In the period from the opening of the first public theatre in London in 1576, until the death of Shakespeare, over one-third of all extant plays, and almost one half of those written for Public playhouses include spectacular battle-scenes: scenes in which armies marched on and off the stage in military manner, carrying a great variety of military equipment, and engaged in mock military maneuver, often culminating in the confrontation of two armies. In most cases, battle scenes come near, or are, the climax of the play.
Staging such scenes constitute a real theatrical challenge for William Shakespeare. It presupposes a dramaturgy based on the representation of that which cannot be represented, such as armies of soldiers, weapons, confrontations, blood and military tactics. How, then, can the horror of the bloody disfigurement of Earl Salisbury by a cannonball in 1 Henry VI (I.4.71-96) or the double beheading of Lord Saye and his son James Crowmer, whose heads are then erected, lips entwined, on spears in 2 Henry VI (IV.7.21-128), be depicted on stage? If we look closely at the stage directions and the representation of battle in the plays of the playwright and his contemporaries, we find that four circumvention strategies were in vogue to stage the ravages of battle without showing them: separating speech and combat; limiting the battle to a skirmish between soldiers or warlords, punctuated by sound effects in the offstage area; depicting the battle only by clamours in the offstage area; ordering simultaneous or successive stampedes and pursuits. In the wake of his contemporaries, Shakespeare uses all these strategies of circumvention, sometimes in combination. He never depicts the group battles in a frontal and direct manner, which would have been a challenge: the actors are always depicted as being on the margins or in the wings of the battles that are simultaneously taking place mostly offstage. The audience hears only shouts, trumpet blasts and drum rolls, as at the Battle of Towton in 3 Henry VI, which is one of the most sonorous battles in the Henriades. Being a spectator of a Shakespearean battle scene was a multi-sensory experience. The actors, meanwhile, moving to the front of the stage, are caught up in skirmishes alongside the main battle, as in the Battle of Shrewsbury which essentially revolves around the duel between Hal and Hotspur (1 Henry IV, V.4.24-55). Another circumvention strategy employed by Shakespeare is to show soldiers stepping away from the battlefield, panting, to catch their breath and comment on the action: in the Battle of Shrewsbury, Hal steps to the margins of the battle and appears bloodied (V.4.1-23) - according to Holinshed, he was shot in the face, although Shakespeare does not mention this. Shakespearean battles are constantly invoked, but not shown, as in the case of the siege of Harfleur, which is shown in the margins with an unsuccessful charge (Henry V, III.4.1-58): the playwright stages a positional battle where the soldiers vegetate in front of the wall.
More than any other, Shakespeare was aware of the challenges and limits of staging battles, as demonstrated by the chorus of Henry V, which is a veritable theatrical manifesto. For the challenge of theatre is to represent the multiple through the one or to make the absence appear on stage. The battles, consisting of two rival factions fighting each other and a multitude of soldiers, represent the ultimate challenge of the unrepresentable for the author-director. Shakespearean battle theatre is a poor art form which serves a minimalist aesthetic, based on a relationship of complicity and collaboration between actor and spectator. This baroque art is constantly reminding us of its limits, its impotence and its artificiality, as the entire play Henry V testifies: the battles glorify the theatrical illusion by constantly deconstructing it. Is the spectator not then witnessing the impotence of the forces of theatre, the failure of rhetoric and stylistics to create the illusion that a real battle is raging on stage? Shakespeare says it with a touch of malice: the spectator will never see anything but an « unworthy scaffold » (Henry V, I.0.10) and, in the end, quarrels that are more reminiscent of a ridiculous cockfight than the nobility of a conflict between crowned heads (« ridiculous brawl » (IV.0.51)). Henry V is no longer the « warlike Harry » (I.0.4) announced in a bombastic prologue (I.0.5-6), but an actor waving a wooden sword. It is always the spectator who has to make up for the powerlessness of the prologue: the battles are thus at the mercy of a stage set.
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