How is the theme of gender explored in the prologue to Act 3 of Shakespeare's play Henry V?

Issues of gender are among a variety of issues raised in
the Prologue to Act 3 of Shakespeare’s play Henry V. The prologue
opens with a Chorus (a male actor presumably playing a male character) addressing the
audience as a gender-neutral “you” (1). The first reference to a male occurs in line 4,
when the “king” is mentioned. He is described in ways traditionally associated with the
male gender – he is headed off to war, thus behaving actively rather than passively and
thereby asserting his power.  He is in possession and command of a “brave fleet” (5), so
that his power (an attribute often associated with males in Shakespeare’s society) is
once again emphasized.

Indeed, the next line refers to the
sun as Phoebus, a male god who possesses enormous power of his own. Boys are next
mentioned as workers on the ships (8): young males are being trained in the ways of male
power. The idea of girls or young females serving in a similar capacity would have been
unthinkable to most people during Shakespeare’s day.

The
Chorus himself, of course, is presented as a very lively and active male, as when he
urges the audience to react in various ways and uses vigorous verbs to do
so:

. . . 
Follow, follow!

Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy
. . . (17-18)

Presumably the
actor playing this role would have been loud and boisterous and would have moved
actively around the stage, exhorting the audience. In all these ways, he would have been
behaving in ways that were far more acceptable among males of Shakespeare’s days than
among mature females, who were on the whole expected to be much quieter and more passive
than males of this period.

Interestingly, the first
explicit reference to females in the speech refers to “old women” (20), who are listed –
along with “grandsires” and “babies” -- as those who must stay behind in England while
vigorous young men go off to France to fight. Old women are thus linked here with the
weak, while even the youngest men (those who have just one hair on their chins) are
imagined as eager to go off with Henry to battle the French
(21-24).

The only other explicit reference to a female in
the speech refers to Princess Katherine, daughter of the French king. Obviously she is
more powerful than most women of her time would have been, but even she is imagined as
the daughter of her father (rather than as an independent person in her own right), and
she is also imagined as someone who is “offer[ed]” as a marriage partner by her father
to Henry . Even this powerful woman, then, is presented as a possession of a male who
offers her to another male. The whole Prologue, then, presents men as powerful and
active and presents women (when they are mentioned at all) as relatively weak and
passive.