Henry V (c1599). Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written near 1599. It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War. In the First Quarto text, it was titled The Cronicle History of Henry the fift, which became The Life of Henry the Fifth in the First Folio text. The play is the final part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2. The original audiences would thus have already been familiar with the title character, who was depicted in the Henry IV plays as a wild, undisciplined young man. In Henry V, the young prince has matured. He embarks on an expedition to France and, his army badly outnumbered, defeats the French at Agincourt. Act II includes a plot by the Earl of Cambridge and two comrades to assassinate Henry at Southampton. In Act III Henry and his troops cross the English Channel to attack the French port of Harfleur. At the siege of Harfleur, the English are beaten back at first, but Henry urges them on with one of Shakespeare's best-known speeches. The French assemble a powerful army and pursue him. They surround him near the small town of Agincourt, and in Act IV, the night before the battle, knowing he is outnumbered, Henry wanders around the English camp in disguise, trying to comfort his soldiers and determine what they really think of him. He agonizes about the moral burden of being king, asking God to steel my soldiers' hearts.