137
and, doubting the king’s word,
deny him the details of Henry’s
terms for peace. In the end, though,
it is Northumberland who can’t be
trusted. He and Glyndwˆr fail to send
Hotspur essential reinforcements
before the battle at Shrewsbury.
Typically, Hotspur puts a brave
face on this, arguing that it adds a
“larger dare to our great enterprise”
(4.1.78). But single-minded valor is
no substitute for political strategy.
And the consequence is fatal.
Henry sees in Hotspur the man
he’ll never be. He represents the
knightly virtue that Henry stepped
away from when he seized the
crown. In this respect he is Henry’s
lost ideal, and the son that he would
wish for: “A son who is the theme of
honour’s tongue” (1.1.80). His own
son, Prince Hal, is a rebellious youth
whom Henry needs to conform, for
a noble heir would let him reinstate
the line of legitimate inheritance
that he himself usurped, and
restore England’s true order.
For the present, Hal chooses
disorder. He spends his days far
from the uneasy court, in the
stews of the Eastcheap taverns,
where excess, licentiousness,
and dissipation are the norm.
The whole is epitomized in the
expansive and unconstrained
fleshiness of Falstaff, the emblem
of physical, moral, and spiritual
disorder and of occasionally ❯❯THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN
An RSC production in 1951 saw
Richard Burton (center), play an aloof,
heroic Hal. Critics remarked upon
Burton’s eyes, which seemed to hold
a vision of Hal’s own destiny.Censorship
Sir John Falstaff (above right,
played by Antony Sher in a
2014 RSC production) is one
of Shakespeare’s bawdiest
dramatic creations. His comic
profanities were part of a long
tradition of stage swearing.
However, by the late 16th
century, this was increasingly
offending Puritan sensibilities.
Shakespeare had already got
into trouble by originally
naming the character Sir John
Oldcastle, which was also the
name of a Protestant martyr.
The outraged lord chamberlain
(a descendant of Oldcastle’s)
forced Shakespeare to change
the name and apologize.
Players came under
pressure to clean up their
language, then the 1606 “Act
to Restrain the Abuses of
Players” formally banned all
onstage ribaldry and cursing.
From then on, the plays were
purged of any off-color or
irreligious language, a legacy
that continued into the 20th
century. The most drastic
clean-up was, perhaps, the
1818 Family Shakespeare
edited by the Reverend
Thomas Bowdler, whose cuts
were so severe that some
plays, in particular Othello,
were rendered nonsensical.