Act 5: Peace & Marriage
Henry Woos Katherine (Act 5, Scene 2)
After the military triumph at Agincourt, Shakespeare shifts to a radically different register. Act 5, Scene 2 is an extended wooing scene in which Henry attempts to win Princess Katherine of France. He presents himself as a “plain soldier” who “cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my eloquence” — but this claim of simplicity is itself a rhetorical strategy. The audience has watched Henry deliver some of the most eloquent speeches in English literature; his pretence of plain-speaking is a deliberate performance designed to seem sincere.
The scene mixes English and French, creating comic confusion as Henry and Katherine struggle to communicate. Shakespeare uses the language barrier to generate humour, but it also carries serious implications. Katherine has very little genuine choice: the marriage is a political necessity sealed by the Treaty of Troyes. Her consent is a formality. When Henry says “you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion,” he is both charming and presumptuous — he assumes his will overrides both custom and Katherine’s own preferences.
Henry claims to be a “plain soldier” who cannot speak eloquently — but the audience knows he is the play’s supreme rhetorician. His pretence of simplicity is itself a performance. The wooing scene shows Henry code-switching once more: he uses a different register for love than for war, but both are calculated to achieve his objective.
The Treaty of Troyes
The marriage is sealed by the Treaty of Troyes, which makes Henry heir to the French throne. The French King agrees to all of Henry’s terms — not because of the wooing scene but because of the military defeat at Agincourt. Love and politics are inseparable: the marriage is both a personal union and a political dynastic alliance. Katherine is exchanged between nations in much the same way that Hero is exchanged between men in Much Ado — her consent is assumed, not genuinely sought.
Shakespeare presents the peace as fragile. Queen Isabel blesses the marriage with hopes that “English may as French, French Englishmen, / Receive each other.” But the audience already knows — from the Henry VI plays and from the Epilogue about to come — that this peace will not last. Henry’s triumph is temporary. Everything he has won will be lost by his son.
The Chorus returns for the Epilogue in sonnet form. The message is devastating: The Chorus notes that Henry V died young and his infant son Henry VI, left in the management of many, “lost France and made his England bleed” — a sobering epilogue that undercuts the play’s triumphalism The reference to Shakespeare’s own Henry VI plays reminds the audience that they already know the ending of this story. The glory of Agincourt is framed by futility. Shakespeare refuses to let the play end on simple celebration: triumph and loss are inseparable, and the cycle of war continues.
Katherine’s Agency
Katherine is one of the play’s most debated characters. Her English lesson scene (Act 3, Scene 4) is charming and comic — she practises English words with her gentlewoman Alice, and the scene ends with double entendres that would have delighted Shakespeare’s audience. But the comedy conceals a serious point: Katherine is preparing herself for a future she cannot control. She will be given to the English king regardless of her own wishes. In the wooing scene, she speaks very little and mostly in French; Henry dominates the conversation. Her final consent — “Dat is as it shall please de roi mon père” (it is as my father the king shall please) — defers to her father’s authority, not her own desire.
Katherine’s consent — “as it shall please de roi mon père” — defers to her father, not her own desire. Like Hero in Much Ado, Katherine is exchanged between men as a political commodity. Shakespeare presents the marriage as both romantic and transactional, refusing to simplify the relationship between love and power.
The tonal shift from Agincourt’s carnage to the wooing scene’s comedy is deliberately jarring. Shakespeare moves from the death of the Boy and the order to kill prisoners straight into Henry’s playful courtship. This juxtaposition forces the audience to question the relationship between war and its supposed rewards: is the marriage a happy ending or a political transaction imposed on a defeated nation? The Epilogue then undercuts even this ambiguous happiness by reminding the audience of what comes next. Shakespeare structures Act 5 to deny the audience simple satisfaction.