Henry V, The Spectrum of Realism: Production and Staging in Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Versions Kirstie Hopkins College

This essay provides an analysis of Henry V[1] and the use of staging throughout the years. Of particular interest are the 2007 Royal Shakespeare Company production directed by Michael Boyd[2], the 2015 Royal Shakespeare Company production directed by Gregory Doran[3], the 2013 BBC segment The Hollow Crown directed by Thea Sharrock [4], and the 2019 Netflix movie The King directed by David Michôd[5], and the ways in which they make different creative decisions in order to portray the battle of Agincourt, as written in Scene Four of Henry V[6].

The two productions by the Royal Shakespeare company are more traditional in their portrayal of the play, and what can be seen as quite similar in the sense of the media that they used for their version of Shakespeare’s play, yet they are both still very different in their own individual ways. The two movies take a more realistic form and contrast the typical media of Shakespearean production, abandoning the stage and replacing it with hyper-realistic settings.

While also different in the media they used to portray their version of the play, each production also uses the role of the chorus in different ways, the Royal Shakespeare Company productions have a physical character on stage...