Henry V Kevin Ewert Under cover of being a rousing adventure story, Shakespeare's Henry V manages to become something much more open and complex - a play whose possible meanings point in many directions, often all at once. In this Handbook, chapters on critical assessment and performance history take the reader in some of those many directions - from unproblematic reflection of an Elizabethan World Picture to cultural materialist reappraisal of how power works, and from Olivier's brilliant Technicolor pageant to the National Theatre's stage directions, implied action in the dialogue, and various production choices available at key moments, a theatrically aware commentary encourages the imagining of a physical narrative where the play's meanings and our responses are shaped by the constantly shifting stage action. Multiple, competing voices and often daring structural choices make Henry V an invigorating occasion for theatre. With a fresh and engaging style, this Handbook explores all the spiky, disruptive and debatable aspects of a tale Shakespeare could have told in a simple, straightforward and heroic fashion, but chose not to. Kevin Ewert is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. From 1997 to 2003 he was an Artistic Associate and regular director for the Unseam'd Shakespeare Company in Pittsburgh, PA, where his productions included The Provoked Wife, Coriolanus, The Libertine, The Winter's Tale and Women Beware Women.