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 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, Henry IV, Part 2. The original audiences would thus have been familiar with the title character, 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. The Elizabethan stage lacked scenery, it begins with a Prologue, in which the Chorus apologizes for the limitations of the theatre, wishing there were "a Muse of fire", with real princes and a kingdom for a stage, to do justice to King Henry's story.

Says the Chorus, King Henry would "ssume the port of Mars". The Chorus encourages the audience to use their "imaginary forces" to overcome the limitations of the stage: "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts... turning the accomplishment of many years / Into an hour-glass". Shakespeare's plays are in five acts. In Henry V, the first two deal with the king and his decision to invade France, persuaded that through ancestry, he is the rightful heir to the French throne; the French Dauphin, son of King Charles VI, answers Henry's claims with a condescending and insulting gift of tennis balls, "as matching to his youth and vanity." The Chorus reappears at the beginning of each act to advance the story. At the beginning of Act II, he describes the country's dedication to the war effort: "Now all the youth of England are on fire... They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, / Following the mirror of all Christian kings...." Act II includes a plot by the Earl of Cambridge and two comrades to assassinate Henry at Southampton.

Henry's clever uncovering of the plot and his ruthless treatment of the conspirators show that he has changed from the earlier plays in which he appeared. In Act III Henry and his troops cross the English Channel to attack the French port of Harfleur; the Chorus appears again: "Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy/And leave your England, as dead midnight still". The French king, says the Chorus, "doth offer him / Catharine his daughter, with her, to dowry, / Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms." Henry is not satisfied. 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. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. After a bloody siege, the English take Harfleur, but Henry's forces are so depleted that he decides not to go on to Paris. Instead, he decides to move up the coast to Calais; the French pursue him. They surround him near the small town of Agincourt, 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 think of him.

He agonizes about the moral burden of being king, asking God to "steel my soldiers' hearts". Daylight comes, Henry rallies his nobles with the famous St Crispin's Day Speech: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers". Armed with longbows, the English surprise the French, themselves, with an overwhelming victory; the French suffered 10,000 casualties. "O God, thy arm was here," says Henry. Act V comes several years as the English and French negotiate the Treaty of Troyes, Henry tries to woo the French princess, Catherine of Valois. Neither speaks the other's language well, but the humour of their mistakes helps achieve his aim; the scene ends with the French king adopting Henry as heir to the French throne, the prayer of the French queen "that English may as French, French Englishmen, receive each other, God speak this Amen." Before the play concludes, the Chorus reappears and ruefully notes, of Henry's own heir's "state, so many had the managing, that they lost France, made his England bleed, which oft our stage hath shown" – a reminder of the tumultuous reign of Henry VI of England, which Shakespeare had brought to the stage in a trilogy of plays: Henry VI Part 1, Henry VI Part 2, Henry VI Part 3.

As in many of Shakespeare's history and tragedy plays, a number of minor comic characters appear, contrasting with and sometimes commenting on the main plot. In this case, they are common soldiers in Henry's army, they include Pistol and Bardolph from the Henry IV plays; the army includes a Scot, an Irishman, an Englishman, Fluellen, a comically stereotyped Welsh soldier whose name is phonetically close to "Llywelyn". The play deals with the death of Sir John Falstaff, Henry's estranged friend from the Henry IV plays, whom Henry had rejected at the end of Henry IV, Part 2. Shakespeare's primary source for Henry V, as for most of his chronicle histories, was Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York appears to have been consulted, scholars have supposed that Shakespeare was familiar with Samuel Daniel's poem on the civil wars. An earlier play, the Famous Victories of Henry V is generally believed to have been a model for the work.

On the basis of an apparent allusion to Essex's mission to quell Tyrone's

Zeng Peiyan is a Chinese politician. He was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China from 2002 to 2007 and was a Vice-premier from 2003 to 2008. Zeng Peiyan was born in Zhejiang Province, he graduated from Tsinghua University in 1962. Zeng joined the Communist Party of China in 1978. Following his post as Vice Premier of the State Council, Zeng has been serving as Chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a think tank with the mission of promoting international economic research and exchanges and providing consulting service. In 2009, he became a member of the International Advisory Council of the sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation. In end of February 2013, Zeng, in his capacity as the Chairman of the mainland-based China Center for International Economic Exchanges visited Taiwan for five days in which he delivered a speech during a Cross-Straits Entrepreneurs’ Forum at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, his visit came at the invitation of Vincent Siew, the Chairman of the Cross-Straits Common Market Foundation.

Zeng met representatives from Taiwan’s industrial and commercial circles, will tour around the region to get a better understanding of the latest developments to the island's economy

Cathy Day is an American novelist, short story writer, English professor. She is the author of the linked story collection, The Circus in Winter, a memoir, Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love. In 2014, Goodspeed Musicals launched a full production of a musical adaption of The Circus in Winter. An earlier adaptation was written and produced by students at Ball State University in 2011. Cathy Day was born in Indiana, she graduated from DePauw University in 1991 and earned her M. F. A. in creative writing from the University of Alabama in 1995. Since 1997, Day has been teaching creative writing at the college level, she has taught at Minnesota State University, The College of New Jersey, the University of Pittsburgh. She is an Associate Professor at Ball State University, where she serves as the Assistant Chair of Operations in the English Department. Day's work has been published in numerous literary magazines, including PANK, Ninth Letter, River Styx, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Quarterly West.

The Circus in Winter. Harcourt. 2004. ISBN 015101048X. Comeback Season:. Free Press. 2008. ISBN 9781416557104. “Mr. Jenny Perdido” / PANK “The Jersey Devil” / North American Review “YOUR BOOK: A Novel in Stories” / Ninth Letter “Genesis” / Freight Stories “The King and His Court” / River Styx “The Last Member of the Boela Tribe” / Antioch Review “Jennie Dixianna and the Spin of Death” / Shenandoah “Wallace Porter Sees the Elephant” / The Southern Review “Boats” / The Distillery: Artistic Spirits of the South “Strike Stew” / Cream City Review “The Girl with Big Hair” / Gettysburg Review “The Circus House” / Story “Leon’s Daughter” / Florida Review “Hospice” / Quarterly West Official website