Henry V and the fruits of legitimacy
This chapter argues that from the outset of Henry V, the transformation of both the king and the polity consequent upon Henry's accession is figured as almost complete. In the Henry IV plays, Shakespeare had put a great deal of energy into showing that the miracle of the king's two bodies portrayed in the Famous victories had been no such thing; not a sudden transformation but a long-planned, and entirely calculated performance or facsimile of such a transformation. However, at the start of Henry V, Shakespeare went out of his way to show both that that was precisely how the transformation of Hal into Henry was perceived by even the most learned and eminent of his new subjects and that that perception had worked an almost miraculous transformation on the condition of the body politic.