King Henry V’s conversation with the traitorous lords—the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scroop, and Sir Thomas Grey—is deeply layered with verbal and dramatic irony, as they do not realize that the King already knows of their intended betrayal. Henry asks for their advice on punishing a commoner who has insulted him and, not recognizing the trap that the King has set for them, the lords advise him to offer no mercy:
SCROOP
Let him be punished, sovereign, lest example
Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.KING HENRY
O, let us yet be merciful.CAMBRIDGE
So may your Highness, and yet punish too.GREY
Sir, you show great mercy if you give him life
After the taste of much correction.KING HENRY
Alas, your too much love and care of me
Are heavy orisons ’gainst this poor wretch.
Henry’s language in this passage exemplifies verbal irony, as he maintains the deception that he does not know about the assassination plot. Instead, he continues to treat them as loyal subjects who have “too much love and care” for their King to bear any insult against him. The King, in other words, is toying with the Lords, sarcastically praising their loyalty while he in fact plans to execute them for their betrayal. The Lords, in turn, demonstrate an exaggerated and hypocritical affection for the King in an attempt to mask their true intentions. Ironically, in recommending harsh punishment for the slanderous commoner, they have given Henry ample justification to send them to their own deaths.
In a scene rife with verbal and dramatic irony, King Henry disguises himself among his soldiers in order to better understand their perception of the war and of himself as a leader.
KING HENRY
I myself heard the King say he would not
be ransomed.WILLIAMS
Ay, he said so to make us fight cheerfully,
but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed and we ne’er the wiser.KING HENRY
If I live to see it, I will never trust his
word after.
The audience, unlike Williams, understands that he is speaking frankly—perhaps dangerously so—about the King to the King himself. Indeed, William speaks here in a candid and natural manner that he would never otherwise use around a figure such as the King, and Henry in turn maintains the pretense that he is merely an ordinary soldier in order to better understand his own army.
Ironically, Henry insists that he would “never trust” the King’s word if he were to break his promise by using public funds to pay his own ransom upon capture by the French. This scene demonstrates Henry’s understanding that his position as King bars others from speaking honestly with him. Unlike previous kings in English history, Henry wants to avoid being deceived by the flattering words of courtiers, and later in the play, he rewards Williams for his honesty.
As the tide of battle turns in favor of the English, Pistol apprehends a French Soldier whom he intends to ransom for money. In a satirical scene full of dramatic irony, the French soldier mistakes Pistol, a low class criminal, for an English nobleman. The Boy translates for the Soldier, stating:
He gives you upon his knees a thousand thanks,
and he esteems himself happy that he hath fall’n
into the hands of one, as he thinks, the most
brave, valorous, and thrice-worthy seigneur of
England.
This ironic scene of mis-recognition comedically satirizes the pretensions of the French nobility. That a lowly and unimpressive character like Pistol is able to overpower this French soldier, a “gentleman of a good house” by his own admission, underscores the inferiority of the French to their English counterparts. Indeed, Pistol’s conduct during the war has proven that he is anything but “brave, valorous, and thrice-worthy,” and the French nobleman’s misapprehension reflects poorly on his own personal qualities.
However, the irony in this scene cuts both ways: if the cowardly and slovenly Pistol can successfully pass for a member of the English nobility, what does that suggest about the other English nobles? The difficulty of determining identity on the battlefield challenges the class distinctions so central to the politics of the play's setting.
