Shakespeare's Considerate Use of Caesuras (And Why King Henry is a Hypocrite)

So for the most part my experience with Shakespeare has been reading it, but there's a whole other side to it, and that's the performance of these plays. What struck me as I was reading was the consideration that Shakespeare has for his actors. When you only read Shakespeare sometimes you forget that actors have to speak these lines. It can get tiring to read long passages of iambic pentameter if there are no breaks in it, and writing in iambic pentameter has the tendency to have long drawn out sentences. Take, for example, Exeter's speech to King Charles in Henry V.
Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That if requiring fail, he will compel;
And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
Turns he the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,
The dead men's blood, the pining maidens' groans,
For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers
That shall not be swallowed in this controversy. (Henry V 2.4.99-109)
That sentence is ten lines long, which is what sometimes happens when writing iambic pentameter. There are nine caesuras though, and that's where Shakespeare's consideration for his actors comes in. A caesura gives the actor a break in his speech, which is welcome when they have to read a speech that can be sometimes in excess of a hundred lines. Shakespeare has plenty of endstops and caesuras, which allow the actor a chance to breathe, or to pause for emphasis. That I think shows at least a little consideration and thought on Shakespeare's part.

Shakespeare's formal approach to verse is impeccable. I've noticed something else though, about an earlier point I made about blank verse. In this play King Henry V is acting much more like nobility than in the previous play, right down to the language. He has really come into his own. He's even right on top of who is trying to overthrow him. I think it's important to note, and this little irony was pointed out to me as I was reading the essay accompanying the play (though there's a footnote for it as well), that if you follow King Henry's logic, the Earl of Cambridge has a more legitimate claim to the throne than King Henry, since he married the daughter of Mortimer, who was the supposed rightful heir to Richard II, and King Henry is laying claim to the throne of France because his great-grandfather Edward III was the son of Queen Isabella, the daughter of King Philip IV of France, and the French king only holds his claim through his female ancestors, since his male ancestor had usurped the throne, similar to what King Henry V father had done. So basically King Henry V is saying that he is the rightful heir to the French throne even though he's not really the rightful heir to the English throne, the Earl of Cambridge could be. Really, these lineages are all confusing. I thought I'd just gotten a hold on the English line and now I feel like I need another set of tetralogies to explain the French line.