The crumbling floor for truth
Shakespeare’s “Henry IV Part 2” and rampant dishonesty as strategy
I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world. Today I’m writing about “Henry IV Part 2.” For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week we turn to comedy: “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Dishonesty is on my mind lately. This will happen when you read Shakespeare, or scan the daily news.
Politics, which fills the newsfeed and Shakespeare’s history plays, has ever been fertile ground for dishonesty for good reason: political campaigns require promoting every candidate as exceptional. Politics plays in the grey areas: when does promotional overstatement tip over from a padded resumé or embroidered memory and become outright deception?
This brave new world of ours, abetted by the anonymity and viciousness of online social behavior, has amplified dissatisfaction with political integrity into outright disgust. Gallup reports that trust in the three branches of the US federal government is abysmal, with trust in the Supreme Court at an all-time low. Even worse, distrust of institutions has metastasized to most public arenas. Trust is spent. Devastatingly, the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated not only the mortal impacts of disinformation, but also the measly limits of our resources to filter informational wheat from chaff.
A case study
This New Yorker article, ”They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie?” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus (30 September 2023) details the forces that enable even well-meaning individuals to lie in their data and their conclusions, lying not only to their audiences but also to those who work with them, and (likely) to themselves.
The article profiles two social scientists who published research based on manipulated data that supported predetermined conclusions. Their studies won the researchers acclaim and money while it influenced millions of people who acted upon their flawed conclusions. Other scientists, unable to reproduce their experiments, requested the original data. Damningly, the scientists could not supply the data with integrity.
Based on the information in the article, the two researchers failed to be honest, whether intentionally or not. Their research topic was dishonesty, and their research relied upon its pervasiveness in human behavior.
None of us are entirely honest, and we view integrity on a sliding scale. Is cheating on your diet really cheating, when you’ve been scrupulous up to now? You may have more clarity with categorizing tax cheating or cheating on a spouse (although one can rationalize these too). It’s possible the researchers saw their own decisions existing in a grey area of the honesty spectrum. When there is no clear line, you can place the line subjectively where you want.
Traditionally, we’ve relied on trusted sources to provide guidance on whether information is valid or not. Highly acclaimed universities have been trusted sources in the past, and yet Harvard Business School protected dishonest research according to this article. Reputable news organizations were once trustworthy; their editorial decisions as well as vitriolic political messaging have ruined the public’s trust. For some, religious leaders were that trusted source. That trust has been repaid with story after story of leaders acting in self-interest and lying about it. Not every university. Not every news organization. Not every religious leader. But enough to damage irreparably the trust required to take words as fact.
How terrifying, to live in a world in which the floor of truth continually falls away. This is the world depicted in “Henry IV, Part 2.”
Summary
This play, as the part before it, switches between two plotlines, one of royal rebellion and the other featuring the lowlife crew, Falstaff chief among them. As before, the lowlife plotline speaks to its more dignified counterpart, and Prince Hal moves between them.
Following the final scene in Part 1, Northumberland waits to learn the outcome of the battle at Shrewsbury. Initially, he hears that his son, Hotspur, leading the rebellion against the king, was successful in defeating Henry’s forces. Then he learns the actual news: his son, not the king’s, is dead, and the rebel armies have been slaughtered and captured.
In the lowlife plotline, the Lord Chief Justice investigates Falstaff for the robbery in the former play. Falstaff, however, is now credited with bravery on the field of Shrewsbury in service to the King, a lie that Prince Harry (Hal) enabled. The Justice isn’t credulous but has no means to prosecute Falstaff, given the accounts of Falstaff’s bravery. He lets Falstaff go, while admonishing him.
Prince Harry has loosened his commitment to living to his father’s standards. He’s drawn to the lowlife even as he despises himself for his hypocrisy. He indulges himself once again in his baser desires and idles with his partner in crime, Poins, and Falstaff. (In “Henry IV Part 1,” Hal and Poins had robbed Falstaff of the money he’d stolen. Hal returned the money, allowing himself a pass on whether it was truly a crime. It was a jest, right?)
The rebel faction continues to conspire against the King. They struggle with devising a strategy in the face of having unreliable information upon which to base their planning. Westmorland, allied with the King, meets with them to negotiate. The Archbishop gives him a list of the rebels’ demands, which Westmorland delivers to Prince John, who’s acting for the bedridden King. John, in a move both smooth and falsely kind, claims to accept their demands and then arrests them all. He denies any duplicity of his own: he did accept their demands, but as evidence of their treason.
King Henry, who became ill during the battle of Shrewsbury, is dying. Prince Harry arrives while Henry sleeps, his crown set next to him on his pillow. Hal imagines that his father has expired. He picks up the crown and steps offstage wearing it. The king rouses and his attendants rush in, followed by Prince Harry. The king excoriates his son for assuming the crown before his death. The prince apologizes and renews his allegiance to the king.
Henry IV dies and Hal becomes King Henry V. This fact is uncomfortable for the Lord Chief Justice, who had previously arrested Harry for crimes he had committed in Part 1. As king, Harry recognizes that the Lord Chief Justice had acted honorably, and he assures the Justice that his tenure is secure.
Falstaff, thinking he is now a close friend to the King, is delighted to see him after the coronation. King Henry V disowns him. The Lord Chief Justice orders his men to apprehend Falstaff and his friends. Prince John says he’s happy to see his brother, King Henry V, imposing order on the realm.
At the play’s end, Prince John sets up the play “Henry V” as he turns to France:
PRINCE JOHN I will lay odds that, ere this year expire, We hear our civil swords and native fire As far as France. I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king. Come, will you hence? Exeunt -Act 5 Scene 4
Thoughts
The play gives a character called Rumour, dressed in a robe decorated with tongues, the opening lines.
RUMOUR
Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
I from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commencèd on this ball of earth.
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace, while covert enmity
Under the smile of safety wounds the world;
And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters and prepared defence
Whiles the big year, swoll’n with some other griefs,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, Jealousy’s conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wav’ring multitude,
Can play upon it. But what need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize
Among my household? Why is Rumour here?
-Introduction
Rumour concludes that he’s come to spread disinformation about the outcome of Shrewsbury: “The posts come tiring on, / And not a man of them brings other news / Than they have learnt of me. From Rumour’s tongues / They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.”
And so it is that Lord Bardolph visits Northumberland with fantastic stories: The King mortally wounded, Hal slain by Hotspur, and the rest of the King’s men routed or captured. Another messenger brings conflicting news, which Bardolph refuses to believe. Finally, a third messenger comes with the sad tidings of Hotspur’s death and the King’s victory.
Falstaff’s dishonesty is the subject of the next scene. When the Lord Chief Justice approaches, he hides and then pretends deafness. Called by a servant to the Justice, Falstaff characterizes the servant as a rebel, which the servant denies:
SERVANT You mistake me, sir.
FALSTAFF Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man?
Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had
Lied in my throat if I had said so.
- Act 1 Scene 2
He avoids legal jeopardy for his crimes by invoking the rumour of his bravery as truth. Given every other fact about Falstaff, the story about his killing Hotspur can only be false, and yet the Lord Chief Justice must accept it as fact, without countervailing evidence.
The rebel faction realizes how much more difficult it is to formulate strategy without solid information.
LORD BARDOLPH
Yes, if this present quality of war—
Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot—
Lives so in hope; as in an early spring
We see th’appearing buds, which to prove fruit
Hope gives not so much warrant as despair
That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build
We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection,
Which if we find outweighs ability,
What do we then but draw anew the model
In fewer offices, or, at least, desist
To build at all? Much more in this great work—
Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down
And set another up—should we survey
The plot of situation and the model,
Consent upon a sure foundation,
Question surveyors, know our own estate,
How able such a work to undergo,
To weigh against his opposite; or else
We fortify in paper and in figures,
Using the names of men instead of men,
Like one that draws the model of an house
Beyond his power to build it, who, half-through,
Gives o’er, and leaves his part-created cost
A naked subject to the weeping clouds,
And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.
-Act 1 Scene 3
Without the foundation of fact-based intelligence, their planning is highly exposed to failure and costs they cannot pay. They’ve lost before to the King, and are no better informed. What future losses will they incur if they act on invalid information that they assumed correct?
King Henry, when he finally appears in Act 3, also tests the truth of the information he has on his adversaries. He says he’s heard that they are 50,000 strong; Warwick replies to him, “It cannot be, my lord. / Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, / The numbers of the feared.” (Act 3 Scene 1)
When the Archbishop of York and Mowbray (allied with the rebels) meet with Westmorland (from the King), they speak past each other in holding contradictory truths. Prince John tricks the leaders of the rebellion and captures them:
ARCHIBISHOP OF YORK Will you thus break your faith? PRINCE JOHN I pawned thee none. I promised you redress of these same grievances Whereof you did complain; which, by mine honour I will perform with a most Christian care. But for you rebels, look to taste the due Meet for rebellion an such acts as yours. Most shallowly did you these arms commence, Fondly brought here, and foolishly sent hence.— Strike up our drums, pursue the scattered stray. God, and not we, hath safely fought today. Some guard these traitors to the block of death, Treason’s true bed and yielder up of breath. Exeunt Act 4 Scene 1
Prince Harry, keeping watch over his sleeping father, is enticed by the crown beside his father’s head. He thinks he sees a feather, at rest and unmoved, near the mouth of his father: were his father alive, wouldn’t his breath lift the feather? With this frail excuse, he removes the crown to place it on his own head.
Henry wakens and berates his son for usurping his crown: “For the fifth Harry from curbed licence plucks / The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog / Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.” (Act 4 Scene 3) The King makes the point, vividly, that his kingdom’s people will suffer for Harry V’s penchant for chaos and ‘riot.’ Harry swears his obedience to the King when he returns the crown. But his eager assumption of his father’s death, based on hope rather than fact, leaves us in disbelief that he’s capable of fulfilling his oaths.
Dishonesty, as well as simply bad information, robs the world of order and peace. The play depicts how wishfulness colors facts to transform them into misinformation. It shows us willful dishonesty for self-gain and in pursuit of a cause. Dishonesty sidetracks justice and peace. It rends relationships.
Power runs up the bill that others pay
In a recent essay (“War as punishment”), Lucian Truscott explains that Carl von Clausewitz (“On War”, 1832) saw war as a political weapon:
War is a mere continuation of policy by other means…for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.
An honest political leader would own that fact. Putin said a lot of things about his motivations for invading Ukraine, none of them honest. The US claimed to have pure motivations for its first strike attack on Iraq in 2003, but the administration was lying to its own people and other nations.
Killing another human being cannot be rationalized because it is an act of subtraction, physically, morally, and perhaps most of all, in terms of the future. Killing disallows the contributions to life on this planet that might have been made by the dead. What cures for disease lay locked within the bodies lying dead in Ukraine or Israel or Gaza, to mention just three of the dozens of wars being fought right at this moment around the world?
-Lucian K. Truscott IV
Truscott articulates a truth that stretches back in history well beyond Henry IV. Today, not only war combatants have their lives put at risk by the policies of those who hold power.
War expends the bodies of those without power to pursue the goals of the powerful. Yet battlefields of information spread across every field in human culture today: medicine, sports, religion, environment, business, science, the arts, courts, social interactions, and of course politics. When an institution has welcomed dishonesty to further the goals of a few, it destroys trust. How many unknown lives are hijacked or sacrificed by intentional, strategic, deceit in each of these areas? The costs are born by the little people; this is the ‘small beer’ that Prince Hal says he must rise above in order to govern.
In the play, Prince John decides to place his faith in the current demeanor of his brother, King Henry V. I recognize this longing to trust in something positive despite knowing the truth to be more complicated. Ignoring unpleasant realities only strengthens dishonesty.
I can only say: remain vigilant.
Thanks for reading,
