Katherine: The Princess Who Has No Good Options

Katherine appears in two scenes and they are very different from each other. In Act 3 Scene 4, she is learning English from her gentlewoman Alice: body parts, pronunciation, the accidental comedy of French words that sound like English obscenities. It is a private, domestic scene, and it shows her as curious and sharp without any political function at all.

The wooing scene in Act 5 Scene 3 is the longest in the play and the most politically loaded. Henry has just defeated France. He arrives and tells her bluntly that he cannot make fine speeches and she should accept him because he loves her plainly. Katherine asks pointed questions about whether a woman can love a man who has destroyed her family's country. She does not simply give in.

How much real choice she has is a question the play raises and does not answer. She says 'dat is as it shall please de roi mon père,' meaning it is as her father pleases. Henry agrees. The decision is not hers and the text knows it.