My Time of Shakespeare: The Second Tetralogy – King Henry IV First Part

You stiffly force the turn of the revolving door flanked by glass panels flashing the buzz of the downtown street. You traverse the shimmering lobby floor and sway with your shifting weight as you await the arrival of the elevator. When it arrives, you leap from the doors as a rush of people flood from the car. Then you enter, alone, light the button for the wrong floor, then the correct floor, and dance your hyper finger on the “Door Close” button. You relax, stare at the glowing numbers count closer to your goal. The doors open. Close. You shouldn’t have pushed that wrong button.

After subduing the receptionist with your charms and forged press badge, you enter his office and find him lying on a sofa tossing a ball in the air to himself. Papers laze about his desk like beastly cats on a hot day in the Savanah and you look for his absent computer, then quickly to the point at hand. He looks to you, your lips quiver and you hold out the bottle of wine which dried up your last paycheck.

You just want to ask one question. You will have no other opportunity to question Shakespeare. He bends his brow, sits up impatiently…What will you ask him?

“Why John Falstaff?”

Amidst more civil strife, spawned by an uncomfortable seat which provides only the opportunity to fight for its keeping, we witness two sides of a politically epic tale. One side, starring Henry Bolingbroke as King Henry IV, portrays the warring factions of Lords Northumberland, Worcester and Percy, the very men who aided Bolingbroke’s apprehension of King Richard II’s throne, against the new King, their one-time friend. Henry Percy, nicknamed Hotspur for his reckless and cavalier temprament, counters a paranoid King obsessed with protecting, washing and wringing his hands, as Jon Finch plays him, in order to parley the guilt of King Richard II’s deposition and murder. If only Richard could witness the accuracy of his prophecy when he said to Northumberland,

The love of wicked friends converts to fear;
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deserved death.

True to his form, Shakespeare urges sympathy to both sides of this historical conflict, since all angles bear the kink of humanity. I sympathize with Percy’s faction because the new King returns the courtesy of their previous aid with scorn and mistrust. Although, to a small degree, I blame Percy’s reckless thirst for action which likely exaggerates his intentions against the King. But I do not find his complaint against Bolingbroke without merit. In this, the new king learns how he opened the gate for equality amongst nobility and royalty by usurping a throne designed for the security of perfect succession. How can he assert his dominance when he owes so much to others? How can he expect others to live submissively when he whom they serve sits on the throne by their actions? Humanity has now tainted the divine sanctity of the English monarchy and bears conflict with her.

Shakespeare might have better entitled King Henry IV – The First Part as The Rise of Prince Henry. Beyond the perilous drought of political conflict, we meet Henry, Prince of Wales, who galavants through inns and taverns with baseborn commoners and insignificant, cowardly villains. Presumabely, he abandons the royal court for the court of paupers where he still maintains his title but enjoys a life a bit outside of the law, like a youth above it. But Shakespeare begs his audience to remember the prince’s own words:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyok’d humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish’d-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents,
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offence a skill;
Reckoning time when men think least I will.

He plays this part so successfully that the King, his father, preaches to him about his holiday behaviour, comparing it to that of King Richard II, and beckons him to behave as he did, humbly presenting himself to gain favour and support as king. Perhaps I prematurely sympathized with Bolingbroke during King Richard II’s time, imagining he only wanted his birthright from Richard. But it would seem, according to his advice, he had his eye on the throne all along, deposing Richard when his birthright would have done. Now in this conflict with Percy he knows his enemies have just grievance against him. So this meeting between father and son, King and Prince, full of advice, with a hint of regret and nostalgia in comparing the prince to King Richard II, and both indicative of the prince’s successful ploy and the King’s apparaent guilt, marks the prince’s return to the royal fold after a very different upbringing than Bolingbroke. After all, Bolingbroke came from Gaunt and nobility while Prince Henry, though of the same blood, wallowed with commoners and miscriants. He has a deeper potential for character and may avoid the shallowness of envy and animalistic paranoia of possession. I wonder if the prince’s humble actions with the likes of John Falstaff, conspiring to rob robber friends, mirrors the pompous political circumstances of the state. The king, then, shares this reunion with a purified and strengthened son who can better lead England.

After the battle, the prince describes the nobility of his heart with mournful praises of fallen Percy and mercy for Douglas in return for his valor. But his true grace lies in his love for men like John Falstaff, jolly cowards who provide good company and unshakeable loyalty despite distastes for war, rebukes of honor and shameful behavior.

Yet who is John Falstaff? Like many other characters in your plays, he beckons so many different interpretations. Why did you write him? What purpose does he serve? You spend so much time on this obvious fiction juxtaposed to the historical plot…why? What sort of past does Falstaff carry with him? Who is he?

While away from court, perhaps the prince embraced Falstaff as a kind of father figure. Falstaff brought him up in all his vulgar practices and they enjoyed an intimate familiarity of loving speech and knee-buckling slurs. Falstaff outweighs the prince in years and pounds and they even perform the part of father and son opposite one another, taking turns imitating the prince and the king. Perhaps Falstaff willingly accepts the prince’s projections of feelings for his father, perhaps he foreshadows the prince’s fate should he choose to hide himself behind the base contagious clouds too long. If Falstaff does serve as a father figure, it would indicate a dual parentage for the prince which serves to strengthen his character for the commons and the nobility – and needless to say, in love, for I do not doubt that Falstaff loves the prince. And all these things combine to create a character that Vernon described:

He made a blushing cital of himself;
And chid his truant youth with such a grace,
As if he master’d there a double spirit,
Of teaching and of learning instantly.
There did he pause: but let me tell the world, –
If he outlive the envy of this day,
England did never owe so sweet a hope,
So much misconstru’d in his wantonness.

 

My Time of Shakespeare: The First Tetralogy – Henry VI Third Part

Full well hath Clifford play’d the orator,
Inferring arguments of mighty force.
But, Clifford, tell me, didst though never hear
That things ill got had ever bad success?
And happy always was it for that son
Whose father for his hoarding went to hell?
I’ll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind;
And would my father had left me no more!
For all the rest is held at such a rate
As brings a thousand-fold more care to keep
Than in possession any jot of pleasure.

With these words, Henry defies those who accuse him of cowardice, including myself. As I conclude this story of King Henry VI, I find myself concerned solely with his character. I understand that with a broad enough scope, discontent and sedition prove cyclical without an end point where justice stands victorious over her enemies and all wronged parties contendtedly relieve themselves. After all, as it may always sway with politics, the powerful alone define the truth of justice.

Yet Henry VI introduces me to an unfamiliar type of king, one who remains so much in the background of the civil warring in his kingdom yet still symbolizes the boon of one side of the fight. It seems Shakespeare inverts the story arch with my emotional reactions to Henry’s behavior. Where a story begins by setting the scene, then introduces the rising conflict, the climax and finally the falling resolution, I held Henry in a high regard, then he fell when the story rises and climaxes, then he rose again, for me, during the falling resolution. I esteemed his wisdom and sense of priority regarding the kingdom above himself in Part 1, began to question his conviction and will to defend his moral integrity in Part 2, then let him fall entirely in my regard as he agreed to York’s succession. But then I embraced him again, more fully than any other time during the trilogy, as a righteous philosopher who understands more of a man’s contentment and the false promise of happiness included with the purchase of a crown.

As the next generation enters the stage, after the tumultous revolting of Henry’s younger years, I wondered if Henry might have his own son’s true interests at heart when he gives up Prince Edward’s right to the crown. Of course, Queen Margaret, a beautifully bold feminine image of power and conviction in a man’s political world, violently defends their son’s right to the crown. But where they hold in common purpose for Prince Edward’s happiness, they differ in their methods. She thinks raising him to the highest office in England means providing his joy. Henry fundamentally disagrees as he comes to understand the true nature of this game and life.

In Act II, Scene V, Shakespeare illustrates a wonderous portrait of civil strife. First, Henry delivers a moving soliloquy on his perspective, one which he may have always had but finally puts in words and owns as his stance, then the image of fathers killing sons and sons killing fathers. The language would crush the heart of any horse-blinded warrior but I appreciated its simplicity most – an image of a corpse, colored in white by his pale cheeks and red by his blood, embodying both the red and white roses of this civil conflict. Such strife serves only to pay tribute unto death, nothing more. The victor dies as much as the vanquished as both share the same body politic.

We now look forward to the exploits of Richard III. I loved his confrontation with Henry VI when he decides to forfeit the effort to keep the nature of his soul and intellect differentiated from his body – a difference the public had ignored and considered his parts one and the same in monstrosity. With develish words Richard surrenders the battle to keep apart the magnetized aspects of his being and allows his spirit to reflect his physical form as so many in ignorant bigotry had marked him. What a tragedy, but no more tragic than the end of a life which wanted nothing more than to know God, serve his realm justly and live happily.

 

My Time of Shakespeare: The First Tetralogy – Henry VI First Part

King Henry VI. Part 1. Act II. Scene 5. From the Painting in the Boydell Gallery, J. Northcote, R.A.

I recently learned about what the scholars have called Shakespeare’s two tetralogies. The first quartet includes Henry VI Part 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III and the second includes Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and 2 and Henry V. When I discovered these organizations, my eyes bulged and I may have vacuumed all oxygen from the room. I love order. As an example of my quirk, I found a collection of Hardy Boys books tucked away in the storage crevices of my parent’s basement and, after seeing numeric labels on their spines, I instinctively yeared for #1. Also, when I decide to tackle an author, I like to begin with their first work. When journeying through literature, with its monumental scope and canonical subjectivity, order helps the traveller gauge their progress while that gentle stretching feeling of a broadening perspective helps them endure the painful acknowledgment of the minimal mileage they’ve wandered. It also reminds them of the value in those few steps.

I had trouble deciding how I would read these two tetralogies. Should I read them in the order that Shakespeare wrote them, starting with Henry VI Part 1? Or should I follow history and begin with Richard II and the second tetralogy? Well, everyone loves a prequel.

In My Time of Shakespeare, I look forward to reading all of his histories. While reading this play, I suddenly basked in the idea that Shakespeare triumphed in the writer’s arena because he saw art in the real world. All the world’s a stage! Perhaps he does not advise us like a parent, but laughs in uncontrollabel joy at seeing art in life. It might mean that we have parts to play, destinies to fulfill in the writer’s plot, but it can also mean that art, beauty and truth can be gleaned from the very circumstances of reality in the same way as we see it in a staged story. The writer, or any artist, need not fully create their truth and beauty but simply replicate what they see in the real world. Therefore, these histories excite me!

Shakespeare ripens Henry VI Part 1 with suffocating division on all fronts of the world – Henry versus Charles, Richard Plantagenet versus Somerset, Gloster versus Winchester, etc. The play begins with the mourning of Henry V and the end of a unified time when all England rose behind their king in one cause. I imagine the audience must immediately look for characters with whom to allign themselves but, because of the great rhetoric surrounding Henry V’s passing, they must look for those characters who would labor for his legacy. Shakespeare does not hesitate to influence their allegiances either. During occasional lonely soliloquies, he reveals the deceiptful schemes of Winchester and Suffolk which contrast the noble minds of Gloster and others and, with Exeter’s words, he chastises those who would bring about the demise of Henry V’s England.

One of the main divisions, between Plantagenet and Somerset, the origins of the War of the Roses, carries a theme not uncommon to other Shakespeare plays. Plantagenet, stripped of his noble rights because previous kings convicted his forebears of treason, has something to prove. To those who would insult his family and threaten, what he understands as, his rightful inheritance, he gnashes his teeth quickly and with a hot head. Those opposed to him feel they defend the crown and the order of England but Shakespeare asks us to determine whether a man ought to suffer judgement for his individual merit or his noble blood. Two ideas, one traditional and one revolutionary, fester within the spirit of England. And, until a certain point, we entertain the idea that a noble heart and just merit might endure!

I admit I will continue on to Part 2 with an affection for Henry VI. Despite his age, he shows wisdom and a care for the well-being of his country, moreso than for his own pleasure and glory. Throughout his time in the play he implores his subjects, and finally France, for peace, speaks of the importance of schooling before marriage, cannot reason why two countries professing the same faith fight, and presents himself as a kind of Solomon on the throne of justice. However, with all the division within England, which Exeter prophesies as the root of its coming demise, I began to question the hypocrisy of Henry VI’s views on division and unity in his relationship with France. I promptly applauded his demand for peace amongst his English nobility. But knowing that he saw France as his rightful domain like he does English soil, why would he not immediately demand peace between the two countries in the same fasion? After all, in his view, France and England are one kingdom. Later in the play, he presents a peace accord and ultimately stops the fighting but it does not resemble the same moral fortitude which governed his treatment of Gloster and Winchester’s feud. I suppose we will forgive him politics.

Throughout the play, Shakespeare romances his audience back and forth between England and France. In France, the idyllic image strikes the audience in gross contrast to that of England. After meeting Joan of Arc, I imagined her as David (and perhaps Shakespeare did as well with her shepherding background) battling Goliath. She brings spirit and prophesy, pours confidence down the throats of the French government and armies. Of course, the English slander her as a witch and I rebuked their sore losing. But her under-dog status beams so brightly that it blinded me to the fact that she does little to help France on the field. She bolsters their spirits but loses cities as soon as she regains them. They suffer setbacks after their first battle. And the eventual outcome of the war looks little like what she promises. But Shakespeare perfectly plotted her role against her Goliath.

Talbot, who spends his time in France battling the French armies and compouding his monolithic legend and reputation, truly embodies the once-loved warring nobility and romantic bloodlust of Henry V. All of France fears him, all of England loves him and both nations revere him. Shakespeare cleverly reveals him as a man of average stature during a meeting with Lady Margaret, but his armies comprise his limbs and his spirit swells with conviction. Perhaps he resembles the real historic possibility of Goliath who Israel may have symbolized as a giant because of the same qualities embodied by Talbot.

Shakespeare pivots the story on Talbot’s death and also foreshadows England’s coming demise with it. His death may jerk more tears from the audience than any other scene in the play. Shakespeare couples him with his son in battle and they argue in lofty sentiments of a warrior’s honor and duty. Yet they would both sacrifice their lives and legacy so the other might live with honor. Ironically, Talbot’s warrior sentiments do not keep him on the field. His son does. And with words of simple rhyming poetry, father and son intertwine in speech and fate – all because of the bickering between Plantagenet and Somerset! Talbot’s death divides the under-dog sympathies for the noble heart in the earlier parts of the play with the vile stench of foreboding as the deceipt and cunning of noble birth begin to dominate the rest of the play. We see Winchester successfully purchase his position as Cardinal though we know him as a treacherous man lusting after power. We see the King break his word to a French woman because of Suffolk’s manipulation. We see the noble heart revealed as a farce as Joan conjures fiends like a witch and goes to her execution with a crumbling integrity. We see Charles cross his fingers while accepting a peace accord which places him as viceroy of France answering only to King Henry VI. Where noble sympathies once ruled, evil trickery amongst noble officials now reigns.

And this is Shakespeare’s twist. To tease the audience with victory for the noble heart – the conjurer of Talbot’s Goliath-like legend and imagined stature, the holder of the shepherd peasant Joan of Arc’s place at the head of the great table of French history, the key to Plantagenet’s seat in York – but give the play’s reward to sedition and the cunning of birthright.

Oh, how audiences must feel…and impatiently await Part 2!