Part 8 (1/2)
_Written._ (?)
_Published._ 1598.
_Source of the Plot._ Most of the comic scenes are the fruit of Shakespeare's invention. A very popular play, _The Famous Victories of Henry V_, by an unknown hand, gave him the suggestion for an effective comic scene. In the historical scenes he follows closely the _Chronicles_ of Holinshed.
_The Fable._ The play treats of the rising of Henry Hotspur, Lord Percy, against Henry IV of England, and of the turning of the mind of Henry, Prince of Wales, from low things to things more worthy his birth. It ends with the killing of Hotspur, by the Prince of Wales, on the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Hotspur is an uncommon man, whose uncommonness is unsupported by his father at a critical moment. Henry, Prince of Wales, is a common man, whose commonness props his father, and helps him to conquer. The play is about a son too brilliant to be understood, and a son too common to understand.
The play treats of a period some four years after the killing of King Richard II. It opens at a time when the oaths of Henry Bolingbroke, to do justice, have been broken on all sides, lest the injustice of his a.s.sumption of kings.h.i.+p should be recognised and punished by those over whom he usurps power. The King is no longer the just, rather kind, man of affairs who takes power in the earlier, much finer play. He is a swollen, soured, bullying man, with all the ingrat.i.tude of a king and all the baseness of one who knows his cause to be wrong. Opposed to him is a pa.s.sionate, quick-tempered man, ready to speak his mind, on the instant, to any whom he believes to be unjust or false.
This quick-tempered man, Lord Percy, has done the King a signal service.
Instead of asking for reward he tries to persuade the King to be just to a man who has suffered wounds and defeat for him. The King calls him a liar for his pains.
Percy, stung to the quick, rebels. Others rebel with him, among them some who are too wise to be profitable on a council of war. War does not call for wisdom, but for swiftness in striking. Percy, who is framed for swiftness in striking, loses half of his slender chance because his friends are too wise to advise desperate measures. Nevertheless, his troops shake the King's troops. The desperate battle of Shrewsbury is very nearly a triumph for him. Then the Prince meets him and kills him.
He learns too late that a pa.s.sionate longing to right the wrong goes down before the rough and stupid something that makes up the bulk of the world. He learns that
”Thought's the slave of life, and life, time's fool; And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop”--
and dies. The man who kills him says a few trite lines over his body, and leaves the stage talking of Falstaff's bowels.
Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V, has been famous for many years as ”Shakespeare's only hero.” Shakespeare was too wise to count any man a hero. The ways of fate moved him to vision, not heroism. If we can be sure of anything in that great, simple, gentle, elusive brain, we can be sure that it was quickened by the thought of the sun s.h.i.+ning on the just and on the unjust, and s.h.i.+ning none the less golden though the soul like clay triumph over the soul like flame. Prince Henry is not a hero, he is not a thinker, he is not even a friend; he is a common man whose incapacity for feeling enables him to change his habits whenever interest bids him. Throughout the first acts he is careless and callous though he is breaking his father's heart and endangering his father's throne. He chooses to live in society as common as himself. He talks continually of guts as though a belly were a kind of wit. Even in the society of his choice his att.i.tude is remote and cold-blooded. There is no good-fellows.h.i.+p in him, no sincerity, no whole-heartedness. He makes a mock of the drawer who gives him his whole little pennyworth of sugar.
His jokes upon Falstaff are so little good-natured that he stands upon his princehood whenever the old man would retort upon him. He impresses one as quite common, quite selfish, quite without feeling. When he learns that his behaviour may have lost him his prospective crown he pa.s.ses a sponge over his past, and fights like a wild cat for the right of not having to work for a living.
There is little great poetry in the play. The magnificent image--
”Baited like eagles having lately bathed”--
the speech of Worcester (in Act V, sc. i) when he comes with a trumpet to speak with the King, and the call of Hotspur to set on battle--
”Sound all the lofty instruments of war, And by that music let us all embrace”--
are all n.o.ble.
To many, the play is remarkable because it introduces Sir John Falstaff, the most notable figure in English comedy. Falstaff is that deeply interesting thing, a man who is base because he is wise. Our justest, wisest brain dwelt upon Falstaff longer than upon any other character because he is the world and the flesh, able to endure while Hotspur flames to his death, and the enemies of the devil are betrayed that the devil may have power to betray others.
_The Second Part of King Henry IV._
_Written._ 1597 (?)
_Published._ 1600.
_Source of the Plot._ The play of _The Famous Victories of Henry V_. Holinshed's _Chronicles_.
_The Fable._ Northumberland and the other conspirators against the King learn that Hotspur, their a.s.sociate, whom they failed to support, has been defeated and killed. The King's forces are now free to act against themselves. Northumberland retires to Scotland.
The others under a divided command, make head against the King's troops under John of Lancaster. They are betrayed, taken and put to death. Northumberland, venturing out from Scotland, is defeated.
King Henry's position is a.s.sured.
His safety comes too late to be pleasant to him. He is dying, and the conduct of his son gives him anxiety. He sees no chance of permanent peace. He counsels his son to begin a war abroad, to distract the attention of his subjects. Having done this, he dies.
Prince Henry begins his reign as Henry V by casting off all his old a.s.sociates.