“A little less than kin, and more than kind”: kinship and motherhood in Shakespeare’s Henry V

Shakespeare’s theatre addresses the problem of survival in a world on the brink of collapse. Since traditional consanguinity – including maternal ties, framed by the legal maxim mater semper certa – proves no guarantee of stability, survival and agency are achieved through violent conquest rather than familial bonds. Where kinship is divorced from kindness and the care of offspring, justice and safety are also lacking, with tragic consequences. Yet Henry V allows for a different reading, drawing on the critical work of Donna Haraway. In the play, imaginary mother figures, though not physically present, seem to instill in warring men new modes of survival based on the cultivation of deliberate connections with beings worthy of care. This foreshadows the creation of alter-communities and alter-families, forging kinship without biological reproduction – making kin without making babies. While real mothers, like Princess Katherine in the play’s final act, remain trapped in a dead-end world, other figurations of motherhood can chart an escape. They provide inclusive spaces for achieving self-knowledge through Haraway’s concepts of ‘symbiogenetic kinship’ and ‘response-ability’. Henry V, with its lights and shadows, thus becomes a site for narrating alternative forms of kinship and reimagining survival through post-human entanglements and symbiotic assemblages. In this reading, Shakespeare and Haraway shed light on each other: both take our ailing ecosphere as a starting point to propose innovative, inspiring approaches to ‘staying with the trouble’ – facing and enduring adversity in order to envision a better future. Their work highlights the transformative potential of forging non-biological bonds in the face of hardship.