“A woman's hide”: The presentation of female characters in Michael Boyd'sThe Histories

Henry Vafter the War on Terror

“…Re-envisioning a play 'famous for the relative absence of women', the interpolation characteristically amplifies Katherine's (Mélanie Thierry) significance, signalling a felt responsiveness to a world of heroism previously construed -by Olivier, by Branagh and by Shakespeare -almost wholly in masculine terms. 25 The sense that this is a tragedy belonging in the first instance to Henry's nuclear family is strengthened by the appearance here of a character only mentioned in the epilogue -'Henry the Sixth' -for, behind the spectating widow, a waiting-woman is seen carrying a vulnerable new-born in 'infant bands' (Epilogue, 9). As in Iraq films such as Hurt Locker (2008), Henry here is realized not in terms of the larger political landscape but at the level of the career path characterizing 'the individual soldier'.…”