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Medieval Virtues
“sweet Fortune’s minion…riot and dishonour stain the brow
Of my young Harry.
”(King, I.i.80-85)
Upon establishing the prominence of the nationwide political conflict, Shakespeare highlights how
disorder infiltrates the private realm with the intersection of the King’s personal life with the political
concerns of a strong heir for the throne
Binary categorisation between good and evil
Hal, typifying the miscreant/prodigal son, is negatively portrayed as depicted by the diction of
“dishonour” and the connotations of “stain”, depicting an unwanted mark that cannot be removed and is
a burden to the reputation of the King
Emphasis on the King’s obsession with reputation rather than an astute realpolitik focus on a restoration of
the country’s order
“I will wear a garment all of blood… exchange his glorious deeds for my
indignities.” (Hal, [Link].134-146)
Hal vows to defeat Percy on his own terms, exacting the medieval (monistic?) virtue of single combat.
Simultaneously, he exercises hie Machiavellian calculation of benefit: He sees Hotspur as his “factor”, or
agent, a means of conveying honour to himself.
“Let them come.
And to
the fire-eyed maid of smoky war
All hot and bleeding will we offer them.
” (Hotspur, IV.i.)
Personifying war as a woman- military affairs are referred to as “the maidenhead of our
affairs”, then he’s metaphorically constructing war itself as an act of sexual consummation”
Carnal affair of war arouses a quasi-sexual appetite of Hotspur rather than his actual wife
Character profile of Hotspur as myopic/parochial view on non-teleological acts
“Speak peak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,
Cry “Courage! To the field!”
And thou hast talk’d
Of
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sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets…”
(Lady Percy, [Link].32-47)
Association of horse with status- militaristic lexis (dramatic space via monologue)
Accumulation creates a sense of senseless fatigue overwhelm
“O, what portents are these?”(Lady Percy, [Link].56)
Compare language between terseness, and eloquence (note LP’s acumen) - “Why, my horse, my love,
my horse!” (Hotspur, [Link].70)- isocolon sheaths love with the prioritised horse (preoccupation reinforces
his sociopathy/sexual abstinence ~ “I’ll break thy little finger, Harry” (Lady Percy, 81) vs “this is no world
/ To play with mammets” (Hotspur, 85-86)
“And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel fair and evenly.”
(Hotspur, III.i.98-99)
Transmogrifying nature (personified)- contravention of a united and stable England, reified by the prop of
a map
Dividing the country is inherently a nationalistic fragmentation
”Honour is a mere scutcheon- and so ends my catechism.” (Falstaff, [Link].137-138)
History
“the reality that lends itself to narrative representation is the conflict between desire and the law”
“In Hegelian terms, the project of historical narrative is the legitimising of authority” i.e. the collisions
between existing structures/duties/rights and adversities create history
“In single opposition, hand to hand,
He did confound the best part of an hour…
Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink
Upon agreement of
swift Severn’s flood…
Never did bare and rotten policy
Color her working with such deadly wounds”
(Hotspur, 97-107)
Medieval integrity via 1 on 1 opposition (quintessential characteristics of a chivalric knight)
Heroism/Gallantry of wounds suggest Mortimer’s loyalty (maschismo) (yet is answered with the king’s
terse rhetorical question, “Art thou not ashamed?”)
Hotspur venerates Mortimer’s gallantry in his imagery of “single opposition”, a form of combat which which
encodes the quintessential characteristics of a chivalric knight. Here, he narrativises the heroism of Mortimer
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in war through the personifying epithets of the setting as, “gentle Severn’s sedgy bank” and “swift Severn’s
flood”- a setting which also signifies the schism between England and Wales. (alternative focalisation)
Shakespeare constructs Hotspur’s values as an inversion of Falstaff’s values, as Hotspur’s censure of the
“colouring” of “ bare and rotten policy” indicates his belief that loyalty is calcified in the form of physical
wounds.
Lexical field of scripture indicate the contest of stories and shaping of history- “fill up chronicles” “unclasp a
secret book” (186)
Comedy and Inversion
parallel mirror invert subvert
We can associate comedy with the carnivalesque- latent under the festivity of carnival, misrule and comedy
lie principles of inversion and permutation, the “victory of the old world over the new”. Thus, we can observe
aesthetic of the grotesque and Rabelaisian comedy, whereby comedy acts as a “distorting mirror to reflect
and undermine the upper level of court life” (Laroque, “Battle of Carnival and Lent”) i.e. comedy is the voice
of inversion and cynicism.
Inversion of time/space
Inversion of moderation
Hal’s resolve to kingship, actualised in the dialogue with his father in court, is precipitated by the play
extempore.
Shakespeare structurally embeds scenes of the court with the setting of the tavern, a liminal space which
embodies the Foucouldian heterotopia- a discursive spaces which transgresses and inverts societal norms.
“Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of
bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses” (Hal, [Link].5-7)
Time is burlesquely commodified in terms of intoxication, gluttony and salaciousness (dissipated
indulgence)- accumulative listing enhances self-deprecatory language
Rabelaisian comedy centres on the body/consumption, a carnivalesque celebration of life (distortion of
order elucidated through the distinctio of temporal measures)
Languor/Stupefaction provides a contrasting respite from the breathless tempo of war
“O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint” (Falstaff,
[Link].71-72)
Humorous palimpsest/misquoting of a biblical allusion, a parodying of the rewriting of scripture by Satan
reinforces the inversion of the axiological order, whereby cynicism of politics and parodying of true
reformation supersedes religious piety
Principles of inversion and permutation underpin the carnivalesque (de-stabilization or reversal of power
structures)
Symbiotic interplay of opposites (Apollonian vs Dionysian?)
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“Shall I? Content. This chair shall be my state, this dagger my scepter, and this
cushion my crown.” (Falstaff)
”Thy state is taken for a joined stool, thy golden scepter for a leaden dagger, and
thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald crown.” (Hal, [Link].312-315)
Diminution of stage props to real objects’ Hal critiques Falstaff’s self-exultation/inflation as king
Semiotics of kingship illustrate its tenuousness/superficiality
The play extempore attains aesthetic unity by enabling self-actualisation through pretence
“Tut, tut, good enough to toss, food for powder, food for powder, they’ll fill a pit as
well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.”(Falstaff, [Link].54-56)
Fundamental human (ontological) condition of mortality, contravened by war
Dehumanising paradoxes + epizeuxis subvert metaphor of consumption
“Four, Hal… Seven, by these hilts… These nine in buckram”
Accumulation crescens illuminates his self-aggrandisement
“Can honour set to a leg? no. Or an arm? no. Or take away the grief of a wound?
No. honour
hath no skill in surgery, then? No.”
Hypophora/Via negativa (apophatic theology) illustrates honour to be illusory (distinctio)
Apostrophe “Soft, who are you? Sir Walter Blunt. There’s honour for you. Here’s no vanity.” (Falstaff,
[Link].31-32), whereby personifying honour in the corpse of a slain man, reinforces the sense of nihilism
represented by Falstaff
“The Prince draws it out and finds it to be a bottle of sack” (stage direction, [Link].52)
Sack on the battlefield entrenches Falstaff’s status as a Dionysian figure, who represents joviality and
drunken revelry
“And food for— [he dies]” (Hot)
”For worms, brave Percy.”
(Hal, [Link].86-87)
Linguistic dissonance between Hal and Hotspur cemented by Hotspur’s final words
Comment on hubris through juxtaposition of sizes, “When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound”
- incongruency between valiant resolve and mortality
“What stand’st thou idle here? Lend me thy sword.” (Henry, [Link].38)
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Liminality of character indicated by language, one which distinguishes the sociolects in a class-stratified
society (regal vs demotic)
Prose-verse dynamic, initiated with the caesura, breaking the regular cadence of iambic pentameter
Situationally bridges the dialogue with Falstaff and the King in the next scene (where he talks in eloquent
verse)
“to counterfeit dying when a man thereby live this to be no counterfeit, but the true
and perfect image of life indeed.” (Falstaff, [Link].113-115)
Rabelaisian celebration of life, censure of valiance/honour of death (Falstaff as the embodiment of life
itself, saying that to live is life)
Inversion of morality that “The better part of valour is discretion”
Language of paradoxes is extended in the falsism, “If I do grow great, I’ll grow less” [Link] is
paradoxically deteriorative
I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd
pounds…slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs
licked his sores…younger sons to younger brothers, runaway barmen, and
unemployed stable boys. They are like diseases in a world full of calm and peace... I
had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals (Falstaff, [Link].11-27)
Financial opportunism in substitution of military service (irony of calling the soldiers dissolute)
Financial disempowerment as a result of lack of primogeniture
Parable of Lazarus and the prodigal son all hint towards the perversion/ignorance of redemption- the
beggar, Lazarus, is destitute in live, but goes to Heaven; the prodigal son squanders his wealth, becomes
alienated from his family as he languishes in poverty, but is ultimately welcomed back by his father
Rewriting Biblical allegories/scripture c.f. the King’s self-identification with religion/Christ/self-ordainment,
as having “stolen all courtesy from heaven” (evidence Divine Right of Kings)
Renaissance Self-Fashioning of Falstaff:
Paraxdoxical characterisations transgress the stasis of character, a construction which illuminates the clash
of worldviews within Renaissance England, a time transitioning from Medieval chivalry to humanist
Renaissance thought
Setting of the tavern operates in itself as a place of Bakhtian carnivalesque, whose structural interplay with
the court provides an aesthetic symmetry that directly parallels the two dramatic worlds.
Nature of Leadership
“No more the thirsty entrance of this soil / Shall daub her lips with her own
children’s blood” (King, 1.i.5-6)
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Dramatic visceral imagery, anaphoric “no more”, cannibalistic language of the land blazoned with the
blood of her own children/soldiers
Exposes the the illusions of power by diluting the King’s claim to have restored England, as he opens in
solemn monologue- violent imagery reflective of the country’s instability due to the moral contravention to
the Divine Right of Kings, a consequence of the King’s usurpation of the throne
“Yet herein will I imitate the sun…
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.”
(Hal, [Link].157-163)
Machiavellian Realpolitik (political pragmatism) communicated through the extended metaphor of light and
or performativity, through the (mimetic) diction of “imitate”
Motif of stain via the “ugly mists and vapors”, a metonym for the dissipation of his friends, in contrast,
with the act of reformation, where he can “pay the debt I never promised” (”my refornation, glitt’ring
o’er my fault, / Shall … attract more eyes”)
Hal’s revelatory soliloquy where he metatheatrically breaks the fourth wall dismisses his youthful
miscreance as, “loose behaviour I throw off … Yet herein will I imitate the sun” highlighting his self-
awareness. The imitation of the celestial “sun” of light and life, invites audiences to be privy to his
thoughts where the metaphor of shedding clothes like a performative change of costuming underscores
his multifaceted qualities unbeknown to his father and friends.
Dramatic inversion, “How bloodily the sun begins to peer Above yon bulky hill.” (Henry, V.i.1-2)- Pathetic
fallacy, perversion of the sun suggests a vicissitude in royalty
“but Prince Hal sees it as a cosmic coup-de-theatre in which he will reveal himself to be at one with his
iconic image, as the blessed sun of heaven, the son of England, the prodigal son returned” (Matthew K.
Wikander, The Protean Prince Hal)
So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men…
But
like a comet I was wondered at…
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven
And dressed myself in such humility…
My presence, like a
robe pontifical (Henry, [Link].40-56)
Able to demarcate the mundane from the sublime c.f. “Yet herein will I imitate the sun”
Motif of dressing, imbued with religious imagery of the ceremonial vestment of a high priest- simulacrum
of sanctity (self-anointed)
Machiavelli “videri quam esse”
“But like a comet I was wondered at;” (King, [Link].44-48)
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“I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord,
Be more myself.”
(Hal, [Link].92-93)
Expression of contrition/submission
Platonic idealism, attaining a Form (theory of forms- There is a world of Forms, which is the world we
strive for, and the real physical world, a simulacrum of Forms)
c.f. “the shadow of succession”- imitation of Forms presents the King himself as an ideal form (c.f.
performativity of garments)
“I will redeem all this on Percy’s head…
When I will wear a garment all of blood
And stain my favors in a bloody mask…
That I shall make this northern youth
exchange
His glorious deeds for my indignities.
Percy is but my factor,”
(Hal, [Link].134-146)
Henry is essentially saying that, when he defeats Hotspur, all Hotspur’s honour will transfer to him- while
exacting the medieval virtue of single combat, he exercises his Machiavellian calculation of benefit,
seeing Hotspur as his “factor”, a means of conveying honour to himself.
Presents honour as commodified and transactional
Hotspur’s hypocrisy- “Wear the detested blot of murderous subornation”, “vile politician Bullingbrook”
Tale of redemption- celebration through rehabilitation
Free Will
expresses his cynicism towards the portents of “fiery shapes” and “burning cressets”
Chiastic inversion- “The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble” “O, then the earth shook to see the
heavens on fire”(Glen/Hot, III.i.21-22)- dramatic dialogue underpins Shakespeare’s ambivalent discourse
between the guiding forces of free will, or intrinsic justifications, and predestination. (insularity of Hotspur’s
character)
Versatility/Liminality
“Depose me?” (Falstaff)
”Well, here I am set” (Hal)
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Suggests metamorphosing power- Hal never submits to the role of the penitent son
Mimetic to the history play itself, where Henry IV was deposed for his son
All furnished, all in arms,
All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Bated like
eagles having lately bathed…
I saw young Harry… like
feathered Mercury
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropped down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a
fiery Pegasus… (Vernon, IV.i.97-110)
Exulting panegyric (glorification) + warlike allusion (potency of his princeship)
Amphibian nature illustrated (from a 3rd person view) via the amphibian nature spanning the heraldic
(estridge special to the Prince of Wales) to the mythological (the taming of Pegasus was considered in
Renaissance iconography to be an allegory of self-mastery and statesmanship)
Metatheatre of the play extempore
Theatricality of political performance- simultaneously proleptically tragic and ironic
Initiation of self-actualisation that calcifies his legitimation
“There is virtue in that Falstaff… Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.”
”I do, I will”
Recall the prolepsis “I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill, / Redeeming time when men least think I
will.”
“Depose me?” “Well, here I am set” suggest both the friendship dynamics and the kingship dynamic,
also compounding on Hal’s metamorphosing power
“Shall I? Content. This chair shall be my state, this dagger my scepter, and this
cushion my crown.” (Falstaff)
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”Thy state is taken for a joined stool, thy golden scepter for a leaden dagger, and
thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald crown.” (Hal, [Link].312-315)
Diminution of stage props to real objects’ Hal critiques Falstaff’s self-exultation/inflation as king
Semiotics of kingship illustrate its tenuousness/superficiality
Communication
Marital friction captured through the terse stichomythic interaction between Hotspur and Lady Percy at the
end of Act III Scene i, “Wouldst thou have thy head broken? No. Then be still. Neither, ‘tis a woman’s fault.”-
inability to communicate, divorced/dissociated from other people- echoing “my horse, my love, my horse!”.
Structurally, the entrance of Lady Percy in the scene signals the vicissitude to the poetic suavity of Mortimer’s
love language, “Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned, Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower
With ravishing division to her lute.” (Mort, III.i.202) … “I will not sing” (251)
Prefiguration of battle
caricatures (morality plays e.g. sweet queen)
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