Queenʼs
Men Editions

Para1The scene begins with abrupt negotiations between Henry V and the French King but take an amusing turn with the discovery that our hero-king is in love. The featured video was recorded quite early on in the process and gives only hints of the scene that was performed as part of the Queen’s Men conference. In this performance, Paul Hopkins (Henry V) is gentle and solicitous but feeding off audience response, he learned to be more brash and direct, revelling in his status as the mighty king of England (Sc19 Sp32). Julian DeZotti’s Katherine also grew over the course of the performances as following the inclination of the audience he built on the textual evidence that Katherine, for all her stated diplomatic intents, found the English king utterly irresistible. Our modern audience laughed ironically at the representation of the English king’s sexual bravura but one can imagine it might have been enjoyed in different kind by Elizabethan audiences. Similarly, in the SQM production Katherine became a stereotypically sexy French maiden, an interpretation that undermined the fact that she is engaged in political negotiation on behalf of her father. A more flattering interpretation of the character is clearly possible, but any actor playing the role would still have to deal with her aside: I may think myself the happiest in the world, that is beloved of the mighty king of England (Sc19 Sp32). The joke in the SQM production was that while she was trying to represent her father’s interests she struggled to suppress the desire she was feeling for the English king. This struggle led to the climactic and highly comic moment where she articulated this desire to the audience.