Henry V is a play about war. Learning to be soldiers came more easily to the handful of cast members who had military experience, like Peter Blythe (Exeter) but not to the majority. The
Rehearsal Diary records how they learned to drill, take orders, and carry weapons (rifles for the men, pistols for the officers) under the watchful eye of ex-SAS man, Richard Smedley, who was brought in as Military Adviser to train the company to look convincing as soldiers. Some like Robert Blythe (Captain Llewellyn) supplemented this training with their own research. As the
Rehearsal Photos show, they look very realistic, in contemporary battle fatigues.
For the actors, it also meant getting to grips with the psychological dimension of how each of their characters would approach being a soldier. Those playing career soldiers – Robert Blythe, (Llewellyn) and
Rupert Wickham (Captain Gower) – see war as a necessary duty and, in a just cause such as the King’s, even a noble one. Army life has its positive side: the mutual support and companionship of a band of brothers. Indeed Director
Nicholas Hytner says
Henry V is a play, which conveys something that is not usually acknowledged, Shakespeare's own excitement at the prospect of heroic action on the battlefield. Yet Shakespeare also draws our attention to the darker side of war. Despite his loyalty to King and country, Llewellyn, a stickler for what he calls the rules of war, has a crisis of conscience over Henry’s order to
execute the French prisoners of war. And David Kennedy as Michael Williams agonises about the justice of the war.
Henry the King, has few such doubts, and is not afraid to unleash the awesome horror of war for political ends, as he shows in his speech threatening atrocities against the citizens of the
besieged city of Harfleur unless they surrender.