Is Henry V a Really Bad Law & Order SVU Episode?

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Was Katherine really able to consent to marriage with Henry? We all know the scene where he’s asking for her hand in marriage, but does he really get a yes from her? While watching an episode of SVU this weekend, I came across a scene where a 13 year old girl was trying to marry a family friend after her father was murdered so she could be with this family friend. This young girl, Laura, says to Olivia Benson “Juliet was 13 … I’m a real woman” (A Story of More Woe). In today’s standards, a 13 year old girl would not be able to consent to marriage without permission from her parents, hence why they killed Laura’s father so she could be with this family friend, as he was now her legal guardian.

If we compare this to Katherine in Henry V, she was about 14 years old when Henry started courting her (as I determined from a quick Wikipedia search). Back then this would have been the normal thing, but if we look at today’s standards, she would not be able to consent to marriage. Before Henry could marry Katherine, he had to take over her father’s country before he could ask for her hand in marriage. Comparing this to the SVU episode, Henry had to do a tremendous task to get permission to marry her.

The next question is “Did Katherine really consent”? After our conversation with Hailey Bachrach, I really thought about the idea of consent within Shakespeare’s works. Henry asks Katherine for her hand in marriage, but she doesn’t really say yes. If you look at the scene, it plays out like this:
“King: O fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?
Katherine: Padonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is “like me.” 
King: An Angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel” (Shakespeare 852).

Henry never gets a definitive yes from Katherine. As Hailey Bachrach said during our skype session, “However Katherine feels about Henry, she has to marry him. She can’t say no, but she can’t say yes” (Bachrach). It is not really her choice to marry him, as her father was the one who agreed since Henry took over France. As Henry says to Kate about her father’s permission, “Nay, it will please him well, Kate” to which she responds “Den it sall also content me” (Shakespeare 855).

 Could this scene really be an episode of SVU? Some people may say that her response could have been her not completely understanding the language, so she did not understand what he was saying. Others could say she was playing dumb, either trying to avoid the question or knowing what he wanted but trying to play the naive, young girl.

No matter how Shakespeare meant this scene to play out (and this can be interpreted in many different ways), because of her age, Katherine was not old enough to consent to marriage or get married by today’s standards. She did not directly tell Henry yes, so if this were an SVU episode, Olivia Benson and detective Tutuola would be busting down the doors and trying to stop this potential marriage from happening. Since Henry had her father’s consent though, they probably would not have had a strong enough case to win.
“A Story of More Woe” Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Written by Dick Wolf and Julie Martin, directed by Ray Mckinnon, Wolf Films, 2019.
Shakespeare, William, et al. The Norton Shakespeare: Histories. Third ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Valois

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