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Agincourt, Waterloo, Normandy: Screening Henry V and Re-organizing British History for the Royal Family
Sally Barnden 
Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume: 39, Issue: 1, Pages: 75 - 91
Swansea University Author:
Sally Barnden
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DOI (Published version): 10.1353/shb.2021.0013
Abstract
In 1944, members of the British royal family attended a private screening of Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Henry V in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. Henry V has a long history of appropriation for patriotic and monarchist purposes, particularly in times of war. Olivier's f...
| Published in: | Shakespeare Bulletin |
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| ISSN: | 1931-1427 |
| Published: |
Project MUSE
2021
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| Online Access: |
Check full text
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64321 |
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| Abstract: |
In 1944, members of the British royal family attended a private screening of Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Henry V in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. Henry V has a long history of appropriation for patriotic and monarchist purposes, particularly in times of war. Olivier's film was conceived as propaganda and dedicated to the "Commandos and Airborne Troops of Great Britain, the spirit of whose ancestors it has been humbly attempted to recapture," inviting the viewer to read Henry's English army as a celebratory remediation of British troops in action in 1944.The private screening invited an even more ideologically-loaded telescoping of history, asserting continuity from Agincourt to Waterloo and on to the D-Day landings. This article reads Henry V against the space of the Waterloo Chamber, which was decorated by George IV to celebrate victory at Waterloo, then temporarily re-decorated in the 1940s while its valuable oil paintings were evacuated to a slate mine in North Wales. In this space, Olivier's Henry became haunted by other historical figures, including the Duke of Wellington, while Olivier's own "royal body" was appropriated as an avatar for the contemporary army's symbolic leader, George VI. Historical and Shakespearean examples were used strategically to accentuate the film's propagandist ambitions and to cultivate a royal body invested with the military successes of previous generations. |
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| Keywords: |
Henry V, Laurence Olivier, Royal Family |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Issue: |
1 |
| Start Page: |
75 |
| End Page: |
91 |