smiles’ and his efforts at ‘popularity’. But acting is now a necessary part of political
life: Henry sends into the battlefield at Shrewsbury men dressed as himself, duplicate
kings whom Douglas kills. These multiplied images admit that the monarchy has
lost its sacredness, that kingship is a role, with Hal as understudy. Hal suddenly
becomes Prince Henry at Shrewsbury, killing the honourable Hotspur, but, as in a
pantomine, allowing Falstaff to take the credit. Shakespeare has worked a trick
whereby Hal has touched pitch and is not defiled.
In 2 Henry IV we see less of Hal and less of the comic and festive side of unruly
popular life, more of its disease and low tricks. We also see trickery and suspicion in
high places. Prince John cheats; King Henry wrongly accuses Prince Henry of want-
ing him dead so that he can have the crown. In their last interview he advises his son
to ‘busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels’: Agincourt a diversion! The rogues of
Eastcheap will serve in Henry V as a foil to the noble King. In a rich invention, Mr
Justice Shallow reminisces in his Gloucestershire orchard with Falstaff about their
naughty youth, and dreams how their days of wenching and boozing will return
when Falstaff is Lord Chief Justice. Accosting the new King as he comes from his
crowning, Falstaff is summarily banished; but this lovable Vice was to ride again in
The Merry Wives of Windsor.Henry V
Henry V begins by telling us that it is a chronicle turned into a play, set within ‘this
wooden O’ (the Globe), with prologues and chorus and reference to ‘the story’. It is
a pageant with heroic tableaux. Henry coolly plays his legendary role for all it is
worth, but on the night before Agincourt we see him pray and suffer, and, in disguise
as a common soldier, take the king’s part in an argument with other soldiers. We see
him dealing with nobles,tr aitors, enemies, soldiers, captains, the French court, the
pr incess.But Shakespeare keeps him away from the denizens of Eastcheap, and
Falstaff dies off-stage.
Throughout Henry V we see the seamy side of the tapestry of history alternating
with the public side. Immediately before the wooing of Kate of France we hear that
Doll Tearsheet is dead and that Bardolph will run a brothel. The daughters of
Harfleur are threatened with rape, so that the town should yield; Kate learns English
so that she may yield. Henry’s clemency is followed by his angry killing of the pris-
oners, and a joke about Alexander ‘the Pig’ (i.e. Big, i.e. Great). The play is a carefully
mounted study of how to be king, and of what it costs; but for all his courage and
splendid words Henry is due admiration rather than the unmerited love which
animates the Hostess’s account of the death of one of the ‘gentleman in England now
abed’ of whom Henry speaks at Agincourt, Sir John Falstaff:MRS QUICKLY: Nay, sure he’s not in hell. He’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to
Arthur’s bosom. A made a finer end, and went away an it had been any christom
child.A parte d ev’n just between twelve and one, ev’n at the turning o’ th’tide – for
after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his
finger’s end, I knew there was but one way. For his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a
babbled of green fields. ‘How now, Sir John?’ quoth I. ‘What, man! Be o’ good cheer.’
So a cried out, ‘God, God, God’, three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him
he should not think of God;I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any
such thoughts yet. So a bade me lay more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the
bed and felt them, and they were cold as any stone. Then I felt to his knees, and so
up’ard and up’ard, and all was as cold as any stone.120 4 · SHAKESPEARE AND THE DRAMA