ABSTRACT
In Act 1, scene 2 of Henry V, the king asks the Archbishop of Canterbury: “May I with right and conscience make this claim?” (line 96). The question regards whether the king may claim France as part of the British lands and follows a reading of the king’s ancestral lineage so lengthy, convoluted, and dry that even the archbishop performing the reading is able to make an ironic statement about its “clarity.” In fact this reading of lineage and placement of Henry as the rightful master of Britain is the center of more than the opening of the play; it echoes throughout the following acts as Hal slowly backs up paper with prowess, claiming in fact, and blood, what has been claimed before in theory.
