Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 183
perhaps, because Falstaff ’s nihilism is the prince’s own. Falstaff ’s
speech in contempt of honor could come from the prince’s heart,
but for obvious reasons it can never come from his lips. The prince
holds all values light. But to have Falstaff on hand is a danger be-
cause his uninhibited rancor at values and ideals is too close a clue
to the contents of the prince’s own mind.
The prince can play at statesman—as when, as Henry the Fifth,
he, with the aid of the opportunistic prelates, fabricates reasons to
invade France. He can play at lover when he charms the French
princess. He can play at being a friend and at being a son. Finally
he will become a player king and foment a real war. It is as if Hal
has been schooled into being who he is by watching Shakespeare’s
dramas. He has learned that honor is a sham, faith in religion a di-
version, and the quest for Truth largely irrelevant. Yet he knows that
the ideals will always command fascination, even from those (espe-
cially from those) to whom they pre sent themselves as a threat. Few
can be as enchanted with honor as the man who has had to thrust it
aside in order to get where he is going in the world. Hal is a tactical
shape- shifter. He is Shakespeare’s primary man— and he is, per-
haps, the future.
And Hal is not without bro th ers. He is the best result of the kind
of provisional, positional pragmatism— the extemporization of
Self— that Shakespeare pre sents as the alternative, the victorious al-
ternative, to the old ways. Hal is of the brotherhood of Edmund
and Iago and Caesar Augustus, and the Antony of Julius Caesar—
modern men, men of the pre sent and future. Gods, as Edmund says,
stand up for bastards!
Where does the force of genius come from? Surely there are many
sources. But it is not wrong to see some mea sure of social energy at
the core of Shakespeare’s magnifi cent work. He writes for his class,
his uprising class. He opens a space for its members. In not too
long, the force of his strong descendant, Charles Dickens, will be