Shakespeare’s Henry V and the Ciphers of History

Abstract:This article considers how Shakespeare’s Henry V draws upon the language of double-entry accounting to critique elitist protocols governing early modern historiographies. Rather than a merely reductive numerical procedure, double entry relied upon surprisingly literary functions—including personification—to yield a factual system lending equal legitimacy to real and fictional proper names. Beginning with an analysis of Henry V’s prologue and concluding with Henry’s tally of the dead at Agincourt, I argue that the play invokes double entry as a metaphor for theatrical representation to help underwrite its use of fictional characters and partially recoup the erasure of lower-class names from history.