Make sure you refer to strategic comparisons throughout the play …
Motif: celestial motif to denote royalty
Tapping into the celestial motif which Shakespeare uses repeatedly to refer to royalty, King Henry states, “by being seldom seen, I could not stir, But, like a comet, I was wond’red at”. Throughout the play, there is an understated comparison between Henry and Richard II, who unlike King Duncan in Macbeth, is no virtuous king. Henry criticises the former leader for being the “skipping king” for his association with the proletariat, and dismisses the pleasures of such classes as “barren” and “lewd acts”. King Henry believes he outshone the “crowned King” because of a royal image, wherein pride and honour were camouflaged by an appearance of humility: “I stole all courtesy from heaven, And dressed myself in such humility, That I did pluck allegiance from men’s hearts, Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths, Even in the presence of the crowned King.”
While Henry alludes to the lack of “sun-like majesty” of the previous king, Richard II (III.ii.79), who lowers the prestigious nature of royalty, Harry (Henry, Prince of Wales) earlier states that he will “imitate the sun, / . . . / By breaking through the foul and ugly mists” (I.ii.175–180). Intending to cast off his pretence of idleness, Hal will presumably burn through the clouds and shine radiantly and regally. I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord, be more myself
It is the rebel spy, Sir Richard Vernon, who pays Hal a most worthy compliment when he remarks on the remarkable transformation, as earlier predicted by the scheming prince. Note once again the celestial image of a noble warrior and the true intentions of Hal. “I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d, Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat, As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship
Motif of thief: – parallels between Falstaff, the King and the rebels
As the “king of misrule”, Sir John Falstaff is depicted as a contrast to Henry but one that sheds light on the flaws in his leadership. Falstaff often puns on stealing “crowns” to symbolically capture the source of the King’s anxiety. As a “thief”, Henry struggles to gain the support of the disunified band of rebels. The fact that he disrupted the social order in his grab for power constantly plagues the king who seeks to rationalise and justify his actions, especially by going on the crusade.
However, as the thief, Falstaff’s actions also conjure up parallels with the rebels whose grab for land and power is thinly concealed beneath their list of grievances.
Sequentially, Shakespeare moves from the tavern world in Eastcheap, during which Falstaff hides behind the arras to Owen Glendower’s castle in Wales. At the end of Act II, the Prince negotiates with the Sheriff and promises to make “the oily rascal” “answerable”. At the beginning of Act III, a disunified band of rebels is planning their land grab. Should the tables and chairs be left the same during the stage production, this would link the theme of theft between the two disparate worlds and enable Shakespeare to clearly show the rebels are just as unruly and self-serving in their lust for power as Falstaff.
In this regard, the rebels’ confused entrance (III.1) contrasts to the formality of the king’s court. The rebels cannot decide who should sit down first; ultimately Hotspur takes charge. The fact that he cannot find the map of England that they have been consulting is another symbol of their disorder and eventual disintegration. Shakespeare suggests that, symbolically, they have lost sight of England and her best interests in their struggle for power
Motifs: truth and counterfeit: time and honour
The contradiction of the ‘true” thief lies at the core of Falstaff’s being and this ambivalence renders him difficult to define. As a true thief he rationalises: ‘T’is my vocation, Hal. T’is no sin for a man to labour in his vocation’. This ambivalence also pervades the word play throughout as Falstaff reinvents himself in language
The motif of time is apparent: specifically, Falstaff is indifferent to time and is frequently wiling the time away, snoring. Contrastingly, Hal is squandering his time and good name in his company.
Shakespeare also refers to the fact that Hal appears to have ulterior motives; learning the banter and conversing in puns and double entendres with Falstaff provides a frivolous diversion, but the way in which he seamlessly slips into verse shows his dexterity.
The play extempore; surrogate father etc.
Falstaff flounders and makes do with whatever props he has at hand, inventing strategies on the spot in a ranting parody. The props consist of the crown of England as a bald head and a threadbare cushion. As the Prince notes, “Thy state is taken for a joined-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald crown”. (act 2/ iv/ 377-488)
Motif: language
As a “truant to chivalry”, and although condemned by his father , Hal believes that he is profiting from his time in the tavern world, “mingling his royalty with capering fools”. He shows an ability to be able to “drink with any tinker in his own language”. His linguistic abilities also help him later to appease his father’s wrath. To his credit, Hal speaks Falstaff’s language of fellowship, “I am a sworn brother to a leash of drawers; 2.5.6. “I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life”. He believes this will be crucial to his future exercise of power: “When I am king of England I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap (2.5.12).
During the play extempore, Falstaff seeks to redden his eyes to imitate the King’s fury and woe; it must look as though “I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein”. This allusion to Preston’s King Cambyses (1569) implies a ranting leader and in this case Falstaff draws attention to the King’s conflicting emotions born of passion and woe.
If Hal is learning the language of commoners, Falstaff speaks to Hal “not in words only, but in woes also” and the Prince praises the language, “dost thou speak like a king?” (Throughout, Shakespeare uses the motif of language to suggest that each character, and not just the punning Falstaff, creates and (re)invents self in words that shift and change according to the context. In this case, the language of the king is one of passion; of trials and tribulations; of woe and grief.)
Rebels: motif of the animal world
Thomas Percy, the Earl of Worcester, who is “malevolent to the king in all aspects”, later charges the King with treachery using the motif of the animal world that reinforces an image of cut-throat survival. He states, “Forgot your oath to us at Doncaster; And, being fed by us, you used us so, As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo’s bird, Useth the sparrow”. In other words, the cuckoo lays its eggs in other birds’ nests and the young cuckoos when hatched speedily destroy the other nestlings. As Worcester remarks, after Henry profited from their “feeding”, support and nurture, and grew to “so great a bulk, That even our love durst not come near your sight For fear of swallowing”. So confident and arrogant was the King, that Worcester believes their very presence became a dangerous threat: “with nimble wing We were enforced for safety to fly Out of your sight and raise this present head”. He has clearly violated “all faith and troth”. (V.1. 58)
Economic perspective: and the motif of debt
From a compromise and synthesis perspective, Hal learns both the language of brotherhood and that of honour.
During his reference to Hotspur, Hal refers to honour in commercial terms suggesting that he will suitably profit from acquiring and surpassing Hotspur’s feudal brand of honour. Terms such as ‘factor”, “engross; “account”; “reckoning” conjure up images of a successful commercial deal, (3.2.144) suggesting that honour is like a commodity to be bought and sold. (“I shall make this northern youth exchange his glorious deeds for my indignities.” Hal cements his reputation on the fact that he is aware of the debt that must be repaid and proves himself to be calculating and manipulative.
Falstaff, the lollard knight, and “king of misrule” is a subversive leader of the common folk. He is one of the “moon’s men”, a man of the lower classes; food, women and wine are his “vocation” and he claims that “’tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.”
Falstaff views honour as a “mere scutcheon” : an external badge or sign of status (a piece of armour). (A “scutcheon” was a heraldic device that identified heavily armoured knights in battle when their faces could not be seen.) (Henry uses false scutcheons to send knights camouflaged as himself.) Falstaff says that “honour pricks me on,” parroting the party line; but he then discredits it and complains that it is useless. “Honour is not tangible: it cannot “take away the grief of a wound” or preserve life; “I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath”. Honour will not “live with the living … Detraction will not suffer it.” is of no use neither to the living nor to the dead. When he stumbles across the body of Sir Walter Blunt (slain, ironically, because he is thought to be King Henry), his immediate comment is: “Sir Walter Blunt. There’s honour for you. Here’s no vanity” (V.iii.32–33).
Falstaff is subversive and undermines order. At times he appears moralistic: “Lord, Lord how this world is /given to lying”. He justifies his cowardice at Gad’s Hill, because “the lion will not touch the true prince”. But he implores Hal, to “rob me the exchequer the first thing thou/ dost”. He gives thanks for “these rebels, they /offend none but the virtuous. I laud them. I praise them”. He prefers not to expose himself to risk. Hal comments, “This/ sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horse-back-breaker”. (He seeks an economic benefit from the war and recruits only men who can pay their way out of military service and replaces them with “scarecrows”. When they die their pay reverts to him.
He seeks to be “no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed”. “I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man, who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed.”
Worcester, who is “malevolent to the king in all aspects”, later charges the King with treachery using the motif of the animal world that reinforces an image of cut-throat survival. He believes that so confident and arrogant has the King become, that the rebels’ presence is perceived as a dangerous threat: “with nimble wing We were enforced for safety to fly Out of your sight and raise this present head”. He believes the King has clearly violated “all faith and troth”. (V.1. 58)
However, Worcester also proves to be underhand in his treatment of Hotspur. He conveniently keeps him ignorant of King Henry’s “kind and liberal” offer, knowing that as the leader, Worcester, will be the one to suffer the consequences of their treachery: “We did train him on; And, his corrupting being ta’en from us, We, as the spring of all, shall pay for all.” (V II)
Mortimer explains, “The Archdeacon hath divided it; Into three limits very equally”. They offer Hotspur, “the remnant northward lying off from Trent”. Hotspur proposes altering the course of the river Trent so he will not be robbed “of so rich a bottom” (3.1.102). ( One also recalls Falstaff’s quip when alerting Hal to the dangers of the three formidable enemies (Act II, iv), “you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mack’rel”.)
QUOTES
Although he bears himself regally, he remains “shaken”, “wan with care,” and “pale with worry” (I.i.1). He is referred to variously by others as the “cankered Bullingbrook”. Hotspur sees Henry as a criminal, ‘a poor unminded outlaw sneaking home’ and Worcester is “malevolent to you in all respects”.
Henry seeks to be “mighty and to be feared”.
Henry states, “by being seldom seen, I could not stir, But, like a comet, I was wond’red at”.
He believes he outshone the “crowned King” because of a royal image, wherein pride and honour were camouflaged by an appearance of humility: “I stole all courtesy from heaven, And dressed myself in such humility, That I did pluck allegiance from men’s hearts, Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths, Even in the presence of the crowned King.”
Hotspur is the “theme of honour’s tongue”
As the “king of misrule”, Falstaff is depicted as a contrast to Henry but one that sheds light on the flaws in his leadership. Falstaff often puns on stealing “crowns” to symbolically capture the source of the King’s anxiety. As a “thief”, Henry constantly struggles to gain the support of the disunified band of rebels.
(the earth insufficiently bears so “stout a gentleman”), Falstaff’s obsession with wordplay (the “sweet creature of bombast”) enables him to parody and satirise important themes of the play such as the very pressing issue of Henry’s legitimacy.
Ambiguously, his size also renders him vulnerable. He states, “I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty.” (Is this what makes him act in cowardly ways?) He gains “mastery of the double spirit” ; “counterfeit” (“I am what I seem”)
The contradiction of the ‘true” thief lies at the core of Falstaff’s being and this ambivalence renders him difficult to define. As a true thief he rationalises: ‘T’is my vocation, Hal. T’is no sin for a man to labour in his vocation’. He says, “a plague upon it when thieves cannot be truth one to another.” He warns the prince: “Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit. Thou art essentially made without seeming so.”
In this battle, Falstaff will also conclude, “I am not a double man” (meaning a phantom or wraith) but “if I be not Jack Falstaff, then I am a Jack” (a rascal). (“How this world is given to lying.”)
During the play extempore, Hal levels similar accusations at Falstaff: “Wherein crafty but in villainy”. Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing”.
Falstaff: “Banish plumb Jack, and banish all the world”
As the Prince notes, “Thy state is taken for a joined-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald crown”. (act 2/ iv/ 377-488)
Falstaff seeks to redden his eyes to imitate the King’s fury and woe; it must look as though “I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein”. This allusion to Preston’s King Cambyses (1569) implies a ranting leader and in this case Falstaff draws attention to the King’s conflicting emotions born of passion and woe.
Playing the role of King Henry, Falstaff reminds Hal that there is a “virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name”.
“Shall the son of England prove a thief and take purses?” Using the motif of the sun to refer to Hal’s royal lineage, he asks, “shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries?” In other words, he may be a truant from duty and squander his time, picking blackberries amongst undesirable company. He further explains, “the pitch (as ancient writers do report) doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest”.
If Hal is learning the language of commoners, Falstaff speaks to Hal “not in words only, but in woes also” and the Prince praises the language, “dost thou speak like a king?”
Falstaff playfully undermines civic order, praises the rebels, (“these rebels, they / offend none but the virtuous. I laud them, I praise them”, and as his bulk suggests, he is “gross as a mountain”, survival and living are more important to him. Hal comments, “that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak—bag of guts that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly”.
In the play extempore, Prince Hal foreshadows that he will desert Falstaff, “I do, I will”, but at the moment, he remains true to his friend and protects him when the Sheriff appears, “Go hide behind the arras”.
Hotspur – the “theme of honour’s tongue”; the Scottish rebel Douglas calls him “the king of honour”. Hotspur declares that “me thinks it were an easy leap To pluck bring honour from the pale-faced moon”. He imagines honour as a near mythic treasure, a physical object to be “pluck(ed) up; a buried treasure at “the bottom of the deep”; often obtained by feats of force and even violence. (the extreme feats characterize Hotspur’s personality)
As a “Mars in swathling clothes”, Hotspur is the preferred son;
Yea, there thou mak’st me sad and mak’st me sin
In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son—
A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue, …
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle clothes our children where they lay,
And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet! (I.i.77–88)
Hotspur mocks the Welshman’s claim that “the earth did shake when I was born”, replying that “so it would have done….if your mother’s cat had but kittened” and that “no man speaks better Welsh”, or nonsense. (Compare Hotspur’s relationship with the brash and boastful, magician, Glendower with Hal’s to Falstaff’s. Both scold the other after a set of monstrous lies.)
Mortimer and Worcester chastise Hotspur for his rudeness towards Glendower; despite his courage, Hotspur shows a “defect of manners, want of government/ pride, haughtiness, opinion and disdain”: these are the perils of his single-mindedness (Act 4.3)
Hal professes his preparedness to deceive all of England in his ploy to allow his goodness to be covered up by “base contagious clouds”, the company he keeps, so that upon his transformation to dutiful heir he shall be like “bright metal on a sullen ground” and “appear more goodly/and attract more eyes.”
While Henry alludes to the lack of “sun-like majesty” of the previous king, Richard II (III.ii.79), who lowers the prestigious nature of royalty, Harry earlier states that he will “imitate the sun, / . . . / By breaking through the foul and ugly mists” (I.ii.175–180). Intending to cast off his pretence of idleness, Hal will presumably burn through the clouds and shine radiantly and regally. I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord, be more myself
As a “truant to chivalry”, and although condemned by his father , Hal believes that he is profiting from his time in the tavern world, “mingling his royalty with capering fools”. He shows an ability to be able to “drink with any tinker in his own language”. His linguistic abilities also help him later to appease his father’s wrath. To his credit, Hal speaks Falstaff’s language of fellowship, “I am a sworn brother to a leash of drawers; 2.5.6. “I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life”. He believes this will be crucial to his future exercise of power: “When I am king of England I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap (2.5.12).
Hal can also be just as royally humble as his father. “With three or four loggerheads amongst three or fourscore hogsheads, I have sounded the very bass-string of humility”. Although they refer to him as the “king of courtesy”, he is nevertheless “no proud Jack like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle”, but the mettle of royalty.
He describes Falstaff harshly concluding that “there is a devil that haunts thee in the likeness of an old, fat man”. Falstaff is a “huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloakbag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox … that reverence vice, that gray iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years.”
The anticipated rejection (“I do, I will”) cast in both the present and future tense cuts through Hal’s relationship with Falstaff. Hal accuses him at times of being “a natural coward without instinct”.
The fact that Hal returns the crowns and repays his debt of “three hundred marks” to the Sheriff (“the money should be paid back again with advantage”) reveals his nobility of character. (Compare to King Henry and Falstaff who questions the need to settle dues before their due date: ‘Tis not due yet: I would be loth to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me?
Economic perspective: and the motif of debt
From a compromise and synthesis perspective, Hal learns both the language of brotherhood and that of honour. During his reference to Hotspur, Hal refers to honour in commercial terms suggesting that he will suitably profit from acquiring and surpassing Hotspur’s feudal brand of honour. Terms such as ‘factor”, “engross; account; reckoning” conjure up images of a successful commercial deal, (3.2.144) suggesting that honour is like a commodity to be bought and sold. (“I shall make this northern youth exchange his glorious deeds for my indignities.”
When Hal mortally wounds the “king of honour”, he resists the tendency to usurp his reputation, “‘take thy praise with thee to heaven’.
It is the rebel spy, Sir Richard Vernon, who pays Hal a most worthy compliment when he remarks on the remarkable transformation, as earlier predicted by the scheming prince. Note once again the celestial image of a noble warrior and the true intentions of Hal. I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d, Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat, As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
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