Abstract

 

My paper looks at two scenes from Henry V (1599): one of extended French between Princess Katherine and her maid, and another where English and French crossover between Pistol and a French Soldier. I compare the linguistic difference and exchange of these two scenes with Richard Mulcaster’s Elementarie (1582), where he argues that foreign words should be appropriated from many other foreign languages to improve English, in what he calls ‘enfranchisement’.

I argue that although Henry V gives a strong sense of what it is to be ‘English’, it also dramatises Mulcaster’s theory of ‘enfranchisement’ through its emphasis on linguistic difference and its welcoming of foreign words. This gives an impression of the status of the vernacular at the end of the sixteenth century, of a language looking outward, where linguistic exchange and semantic negotiation constantly emphasises the difference of English within itself.