Shakespeare's audience knew the king that Hal would
become. He was a legendary ruler. We might imagine them in a similar
position to present day audiences who go to JFK (now Zapruder) or
Lincoln.
So the play we are reading is colored by a future history much more familiar to an Elizabethan audience than to you.
Still,
Shakespeare's rendering of this mythic national figure is itself pretty
revolutionary. You can get some sense of how it worksin Thomas Heywood's Apology for Actors:
To turne to our domesticke hystories, what English
blood seeing the person of any bold English man presen∣ted
and doth not hugge his fame, and hunnye at his valor,
pursuing him in his enterprise with his best wishes, and as
beeing wrapt in contemplation, offers to him in his hart
all prosperous performance, as if the Personater were the
man Personated, so bewitching a thing is liuely and well
spirited action, that it hath power to new mold the harts
of the spectators and fashion them to the shape of any noble
and notable attempt. What coward to see his contryman
valiant would not bee ashamed of his owne cowardise?
What English Prince should hee behold the true portrature
of that amous King Edward the third, foraging France,
taking so great a King captiue in his owne country, qua•∣tering
the English Lyons with the French Flower-delyce,
and would not bee suddenly Inflam'd with so royall a spec∣tacle,
being made apt and fit for the like atchieuement. So
of Henry the fift.
And here is the play in performance at the New Globe:
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