THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN 153
before establishing the details of his
promised redress. Once the lords are
powerless, John condemns them all
to death. Timing is everything. As
Lord Hastings puts it, “We are time’s
subjects, and time bids be gone”
(1.3.110). Thanks to Prince John’s
tactics, by the middle of the play,
all of Henry’s enemies are gone.
Inheritance
Shakespeare alters history to
implicate the king in this deception
by tasking his son with the trick.
The chronicles ascribe it to one
of his nobles. In political terms,
John has acted wisely in avoiding
bloodshed. Yet, as the scene closes,
his insistence that “God, and not
we, hath safely fought today”
(4.1.347) recasts his political
stratagem as a battlefield victory
by infusing it with honor that it
hardly deserves. John has evidently
inherited his father’s calculation.
He is, in Falstaff’s words, a “sober-
blooded boy” (4.2.84–85), lacking a
sense of humor or taste for drink. In
his lengthy praise of sack, or sherry,
the fat knight says that Hal, who
My father is gone wild
into his grave
Prince Harry
Act 5, Scene 2also shares his father’s cold-
bloodedness, has warmed it with
the wine of tavern life.
Hal shows his ability to sidestep
the kind of confrontation that his
brother seems to relish when he
eventually meets the king. Henry
has placed the crown beside him
on his pillow and, mistaking sleep
for death, Hal has briefly tried it on.
Now it sits between them as they
talk. The prince tells Henry what he
wants to hear, but he does so by
reworking slightly what happened
when he briefly took the crownThinking his sleeping father (David
Yelland) dead, Hal (Tom Mison) tries
on the crown for size in this 2011
production directed by Sir Peter Hall.away. In his earlier words, he
described his father as using the
crown like armor, to serve himself.
Now he says to the king that it is
he, the king, who has protected the
crown and suffered in its service.
Henry takes up this flattering
falsehood when he describes
himself as meeting rather than
seizing the crown, as if he took no
active part in usurping Richard II.
And Hal confirms the fiction that the
crown has rightfully passed to
Henry when he casts himself as its
true inheritor: “You won it, wore it,
kept it, gave it me; / Then plain
and right must my possession be”
(4.3.350–351). This revision by father
and son of the central problem
of Henry’s reign exemplifies
Shakespeare’s major theme in the
play—that of re-reading the past.
Having placated his father with
this promise of loyalty, the prince
receives his advice. Once king, says
Henry, Hal should bring the people
together in a foreign war.Somber finale
Shakespeare closes the play in
the minor key. Falstaff is finally
dismissed when Hal establishes
his power in the rule of law. His
rejection of his old friend is the
final playing out of that promised
moment from the comic tavern play
in Part 1. Hal’s new regal style now
silences Falstaff’s familiar greeting:
“I know thee not, old man” (5.5.47).
And when John mentions rumors
of war, we remember Henry’s
deathbed advice to his son. We
know this war will end with victory
at Agincourt and see Hal fulfill his
father’s project of uniting the nation
under the crown, however briefly. ■