In a play that is so much devoted to men, and men bonding in war (a band of brothers), and in a cast of 26, there are just four women: how do they approach their roles? Penny Downie tells us about the decision by Director Nicholas Hytner to cast against convention and choose a woman, to play the part of
the Chorus .
Cecilia Noble has two strong parts to play. Mistress Quickly the publican is a woman with a shrewd business head, making her way in a man’s world. As Isabel, the Queen of France, she has to support her family through defeat and the loss of her daughter in marriage to the enemy. She believes the women add
an emotional dimension to the production.
Felicité du Jeu plays the French princess, Katherine, as someone who strives to achieve human dignity yet knows her position to be an impossible one. A scene sometimes played for comedy, that in which Katherine struggles to learn a little English, assumes a poignancy in this production. It is placed straight after she has witnessed (in French as a
subtitled newscast ) Henry’s speech threatening to unleash terrible cruelties on the citizens of Harfleur unless they surrender. As the daughter of the defeated French King she knows she is to be given as a prize of war. Contemplating Henry, she asks herself: "Is it possible that I should love the enemy of France."
In the later scene where Henry woos Katherine, though she knows she has no option but to submit, she achieves some dignity through small acts of
defiance , as the
Rehearsal Diary relates. Felicité du Jeu says
she is angry , not so much at Henry, as at the situation of the politically expedient arranged marriage, in which she is powerless, reduced to an object, at the mercy of politics.