Fathers and sons
On Shakespeare’s “Henry IV Part 1” and the battle fatigue we’re all feeling right now in this world riddled with uncertainty and disaster
I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world. Today I’m writing about “Henry IV Part 1.” For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week we continue the Henriad with “Henry IV, Part 2.”
Previously on ….
The play “Henry IV Part 1” continues from the last lines of the play “Richard II.” Without an heir, Richard sat uncomfortably between competing houses in his family’s tree. Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt (one of Richard’s uncles), had forced Richard, distracted by a failing military campaign in Ireland, to abdicate and cede the crown to him. The play “Richard II” ended on a less-than-triumphant note for King Henry with two discordant themes.
The first of these is the matter of his own son, young Harry (Henry).
KING HENRY
Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?
‘Tis full three months since I did see him last.
If any plague hang over us, ‘tis he.
I would to God, my lords, he might be found.
Enquire at London ‘mongst the taverns there,
For there, they say, he daily doth frequent
With unrestrainèd loose companions—
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes
And beat our watch and rob our passengers—
Which he, young wanton and effeminate boy,
Takes on the point of honour to support
So dissolute a crew.
HARRY PERCY
My lord, two days since, I saw the Prince,
And told him of these triumphs held at Oxford.
KING HENRY And what said the gallant?
HARRY PERCY
His answer was he would unto the stews,
And from the common’st creature pluck a glove,
And wear it as a favour, and with that
He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.
KING HENRY
As dissolute as desperate. Yet through both
I see some sparks of better hope, which elder days
May happily bring forth.
-Act 5 Scene 3, Richard II
Harry Percy, also known as Hotspur, is a major character in “Henry IV Part 1.” He’s the son whom King Henry wishes he had: strong, principled, a warrior. He despairs that his actual son, Prince Hal or Harry, is wasting his life. Succession is all-important to the King’s ability to hold the throne, as Richard’s abdication and demise demonstrate. The dissolute Harry poses a real issue for King Henry IV.
The other theme is the threat of ongoing rebellion against Henry’s rule. “Richard II” ends with King Henry in a sour mood. Richard’s murder has just been announced, a murder that was undertaken by one of Henry’s men, although Henry claims to have nothing to do with it.
KING HENRY
Lords, I protest my mood is full of woe
That blood shall sprinkle me to make me grow.
Come mourn with me for what I do lament,
And put on sullen black incontinent.
I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.
March sadly after. Grace my mournings here
In weeping after this untimely bier.
-Act 5 Scene 6, Richard II
Both of these themes drive the action of the play “Henry IV Part 1.”
A note on naming
Harry (Prince Hal) carouses with one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comic characters, Falstaff. Originally, Shakespeare named the character “Sir John Oldcastle”, and The Oxford Shakespeare (the edition I use) prefers this name in this play. Shakespeare was pressured by the family of the real Sir John Oldcastle (a Presbyterian martyr) to change the name of the character, and other texts reflect this revision. For clarity, I’m going to call him Falstaff.
Summary
As the play opens, King Henry carries on in the same vein as he closed “Richard II.”
KING HENRY
So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood.
-Act I Scene 1
Hopeful for a break in the continual rebellions that have marked his reign, Henry announces that now he’s off to the Holy Land, as he promised in the previous play.
No sooner has he made this proclamation, when he’s brought news of other battlefields that warrant his attention. He learns that Mortimer, having fought in Wales, has been captured by a Welsh warrior named Owain Glyndŵr1. On another front, in the north of England at Holmedon, Hotspur has fought valiantly and secured a number of prisoners. Henry admires Hotspur, and wishes his son and Northumberland’s (i.e., Hotspur) had been switched at birth.
Henry demands that Hotspur yield his prisoners to the king, who is also being asked to ransom Mortimer, Hotspur’s father-in-law. This is a tricky proposition for Henry because Mortimer was King Richard’s chosen heir, and is therefore a potential rival for the legitimacy of the throne. Henry angrily calls Mortimer a traitor and refuses to ransom him. He chastises Hotspur for refusing to yield up his prisoners.
This conflict, along with the marriage of Glyndŵr’s daughter to Mortimer, fortifies the emerging group of rebels: Hotspur, Northumberland, Mortimer, Glyndŵr, Worcester, Douglas, and Vernon. Their rebellion will define the action of the play.
Prince Harry is introduced at an alehouse, drinking and trading comic insults with his friends. Falstaff and Prince Harry have a relationship based on jibes and playful taunting. Falstaff’s round figure, laziness, fluid morality, and thirst for drink define him.
Falstaff plots a robbery with his friends. After they leave, Prince Harry and his friend Poins scheme to disguise themselves and steal from the robbers. It’s just a jest, Hal claims, to put one over on Falstaff. He intends to return the money to the owners after the fact. After Poins leaves, Prince Harry announces in a soliloquy his intentions to demonstrate to his father his true worth and leave the dissolute life behind.
Falstaff and his gang pull off the robbery, and Hal and Poins easily scare them away and pick up the loot. When they meet up at the tavern, Hal makes much of the fantastical story Falstaff spins of being robbed, each iteration doubling the number of men he tried to fend off. In the midst of the celebrations, Prince Harry is called to court.
When Prince Harry meets with his father, he commits to serving the king’s cause and being the son Henry wishes he were. Henry directs him to organize three flanks, of which the King will lead one, Prince Harry another, and his brother John of Lancaster heading the third.
Falstaff, being tasked to muster some troops, uses this as an opportunity to line his pockets from men who pay him to release them from conscription. He amasses a useless collection of men who are starving, destitute, recently imprisoned—none of them fit for the battlefield.
Having made camp near Shrewsbury, the King sends a message to Hotspur asking to hear his complaints so that they might work out their differences without loss of life. Hotspur says he’ll think about it. He sends Worcester to the King. Prince Harry offers to fight Hotspur one-on-one, to prevent the extensive bloodshed of battle, but the King overrules him. Instead, he offers to appease Hotspur. Worcester decides not to give this message to Hotspur, thinking that eventually Henry will revert from his cool-headed peaceful self to his warlike one, and will exact revenge against the rebels.
The battle of Shrewbury ensues. Many of the King’s men dress as the king, resulting in the rebels killing ‘the king’ over and over throughout the battle. Symbolically, the king won’t be taken down no matter how many times the traitors attempt it.
King Henry is wounded, though not gravely. Hotspur and Prince Harry fight, and Hotspur is killed. Harry says goodbye to him, then notices Falstaff’s prone figure. Falstaff has been hiding from the battle and pretends to be dead. Prince Harry says goodbye to his old friend.
Once Harry’s gone, Falstaff rises. He sticks his sword in Hotspur’s leg in a gambit to claim that he had killed Hotspur in order to receive a reward from the King. He’s spotted trying to haul the body away. Prince Harry hears his tale and generously lets him take credit.
The King’s army is successful in the battle. The play ends with Henry ordering troops onward to the next fight.
Thoughts
This is a play filled with fathers and sons: Henry and Hal (and John); Henry and his would-be son, Hotspur, who leads a rebellion against him; Northumberland and Hotspur; Mortimer and Hotspur; Glyndŵr and Mortimer. If Richard’s reign was marked by an absence of sons, Henry’s is notable for its abundance.
More important than the presence of father-son relationships is their nature. A loving relationship that’s betrayed easily turns violent. Hotspur, loved by Henry, leads the rebellion against him. A relationship that begins in violence—such as Glyndŵr’s capture of Mortimer on the battlefield—can turn into a loving relationship.
In a remarkable scene in which Mortimer and Hotspur say good-bye to their wives before leaving for battle, Mortimer is depicted as being heartbreakingly in love with his Welsh wife, Glyndŵr’s daughter. Mortimer speaks no Welsh; his wife speaks no English. What unites them is love, as Mortimer tenderly listens to the song of her voice, his head placed tenderly on her lap.
Relationships contain this duality: love despite differences and betrayal despite similarities.
The play also explores competing duality within individuals. Prince Hal and King Henry mirror each other, without their awareness. Consider this soliloquy, spoken by Prince Harry after a long scene of raucous banter with Falstaff and his mates. Alone onstage, he has this to say:
PRINCE HARRY
I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So when this loose behaviour I throw off
And pay the debt I never promisèd,
By how much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offence a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
-Act 1 Scene 2
The speech evokes the parable of the Prodigal Son, in which one son squanders his inheritance while his brother dutifully stays behind with the father. The father rewards the prodigal who returns. According to the parable, the father explains to the dutiful son: "You are ever with me, and all that I have is yours, but your younger brother was lost and now he is found." In a more secular vein, it’s also the explanation Elmo’s given as to why we can’t have Christmas every day: scarcity makes something more precious. However, the soliloquy is the first indication we have that Hal contains a duality that he hides in his comic scenes with Falstaff.
The next speech, at the beginning of the following scene, eerily echoes Hal’s:
KING HENRY (to Hotspur, Northumberland, and Worcester) My blood hath been too cold and temperate, Unapt to stir at these indignities, And you have found me, for accordingly You tread upon my patience; but be sure I will from henceforth rather be myself, Mighty and to be feared, than my condition, Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, And therefore lost that title of respect Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud. -Act 1 Scene 3
Both men make claims to their true selves: one more obedient, hard-working, and valorous; the other less patient and accommodating. Once Hal turns toward the King’s sun, embracing the duties and responsibilities of being the Prince of Wales, he does so fully. He’s ready to bury his past self along with the seemingly dead Falstaff, his false father. Henry, however, vacillates between benignity and ferocity. He struggles with Hotspur’s betrayal to the point that he declares his love for every man, including the insurrectionists. Instead of celebrating his win at Shrewsbury, he mourns the lives lost in the battle. He frees Douglas, who was captured in the battle by the King’s men, saying of him “His valours shown upon our crests today / Have taught us how to cherish such high deeds / Even in the bosom of our adversaries.” (Act 5 Scene 5)
By contrast, Hotspur’s character displays no nuance or honest self-reflection. Watching Mortimer, his head in the lap of his Welsh wife, Hotspur decides to emulate him. He places his head in his wife Kate’s lap, and tries to adopt the look of sentimental love. But he cannot listen to his wife (while Mortimer listens uncomprehendingly to his wife), much less respond to her questions. He’s impatient for battle. His defense of why he won’t yield his prisoners in the first act demonstrate his self-righteous indignation over someone else taking credit for his blood work. Near the end of the play we witness the opposite: Prince Harry telling Falstaff to pick up fallen Hotspur: “Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back. / For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, / I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.” (Act 5 Scene 4)
The play urges loving even those who fight against you: having slain Hotspur, Prince Harry mourns the warrior and even finishes his last sentence. He knows his own father looked on Hotspur as the son he wished he had; he finds in his adversary something he can love, something like himself.
Henry, the recipient of a crown with a muddied line of succession, must negotiate minefields of treachery. He captured the throne by being whomever he needed to be in the moment: flattering Richard in his presence, winning the hearts of the common man to gain popular support, taking up arms when necessary. By the end of the play, he’s resigned that this will be his inheritance of the crown: unending rebellion. He gathers his sons around him to face it together in the final lines of the play.
KING HENRY
Then this remains, that we divide our power.
You, son John, and my cousin Westmorland,
Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed
To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scrope,
Who as we hear, are busily in arms.
Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales,
To fight with Glyndŵr and the Earl of March.
Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,
Meeting the check of such another day;
And since this business so fair is done,
Let us not leave till all our own be won.
-Act 5 Scene 5
Battle fatigue
Henry’s weariness of the ongoing onslaughts against him open the play and close it, and we share that sense palpably today. The successes of anti-democratic forces around the world. The pandemic. Economic upheaval. The breakdown of civil discourse. The outrageous embrace of terror and bellicose aggression that are destroying innocent lives half a world away.
I recently heard someone say that every election promises to be the last democratic election in the US until an anti-democratic candidate wins the presidency, and then there will be no more. How are we able to cope with waking up to such bleak and violent prospects each day?
Self-righteous fanaticism is one way, but it didn’t work well for Hotspur and it’s unlikely to be a winning long-term strategy. The rule of law, while it survives, brings accountability. Eventually, even dictators are (usually) turned out of office either by insurrectionists or the electorate.
This play reinforces the power one can find in basic and under-valued abilities: listening to those who speak another language (actually or metaphorically), flexibility, reflection, forgiveness, acceptance of differences. And yes, standing firm in resistance, courageously defending the rights of others and ourselves. When possible, looking upon an adversary with love and understanding to see ourselves, in all our failings and strengths. Frankly, these actions take much more energy than it takes to wrap oneself in the robes of righteousness. Its burden never lessens.
Which is why there is comedy, why this play is at least half given over to Hal and Falstaff’s relationship and their antics, and why Falstaff is so beloved despite being the brunt of jokes whenever he’s onstage. Life’s burdens are heavy, but they’re made lighter in laughter with friends.
Thanks for reading,
Pronounced ‘Oh-wain Glin-door.’ It’s spelled variously across competing texts of the play. Sometimes his first name is spelled ‘Owen,’ for instance. For this play, keeping front of mind that he’s Welsh is helpful, I think.