The most concise and accurate way of defining "epic" is to consider it as a literary work designed to teach a people its own traditions. In the Shakespeare canon, the play that best suits this definition is Henry V. And over the next couple of posts, I'm going to try to explain my reasons for thinking this.

First of all, in the Oxford edition, edited by Gary Taylor, it's explained that there is no evidence that Henry V was a popular success in 1599 (a date for its completion that can be given with relative certainty, due to the fact that the still-in-progress Irish expedition of the Earl of Essex is mentioned in the Chorus to act five - the only reference to what we would call a current event in Shakespeare). And among the many possible reasons for this is the fact that the play is built on the dialectic concept, and thus the character of Henry V is much more complex than the rally-round-the-flag figure that they might have been expecting. This is still the case today, in fact, and the essay (which I've mentioned before) that comes the closest to delineating Shakespeare's method in the play is "Rabbits, Ducks and Henry V" by Norman Rabkin, which posits the idea that the author meant to show two equally compelling views of Henry (patriotic hero or Machiavellian war criminal) and force the audience member to choose between them. This would have thwarted expectations, and still does, I think it's fair to say. And the entire play is built on variations of this approach. More on all of this tomorrow.