There were a lot of Henrys...

Since my last post was less than scholarly, I wanted to rectify myself and add a scholarly search that I did for Henry V. I wandered around for awhile searching the Lee Library's Shakespearean index and found a couple of great articles, one that I marked to read at a later date and the one I will post on today.

I found myself more fascinated than I thought I'd be with the war aspect in Henry V. I was curious to get more background information on it, because frankly cliffnotes left me less than satisfied. The synopsis seemed a little too vague since I didn't know enough of the history at the time of Henry V. So I did my own digging and found this little tidbit of knowledge that I found rather intriguing.

"However, though the King insists that the victory of Agincourt is not his but God's, Shakespeare's depiction of Henry and of the way events unfold suggests otherwise. Henry follows his father Bolingbroke's footsteps in thinking and behaving as if the outcome of events is decided by his own courage and cleverness. The elder Henry plans a holy war against the Turks as a means to quell civil war at home and to ease his conscience for usurping the throne, and his dying words include the advice to his son to 'busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels' to solidify his shaky regime (II Henry IV 4.5.213-14). And immediately following the Chorus's opening invocation of Henry's divine mission, we eavesdrop on a backroom conversation revealing that he has secured the Archbishop's sanction for the invasion of France in return for his agreement to block the bill in Commons that would force the church to pay taxes to support the sick and indigent. Incidents like these suggest that Shakespeare exposes holy war as a device manipulated by Kings for political ends, confirming what Stephen Greenblatt calls '...the most radically subversive hypothesis in his culture about the origin and function of religion'. That hypothesis was formulated by Machiavelli in his account of the ancient Roman practice of securing popular support for the state with the pretence of piety. The wisest leaders, Machiavelli claimed, are those who 'foster and encourage [religion] even though they be convinced that it is quite fallacious. And the more should they do this the greater their prudence and the more they know of natural laws.'" Holy War in Henry the Fifth 


So despite what Henry V claimed that he fought only for God, Shakespeare clearly disagreed and took his poetic license to say that the war was political in nature. Which honestly really makes sense...so my question is, Is it merely poetic license on Shakespeare's part or do you really think that Henry IV started the war for political reasons, despite his statement?