast amount of wars to be immature and very ill-advised. Later in act one the king is shown as a feeble leader as two of his closest nobles and friends, Canterbury and Ely, continuously tease Henry with sarcastic tones and comments and also plot against him to get him off the throne. This shows a lack of respect towards the king by his nobles which would suggest to both and old audience and a modern audience that he is a weak king and he can’t control his own nobles/friends. During the jokes Canterbury and Ely are making behind Henry’s back, they hint that persuading Henry to go to war will be very easy, this is shown when they say, in a sarcastic tone of voice, “The King is full of grace and fair regard”. This
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