At the end of the play there is an epilogue in prose, touching for this reason, that it is one of the few personal addresses that Shakespeare has left to us. In the plays the characters speak with a detachment never relaxed. They belong to the kingdom of vision, not to the mind through which they came. In this epilogue Shakespeare speaks for all time directly to his hearers, whoever they may be. Who are his hearers? Not the English. Our prophet is not honoured here. This series of historical plays is one of the most marvellous things ever done by man. The plays of which it is composed have not been played in London, in their great processional pageant of tragedy, within the memory of man. _King Henry V._ _Written._ 1598 (?) _Published_, imperfectly, 1600; as we now have it, 1623. _Source of the Plot._ The play of _The Famous Victories of Henry V_. Holinshed's _Chronicles_. (Possibly) an earlier play, now lost. _The Fable._ The play describes the determination of Henry V to fight with France, his progress in France, the battle of Agincourt, the articles of peace between the French and English, and the courtship of the King with Katharine, daughter of the French King. It is a chronicle of the coming, seeing, and conquering of the "fellow" "whose face was not worth sun-burning." The play bears every mark of having been hastily written. Though it belongs to the great period of Shakespeare's creative life, it contains little either of clash of character, or of that much tamer thing, comparison of character. It is a chronicle or procession, eked out with soldiers' squabbles. It seems to have been written to fill a gap in the series of the historical plays. Perhaps the management of the Globe Theatre, where the play was performed, wished to play the series through, from _Richard II_ to _Richard III_, and persuaded Shakespeare to write this play to link _Henry IV_ to _Henry VI_. The lines of the epilogue show that Shakespeare meant the play to give an image of worldly success between the images of failure in the other plays. The play ought to be seen and judged as a part of the magnificent tragic series. Detached from its place, as it has been, it loses all its value. It is not greatly poetical in itself. It is popular. It is about a popular hero who is as common as those who love him. But in its place it is tremendous. Henry V is the one commonplace man in the eight plays. He alone enjoys success and worldly happiness. He enters Shakespeare's vision to reap what his broken-hearted father sowed. He passes out of Shakespeare's vision to beget the son who dies broken-hearted after bringing all to waste again. "Hear him but reason in divinity," cries the admiring archbishop. Yet this searcher of the spirit woos his bride like a butcher, and jokes among his men like a groom. He has the knack of life that fits human beings for whatever is animal in human affairs.