182 Ideals in the Modern World
Hal tells us from the tavern at Eastcheape, “redeeming time when
men think least I will” (I.ii.216–217). Hal is an actor, yes, but as
Stephen Greenblatt argues, he is also a playwright, and he has al-
ready written and mentally rehearsed the play that will be his life.
Hal is not a wild improviser like Iago, but one who has already
outlined the drama in which he will play the leading part.
Men and women still thrill to the heroic ideal. (They always will.)
Very well, Hal can play the part of the hero. He can kill Hotspur
and take his honors, as if they were a sum of money in a bank ac-
count. So one may defeat, close out, bankrupt, and appropriate the
possessions of a rival business. “Percy is but my factor,” Hal tells
his father the king, “To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf; /
And I will call him to so strict account / That he shall render
every glory up, / Yea, even the slightest worship of his time” (III.
ii.147–151). Hal refuses to accept honor as it has been under-
stood—as a State of being. He prefers to think of it as a state of
having. It is analogous to bourgeois own ership, which in his
world, where the audience conceives of achievement as entwined
with possession, it must be. Hal’s duel with Hotspur is a hostile
takeover bid.
Surely defeating Hotspur in battle is no easy matter. And Hal
does take him on face- to- face. But the play shows that there has been
a stratagem involved. Many warriors in Hal’s faction have dressed
themselves up to counterfeit the king. Hotspur, it seems, has chased
them up and down the battlefi eld seeking glory. By the time he meets
Hal, he is presumably weary— far easier to kill then he would have
been if Hal had taken him on in single combat early in the battle.
What looks like the apogee of heroic honor in Hal is in certain ways
a matter of cunning and deception.
Hal will feign being a robber and actually steal the crown. He will
feign friendship for Falstaff — the Socrates of Eastcheape, as Harold
Bloom calls him— and then repudiate him. The repudiation comes,