Frances Teague

Prof Teague's is a provocative collection; she has included the best essay on Shakespeare I've written in thirty years of teaching and attending the Shakspeare Association of America. I argue that Henry the Fifth reads best as a comedy ending in marriage. Unlike any other Sh play, but like much later comedy, H5 makes humor out of ethnic differences and accents--the French, the Welsh, the Scots, and the Irish. In the play, the despised minority of the Welsh is represented by the bravest and show more best of soldiers, Fluellen, whose hilarious accent ("Alexander the Pig" for Alex the Great) disguises his heroic dimension, which the King acknowledges as his family, "For I am Welsh...." The play abrades ethnic difference of the sceptered isle to prepare for the multi-nationality of Great Britain.
Powers' essay here has been quoted in UK books--Maley's on Shakespeare and Wales, Shakespeare and Scotland-- and in Shakespeare and Foreign Languages by a Dutch author. show less