ABSTRACT
Among Shakespeare’s plays only Henry V and Pericles employ the highly elaborated formal structure of prologue, choruses before each Act, and epilogue. The audience is required to work for its living in Henry V along with the author and the actors. The range of discourses that exist in Henry V without the Chorus is indeed two-dimensional and, the author suspect, inexplicable without further alteration of the text. In such a context, the appeals of the Chorus of Henry V for imagination are more than conventional apologetics, and must be read or heard intertextually for their true force to be perceived. Henry V is an extended theatrical experience, which is not switched on at the rise of the curtain (as it were), and switched off at its fall, but something that continues to provoke and challenge its audience to grapple indefinitely with its plurality.
