Henry\u27s Order to Kill Prisoners at the Battle of Agincourt

Andrew Gurr points out that there are three events in Shakespeare\u27s Henry V which do not exist in The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (1598): the revelation about the conspiracy to kill Henry at Southampton, Henry\u27s assault on the town of Harfleur and his order to kill the captives at the Battle of Agincourt. Why did Shakespeare have Henry V 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 expansion of his country abroad, which led him to give the order to kill prisoners at the battle. My second 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 laughter of the kind found in Falstaff. Before embarking on writing his tragedies, he was determined to quell the comic elements in his plays. Therefore, after this play he could permit himself the cynical wit of Hamlet and other plays, but not the direct humour of earlier works