ABSTRACT
Critical investigations of Shakespeare’s Henry V have increasingly come to recognize the importance of theatrical and cinematic appropriations, native as well as foreign, but they still tend to ignore off-shoots generated by these appropriations in other genres and in the broader field of popular culture. It nearly goes without saying that such spin-offs are neglected at the critic’s own peril; often they may generate valuable new insights into the more familiar Shakespearean material, and give rise to fresh investigation and debate. One such unfortunate oversight is Philip Purser’s 1990 novel entitled Friedrich Harris: Shooting the Hero, a first-person fictional tale about the making of Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film epic. This novel places the film and its crew in the context of wartime propaganda, and, by establishing a direct connection between the German film industry run by Joseph Goebbels and the charismatic acting skills of Laurence Olivier, it ultimately invites a reconsideration of the political significance of the most problematic of Shakespeare’s history plays and one of its most popular cinematic reincarnations. Purser’s largely unexperimental novel represents a useful case study because it problematizes the phenomenon of hero worship which has deeply affected the reception of Shakespeare’s play throughout the twentieth century, and which even iconoclastic approaches like John Sutherland and Cedric Watts’ Henry V, War Criminal? have been unable to challenge.
