Cucinella, Rachel 2019 English Thesis
Title: “As Thou Art to this Hour was Richard Then”: Recycling and Mirroring in Shakespeare’s Henriad Advisor: Christopher Pye Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Released: release now Authenticated User Access: Yes Contains Copyrighted Material: No
“As Thou Art to this Hour was Richard Then”
Recycling and Mirroring in Shakespeare’s Henriad
By
Rachel Cucinella
Christopher Pye, Advisor
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English
WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
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Acknowledgments
I would like to begin by thanking my thesis advisor, Professor Christopher Pye. Without you this project would not have been completed. Your input, critiques, and advise throughout the writing process was invaluable. Though I was a stranger to you when I came asking for you to undertake the task of being my thesis advisor, you did not hesitate to agree. For this most of all I thank you. I would also like to thank Professor Emily Vasiliauskas and Professor Robert Bell for the encouragement and assistance they have leant to me throughout this process as well as in years past. Both of you had an incredible impact on my education. Thank you.
To my parents, thank you for always supporting my education and listening to me when I don’t believe in myself. I love you.
To my English thesis colloquium, thank you for all of your support. This project had its ups and downs but we supported each other through it all. I will miss the memories we made this past year and will miss you all greatly.
Thank you all. Without you this thesis would not have been possible.
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Table of Contents
Introduction ...... 4 - 6
Chapter 1: Characterizing the Kings...... 7 - 31
1.1 Richard’s Confusion of Self...... 7 - 13
1.2 Hal as Prince and Degenerate...... 13 - 19
1.3 Richard’s Deposition and Bolingbroke’s Kingship...... 19 - 31
Chapter 2: The Problems of Kingship...... 32 - 52
2.1 Bolingbroke’s Character...... 32 - 42
2.2 Usurpation...... 42 - 52
Chapter 3: The King’s Identity...... 53 - 60
3.1 Is it Really Recycling? ...... 53 - 59
3.2 Conclusion ...... 59 - 60
Bibliography...... 61
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Introduction
Shakespeare’s use of character in the Henriad informs the way the audience comes to identify kings Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. Each of the Henriad’s kings begins his journey to and through reigning with a distinct view of kingship and of the self. Richard, who has only ever been king, wars with himself over his lack of a private, as opposed to a public, self.
This struggle is not unique to him but is something every king must attempt to make sense of.
The king’s two bodies is a theory stating that the king exists as two distinct entities - the king as
God’s divine hand on earth and the king as a personal private man. Due to this doubling of the person, the king is in the unique position of having two selves. This split in the self causes the kings to struggle between their personal and public selves often times to the detriment of the king in both senses of his being. To further complicate this dilemma, I argue that Shakespeare embodies this condition of doubling in the relation between kings through a recycling of
Richard’s person. This duplication is not perfect in each of the two subsequent kings, as they do not mirror Richard exactly in all things. Instead the recycling is found in the insertion of many of
Richard’s attributes and opinions where once Henry and Hal held opposite views. Henry and Hal are reversed and doubled in their transformations. Reversed within themselves, as is seen in the way they drastically alter their opinions to align more with Richard’s, as well as doubled in reference to each other and Richard, as is seen in the new ways kingship, after the loss of its divine office and the supremacy of its mortal aspects, forces an usurper mindset on the kings by default and doubles the kings against each other instead of within themselves.
The recycling extends beyond Richard being found in Hal and Henry. Bolingbroke is also repeated in Hotspur. The mirroring of Bolingbroke in Hotspur is more obvious as Hotspur occupies the same place of rebel in the Henry IV plays that Bolingbroke occupied in Richard II.
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In this way Shakespeare recreates the power struggle between Richard and Bolingbroke. By now casting himself as the tyrant king being rebelled against, Henry is forced to grapple with the implications of how he has changed during his time as king. The recycling of Bolingbroke’s former self into Hotspur is able to easily show the implications of reusing opinions, vices, and plot devices intrinsic to a previous character into a new one.
The importance of such recycling, why it is notable that Shakespeare has done it at all, bears out in the theory of the king’s two bodies within the longer frame of the lineage of kings, the confusion of the self, and the increasingly indiscernible border between one character and the next. If each man were entirely separate, sharing only an office and not even the full right to that office, there would be less to say about whether kingship allows for the continuation of the personal self as it existed in the time before kingship. The issue of the king’s two bodies is directly related to the way Shakespeare explores the nature of the self and the blurring of the boundaries between the self and others as well as the private and public self. The fact that neither
Henry nor Hal were able to transition from non-king to king without fundamentally changing who they are reinforces the narrative of the kings two bodies and the intrinsic separation of the selves. Henry and Hal do not exemplify the conclusions drawn by the king’s two bodies, as laid out by Kantorowicz, because of Henry’s usurper status and the loss of unbroken lineage that ended with Richard. The recycling of Richard in them, then allows for the doubling to occur in a new way. With the fact of usurpation and the break in lineage, that doubling that defines the king can only be played out in the often-contradictory relation between kings. The king’s two bodies is now played out in the oppositions created by usurpation which leaves the kings all at once mirroring and opposing each other. Without the recycling the double body may have been lost entirely.
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Thus by examining the recycling of various aspects of Richard II in Henry IV and Henry
V one is able to gain further insight into the ways the king is split and regrouped over and over.
There is an important shift that occurs here in regards to the way kingship is defined, and especially how it is defined in regards to Kantorowicz’s theory. The divine high sense kingship has been lost with Richard’s usurpation there remains the lower form of kingship in office and a new sense of kingship where the king is defined by comparisons to the former king. The king’s two bodies now, instead of existing as a doubling within the self, exists as an external doubling of the current king and the former king or the current king and his former non-royal self. The double body and the ways kingship intrinsically alters the person are intimately connected to how the kings are able to govern and interact with themselves and others. Recycling is occurring and its implications are far reaching for the kings it affects.
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Chapter 1: Characterizing the Kings
The understanding of Richard, of the framework he provides for the later kings, is central to understanding how kingship changes throughout the Henriad. Richard’s conception of himself and of his kingship is essential to identifying the later differences found in Henry and Hal’s views of themselves, each other, Richard, and kingship. The theory of the king’s two bodies colors every corner of Richard’s inner struggle; he is the last of the kings to fully embody the concept as it was originally intended. In addition to examining Richard to fully determine how kingship is changed one must also establish the origins of Bolingbroke and Hal. Both men go through substantial changes after becoming king and these changes can only be understood by examining Henry and Hal as they existed before kingship. In order to see the differences, the recycling, that later occur one must first establish a distinct sense of self for all three men.
1.1 Richard’s Confusion of Self
Richard makes two grandiose and pitiable speeches at the precipice of his downfall. As
Richard loses faith in his ability to maintain power and loyalty within his court he too loses his sense of self. The line between king and man blurs in his language and form of address.
Richard’s self doubt, his lack of self-knowledge, allows one to see the separation of mortal and royal authority. Richard as king still commands respect within his language and self-evaluation but Richard has no confidence as merely a mortal man. The authority of a weak king lies solely in his office, his majesty, and so as Richard loses power he becomes ever more mortal. Richard is left to guess at his strength as a monarch, leaving him with the pitiable air of a man guaranteed to lose but forced nonetheless to fight. The majesty that elevated him above the rest drains away and does not give Richard the benefit of knowing when it is fully gone. It is from this lack of
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certainty in regards to his kingly authority that Richard’s confusion of self is evident. The first speech will here be examined for evidence of such.
The first of Richard’s speeches in which one can clearly see the shift in his self-certainty occurs upon his return from Ireland. Following the realization that his supporters have been killed, his army has fled, and his throne has been seized Richard falls into a momentary despair.
He states, “No matter where. Of comfort no man speak – Let’s talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs, make dust our paper and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. Let’s choose executors and talk of wills”.1 This level of despair is appropriate for a man who feels he has lost all. Yet one must note that the language used is entirely mortal. Richard speaks of death as that which will affect his physical body, not of kingly death. He seems to have no concern for the latter death. The use of ‘executor’ calls to mind the word’s double meaning. While it can refer to the executor of a will, as Richard’s phrase seems to imply, it of course can call to mind an executioner. If Richard is to die in his forsaken state he will most likely be killed. One can argue that Richard’s abandonment by his people and army is in itself a death sentence, if not for
Richard the mortal then at least for Richard the king. It is also pertinent to note that kings do not leave wills. Primogeniture takes care of the passing down of the king’s titles, lands, and worldly possessions. So why does Richard talk of wills? He as king can have no will and he as a man has no possessions to bequeath. His dual nature catches him between these truths and it is in his desire for the will of a mortal man that one can see the first signs of Richard’s confusion.
Richard is aware of the futility of his request. “And yet not so, for what can we bequeath save our deposèd bodies to the ground? Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke’s, and nothing can we call our own but death and that small model of barren earth which serves as paste
1 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II (2011), 3.2.144-8
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to cover our bones”.2 Richard knows he has nothing as either king or man and that a request for a will can mean nothing coming from him. In this section of the speech one sees a mode of speaking absent from the previous lines; Richard begins to employ the royal we. The royal we is reserved for kings, only they are beings with multiple entities. So Richard’s use of the royal we indicates that he still views himself as king. He still holds within himself the authority of both god and government. Yet, in the same breath that he affirms his kingship he forfeits his crown. If all his lands and life belong to Bolingbroke he cannot be king. What is a king without territory?
No more than a figurehead. Richard, who owns all the lands of an entire nation, now lays claim to only the dirt that will cover his corpse. This forfeiture also comes before he has been formally deposed. As far as government is concerned Richard is still the king but it is that all-important authority, from God and right, which Richard now lacks.
The crux of the speech proceeds as follows, “For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings, how some have been deposed, some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed – all murdered”.3 The death of kings must necessarily be a discussion only of their mortal deaths.
As the office cannot die with the death of the mortal man Richard here is concerned only with his body, his personal self. Again we see a distinct shift away from his royal self. The royal we once again disappears. Richard lists the kings’ causes of death and does not fail to include himself and
Bolingbroke in the litany, as the deposed and haunted respectively. Then he changes his tone from despairing to accusatory. “All murdered” this statement is more than an accusation against
Bolingbroke or a prediction of his own fate. No, here Richard makes a stronger claim. If all kings are murdered then their deaths can never, by definition, be natural. Murder definitionally requires
2 Ibid. 3.2.149-54 3 Ibid. 3.2.155-60
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that there be a victim and perpetrator of the killing, that said killing be intentional, and that the death not be of natural causes. Though many kings have been murdered, and some of Richard’s examples clearly point to obvious instances of murder as with the poisoning, many kings die of old age, Richard’s grandfather for example, and even deposed kings are not necessarily murdered. This fact precludes the mortal death from always being murder. However, it does not prevent the king’s non-mortal death from always being murder.
The king’s non-mortal death, his death as king, must necessarily make him always the victim of his successor. Should there be no heir, no successor whatsoever, to the office of king then just like the mortal body there would be no chance for the office to be invaded by an interloper. But this is necessarily what the office of kingship requires; there must always be a successor. The office of kingship is immortal, and so there can never be a natural death of a king.
The king in his capacity as king should too hold this immortal quality. But he necessarily cannot due to his mortal qualities. Thus he must die but that death can never be considered a natural death, as it is always a life cut short of its intended lifespan. As the successor, the crown, can be seen as the killer and the king always the victim the death is not only unnatural but murder in every instance.
Following this is Richard’s most famous claim, “For within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court…”4 The crown once again rounds a mortal temple. The king as agent of god does not require such an outward display of office and so it is relegated to the mortal entity. And so death too must only here be affecting the mortal man. As death inhabits the crown, the embodiment of the king’s earthly authority, the question of who rules becomes tantamount. Death controls the king, has power over him, and yet we claim that
4 Ibid. 3.2.160-2
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the king is above all mortal considerations in the capacity of his office. This seems not to be the case. Death is himself a king, keeping court within the crown. The king is ruled therefore not only by God but also death. A king beneath two far mightier kings. Again the mortal man is subsumed by the immortal, the infinite. The crown’s hollowness also cheapens its symbolic power. There is nothing backing the image of the crown. If there is no authority behind the crown, if it is not even controlled by the king, can the king claim to be God’s authority on earth?
The king, as mortal man, must necessarily also pay homage to death. It is this homage that makes the mortal office of king mutable. It changes hands and authority can wax or wane but death is constant within the crown.
Continuing the idea that the king is always murdered by the very office he holds, by the crown and his successor, Richard laments his fate. “…And there the antic sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, allowing him a breath, a little scene to monarchize, be feared and kill with looks, infusing him with self and vain conceit, as if this flesh which walls about our life were brass impregnable, and humoured thus comes at the last and with a little pin bores through his castle wall – and farewell king”.5 Richard shows here that he is fully aware of his previous false surety in his authority, his office, his status above all others. He was only allowed to act in such ways because it pleased some higher power, not because of some intrinsic quality within him. He was never as high and mighty as he may have once thought. Always, death and god have only permitted him ‘a little scene to monarchize’ when it so pleased them. They elevated him to a status close to their own, with the power of life and death in his hands, but they were always in charge, always above him. Even the ‘castle wall’, the crown, through which death bores, belongs not to Richard but to death. If he cannot even claim his own crown how can he
5 Ibid. 3.2.162-70
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claim his kingship? Mortality is all the more felt because he is king; if one is meant to be immortal in any sense, any vestige of mortality is all the more noticeable.
And so Richard ends his speech more confused of his station than when he began. “Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood with solemn reverence. Throw away respect, tradition, form and ceremonious duty. For you have but mistook me all this while, I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus, how can you say to me I am a king?”6
Here one sees the most mortal of Richards. He equates himself with the normal mortal men around him, gives himself earthly desires and faults, and makes himself vulnerable. The hollow crown was a question of his sovereignty, his right to rule, and his authority. This pitiable supplication is a plea for understanding as a man. Richard who so valued order and ceremony wishes to cast them out entirely. He as a man has no use for them, they were relegated to King
Richard. And then a bolder claim: Richard does not only now, with the rise of Bolingbroke and the loss of his kingdom, cease to be king but he claims he never was, ‘for you have but mistook me all this while.’ Since he has lost his kingship in all but name he could not have been rightfully king at any time. As Richard takes the right of king to be tantamount to the claims of kingship he must hold that he too had no right since it was so easily taken from him by another. He has completely lost a part of himself in the usurpation but the other, the mortal half had survived unscathed throughout his deposition. He has now been entirely split down the lines that divide his two selves and those selves are now completely separate from each other; while his mortal self lives his kingly self has already perished and thus can never be reunited with its other half.
He knows not how to be king or mortal man and so he is left between the king’s two bodies at a
6 Ibid. 3.2.171-7
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loss for his own identity. By being both and neither he is left with no sense of self and as he continues to fall this confusion will become all the more evident.
1.2 Hal as Prince and Degenerate
Hal is the Henriad’s only prince. He occupies the unique position of being both the physical manifestation of his father’s death and also new life for England. Hal tries desperately to delay the inevitable day when he will have to take up the mantle and responsibilities of being king. At the same time he prepares. Hal prepares the people for his rise by lowering their expectations so as to rapidly rise with his ascension to the throne. As was seen in his father’s transformation from Henry Bolingbroke to King Henry IV, the king lacks a private person. It is a reasonable assumption that it should be much the same for a prince. The crown prince is the guarantee of the lineage of kings, an outward show of the everlasting essence of the crown, and thus he is under just as much scrutiny as the king. Yet, Hal disregards this responsibility and scrutiny. He spends his time drinking and robbing with degenerates, shirks his duties as prince, and frequently brings shame to his father. Hal compartmentalizes his personal and princely personas. The repercussions of such compartmentalization result in Hal’s many mistakes and failures in his father’s eyes.
Hal is first mentioned at the end of Richard II and even then, at least a decade before the actions of Henry IV, Bolingbroke is lamenting the follies of his wayward son.
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: Inquire at
London, ‘mongst the taverns there. For there, they say, he daily doth frequent, With
unrestrained loose companions. Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes, And beat
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our watch, and rob our passengers, Which he, young wanton and effeminate boy, Takes
on the point of honor to support so dissolute a crew7
Even before Hal is formally introduced he is seen as a degenerate and a disappointment. This is exactly what he proves himself to be in Henry IV, at least outwardly. He drinks and maligns his father and does nothing to defend the crown from slander. Falstaff is so sure of Hal’s indifference and possible disdain for Henry that he openly mocks the king in front of the crown prince. Hal’s lack of concern for decorum and traditional respect do not mean he is not aware of the rules. He is painfully aware of how he is expected to act and it is this understanding that allows him to act out with such efficiency while also guaranteeing he never over steps his bounds. Hal must first be a disappointment in order to then be redeemed. The prodigal son is better loved than the loyal son and Hal plans to capitalize on this. He must first act the fool prince so as to seem a wise king.
Hal and Falstaff’s antics come to the fore when they put on a literal mockery of the king and prince. Falstaff is unable to properly affect the demeanor of a king and so Hal becomes his father. This ability alone points to a distinct difference between Hal and Falstaff’s natures.
Falstaff sees Hal as his brother in foolery but Hal is a man different in kind from Falstaff and his band of drunken ruffians. Falstaff, no matter how much practice and time he has to perfect his farce can never affect the manner of a king. For Hal it is as simple as removing a mask. Where
Falstaff made simple mockeries of the nobility and paid himself much undue praise Hal makes biting comments toward his friend and his own willingness to associate with such a fool. Falstaff plays along urgently, “Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack
7 Ibid. 5.3.1-12
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Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world”.8 Hal’s response truly shows how little he is joking with
Falstaff, “I do. I will”.9 These four words tell more of his intentions than his outward friendship and leniency towards the old man did. Hal becomes Henry V, one of the most beloved monarchs of the time and everyone knew it. His sordid youth must then serve some other purpose.
Hal says he only engages in degeneracy to define his future kingly self by contrast future kingly self. Everyone loves a good redemption story. Why act the proper prince and be held to an impossible standard of decorum when one can instead be a free-spirited prince who becomes a proper king? Better to be the prodigal son than the ever-loyal one. Hal’s intentions are made clear in his first soliloquy, “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 be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mist
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him”.10 Hal is not only aware of how he is perceived and the damage he is doing to his reputation but he is also using these to latter define his regal identity.
Hal’s obsession with his image and the shrewd manner he uses to manipulate public opinion reflects the way Richard II acted in court. He too was obsessed with how his courtiers and subjects perceived him. The main difference between Richard and Hal is how skillfully they are able to execute this manipulation. Their respective ends evidence this, Richard dies dethroned, disgraced, murdered while Hal becomes beloved King Henry. Richard’s need for public approval cripples his ability to lead. Hal, by contrast, knows just how far to push the public and his father. When Henry confronts him, “For all the world as thou art to thus hour was
8 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1 (2009), 2.4.492-8 9 Ibid. 2.4.493 10 Ibid. 1.2.204-10
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Richard then when I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh, and even as was then is Percy now.
Now, by my sceptre and my soul to boot, He hath more worthy interest to the state than thou the shadow of succession”.11 Hal immediate becomes the perfect prince his father always longed him to be. “Do not think so; you shall find it not so: And God forgive them that so much have swayed
Your majesty’s good thoughts away from me! I will redeem all this on Percy’s head and in the closing of some glorious day be bold to tell you that I am your son”.12 This is the moment when
Hal can no longer be the miscreant wayward prodigal son. He must now take up the mantle of crown prince and all the responsibilities that come with it.
Hal’s desire to be king is unclear at times even to Hal. His friendship and time with
Falstaff shows that he is conflicted about the life he will be required to live. And much like a petulant teenager he rebels before coming back to his inevitable responsibilities. However, his desire to be viewed as a good king is evident in his elaborate farce to influence the public’s opinion. He shirks all of his princely responsibilities, was forcibly removed from council, delegates his duties, and consorts with the likes of Falstaff, but his future kingship is never far from his mind as his desire to “imitate the sun” indicates. The sun was a constant and significant symbol throughout Richard II for the everlasting constancy of kingship. Hal, for all his running away, does not hide from his future. His willingness to protect his father’s crown and person against Hotspur proves this. “Yet before my father’s majesty – I am content that he shall take the odds of his great name and estimation, and will, to save the blood on either side, try fortune with him in a single fight”.13 Much like his plan to increase the people’s love for him through redemption of his character this offer could well have been more for appearances’ sake than
11 Ibid. 3.2.96-102 12 Ibid. 3.2.134-9 13 Ibid. 5.1.97-101
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because he was truly willing to fight Hotspur. However, to discredit this show of chivalry as purely self-interest would be presuming too much. Hal is confident in his abilities on the battlefield and in his place as Prince of Wales. The only person he was truly impressing with the offer to fight Hotspur in single combat would be his father, and as Henry has not revoked Hal’s status as crown prince after everything Hal has done there seems to be little motivation for such a dangerous gesture other than genuine concern for his father and people.
Hal’s desire for the crown is further confirmed in 2 Henry IV, “O dear father, pay thee plenteously. My due from thee is this imperial crown, which, as immediate from thy place and blood, derives itself to me…it shall not force this lineal honor from me. This from thee will I to mine leave as ‘tis left to me”.14 Hal gives this speech even before the king is dead. This desire to be king forces him to eventually take his duty seriously, to forsake Falstaff and his world, and to fully embody the crown. Hal becomes a great king because he understands that he cannot be merely self-serving, that his plans to glorify his person in history can no longer be personal but must be public.
Hal’s relationship with King Henry suffers because of Hal’s ambitions. Henry was forced to seize the crown from Richard; he had no birthright and thus his wild desire to rule was not a familial betrayal. Henry can see his son’s ambition and is rightfully weary of said ambition. Hal is a physical reminder of Henry’s mortality. As Henry ages his authority wanes though the office he occupies retains the same power. Someone must maintain power and that person is necessarily the future king. Henry distrusts his son to the point that Hal must risk his life to save
Henry in order to prove his worth and loyalty. “Stay and breathe a while. Thou hast redeemed thy lost opinion, and showed thou makest some tender of my life, in this fair rescue thou hast
14 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 (2016), 4.5.39-46
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brought to me”.15 Hal replies to his supplication, “O God! They did me too much injury that ever said I harkened for your death”.16 He regrets having been the source of such thoughts in his father. Hal’s behavior has weakened his father’s position with his wildness and insolence and yet acts surprised that his father should see him as a possible threat.
Is there truly a transformation in Hal? His soliloquies and his outright disparagement of
Falstaff indicates that Hal never truly considered himself one of the dissolute outlaws. Yet, their fellowship affects the prince significantly. To say Falstaff is a true fool is too simplistic. Falstaff talks in circles and run-ons and never seems to say anything and yet beneath the nonsense is common sense and maybe even wisdom. Falstaff’s soliloquy on the battlefield proves this.
What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible,
then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not
suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism17
If Falstaff is nothing else he is practical. He knows how to preserve his own life and lifestyle. He has gotten in the good graces of the crown prince despite being well below Hal’s station. In battle too he knows that though there is honor in a valiant death this honor, this abstract concept, serves him not. What good is honor to the dead? Once one is committed to the idea that things such as honor are not worth the sacrifice Falstaff’s actions make complete sense. He values himself and his preservation above all else. Hal to a certain extent mirrors this way of thinking.
Hal could have been the loyal and subservient son, the proper prince, but he may not have known how to fulfill this role. He was very suddenly thrust into it when Henry took the throne and so he
15 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 5.4.47-50 16 Ibid. 5.4.51-52 17 Ibid. 5.1.135-42
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hides and apprentices under perhaps the least likely but most appropriate person, Falstaff. The transformation Hal undergoes is not from degenerate to perfect son but from normal man unprepared for royal duty to proper prince.
Hal defines himself by his kingship. His prodigal nature forms his every identity as seen in his analogy of the sun specifically being set against the clouds. It was not simply that Hal was unprepared for kingship; he did not yet have the means by which to define himself by his kingship in the terms of what kingship had become under his father’s rule: a mortal office defined by the dichotomy and doubling between the king and his usurpation, the king and his successor and predecessor. Hal had to double himself in order to define himself by his kingship and that is only accomplished after he fulfills his prodigal nature. If he were only the perfect prince, the perfect son, or only the debauched rouge he could not have embodied that split of the king’s two bodies even before ascending to the throne. In this way he defines himself against himself and also usurps himself; the new princelier Hal overthrows the Hal of Falstaff’s world in the same way Henry usurped Richard. Because of his ability to do double himself, to usurp himself, Hal uniquely sets himself up to embody kingship not in the context of divinity but in the mortal definition.
1.3 Richard’s Deposition and Bolingbroke’s Kingship
Henry Bolingbroke occupies a different position in relation to his kingship when compared to the other kings in the Henriad. Unlike the other kings he was never a prince, only a noble without a significant claim to the throne. Despite escaping the onus of princehood in his youth one can see the ills kingship eventually wreaks on him. Through him, one may question
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whether it is ever appropriate to say that the king is the crown rather than the crown is the king and when if ever a king ceases to embody that crown.
To understand the relationship between King Henry and his crown one must first examine King Richard. It is arguable that Richard is always king, from before the tetralogy begins to after Richard’s death. He is met in full kingly glory and even in his deposition he is called king and maintains much of his kingly attitude in the shame of his fall. It is only through death that he loses his kingship, and maybe not even then. The idea of the king’s two bodies as put forth by Kantorowicz shows how the dichotomous nature of the king, both immortal and mortal, both divine and human, can result in a king being simultaneously eternally dead and living. Kantorowicz states, “The king’s manhood prevails over the godhead of the Crown, and mortality over immortality”.18 These warring states contained in a single person are a source of continual conflict for Richard and later Bolingbroke and Hal. Specifically the eternal death of kings, that they are never alive and that to be king is necessarily to die, consumes Richard as his kingship begins to slip away from his control. Perhaps his most indicative lamentation “Tell the sad stories of the death of kings how some have been deposed, some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed - all murdered. For within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court”.19 As Kantorowicz points out this passage marks an essential shift in Richard’s understanding of his own kingship, “The king that never dies here has been replaced by the king that always dies and suffers death more cruelly than other mortals. Gone is the oneness of the body natural with the immortal body politic ‘this double body to which no body is equal”.20 The
18 Kantorowicz (2016), 30 19 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 3.2.156-62 20 Kantorowicz 30
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crown antagonizes Richard. It is the very means of his death, a guarantee since birth, and he cannot shirk it. This same concern will grow to haunt Henry IV. King’s cannot escape death, being mortal, though kingship’s aim is to do just this. Yet the very institution of the crown is imbued with death. What is kingship if not the necessity that the previous king, more like than not one’s own father, die? What is the institution of kingship if not a lineage of power through death? Richard shows that kingship is nothing more than this and that kings are always beholden to their crowns in this way. Henry is no exception. Where Richard was beholden to the paradox of the king’s two bodies Henry’s crown is defined by mortality, and the paradox has shifted to one of a kingship always usurped and a king never fully a king.
If one examines what kingship did to Richard physically, mentally, and emotionally it is immediately evident that the effects are nothing positive. The need to protect his position as a king compelled Richard to kill his uncle, wage an unwinnable war with Ireland and Wales, and seize Bolingbroke’s lands. All of these ideas were objectively bad for Richard as an individual; no moment more outwardly symbolic than when he “hath thrown his warder down”21 all at once protecting his station and forcibly removing it from himself. Every action had terrible consequences for Richard; putting his person or conscience at risk. Yet, the crown requires
Richard to make decisions against his self-interest. Even his ineptitude in rule, most often pointed out in his handling of the court and conflict between Mowbray and Bolingbroke, is a consequence of the crown. To claim Richard is entirely inept is, according to Samuel
Schoenbaum, too harsh. He claims Richard is all too aware of his station and the necessity of his public image writing, “Richard may prattle about divine right but in his world power is wielded
21 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 1.3.118
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by men; those men in whose presence Richard goes through the rhetoric of public gestures”.22
These choices backfire on him. He is seen as inept and unlikable, and summarily deposed.
Ultimately he is killed for these choices. His attempts to protect his crown are the very means by which he loses it. This causes one to ask how the crown could have interests outside of the interests of the king. Is the king not the crown? Richard proves that this cannot be true or at least not wholly true. The crown instead appears to be an entity unto itself, unconcerned for its occupant.
The crown seems only to harm its wearer. Richard, though of a similar age to
Bolingbroke acts and appears much older than his cousin. He is statelier and less brazen, as befits the crown, but also speaks with maturity so often lost on the young. The crown has visible and immediate effects on Bolingbroke when he succeeds the throne. He becomes aged and jaded at a seemingly faster rate than Hal, Hotspur, and every other character that appears in the first two plays of the Henriad. How is it possible for Bolingbroke to age forty years over night while his son remains the same youthful fool? If one goes by the dates stated in Henry IV part 2, “Tis not ten years gone”23 it has been just 10 years since Richard’s death. The crown comes with many responsibilities but the swift aging Bolingbroke experiences is too extreme to be attributed purely to stress. The crown is the source of this aging and yet is itself ageless. The crown is never worn by an ageless man and is never worn even by a young man. Richard all too aware of this fact laments it “I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus, how can you say to me I am a king?”24 The moment he achieves kingship the young man becomes old; he becomes a careworn father of a nation instead of one with the freedom to idly
22 Farrell (1999), 52 23 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 3.1.57 24 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 3.2.175-7
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pursue pleasure, glory, or honor. However, the cares of the crown, maintaining authority, power, the veneer of everlasting life, are those best achieved by the young. If the king is always wizened how is the crown immortal? Succession. The very instant a king dies a new one is born. There can never be more than one king at any moment but there is necessarily always one. From this it is easy to see where definitions such as, “the king ‘is a corporation in himself that liveth ever’”25 came into being. The crown is not a person it is an idea, an institution that exists wholly in the public realm. For this reason the crown’s wearer cannot be immortal, and in fact must be more mortal than the average man so as to facilitate the constant necessity of succession.
One may then ponder if there is such a thing as a king’s self interest. Is the king ever rightfully considered an individual unconnected to his crown? To the king the answer seems to be an unequivocal no. This is seen most clearly through Bolingbroke’s transformation into Henry
IV and Hal’s transformation into Henry V. Father and son face similar trials in this regard.
Bolingbroke is able to pursue his private interests before he is king; he may avenge his Uncle with no thought of political balance, defy his banishment with no regard for the law, and depose a king based on an excuse as flimsy as retribution for unduly lost land. None of these actions are possible for King Henry IV. He goes from being the “type everyone has met, the man whose ruthless selfishness is concealed by a smiling pretty boy exterior who knows that an engaging manner will get the better of most people”26 to an authoritative and stoic king. He chastises his son for having many of these same qualities because he sees too much of Richard’s manner in his son.
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
25 Kantorowicz 24 26 Farrell 70
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presence of the crowned king. Thus did I keep my person fresh and new, my presence
like a robe pontifical never seen but wondered at, and so my state seldom but sumptuous
showed like a feast and won by rareness such solemnity. The skipping king, he ambled
up and down with shallow jesters and rash bavin wits soon kindled and soon burnt,
carded his state, mingled his royalty with capering fools, his great name profaned with
scorns…enfeoffed himself with popularity that being daily swallowed by men’s eyes they
surfeited with honey and soon began to loathe the taste of sweetness27
In this passage Henry clearly lays out for his son the journey he went on from noble to king, from private individual Bolingbroke to public embodiment King Henry IV. He insinuates that
Richard’s inability to properly understand the distinction between public and private is why the people reviled him. Hal takes his father’s advice and he too shrugs off the vestiges of his youth upon taking the throne; he comes to define himself by way of this shift in public persona. Falstaff is blatantly ignored, reviled, and banished by his former friend as soon as Hal becomes King
Henry. Though this is the better political choice it also shows the clear distinction between the young men and the kings. They can no longer pursue the interests of their youths and must instead adopt the rigid masks of kingship.
Bolingbroke clearly has a better grasp on his kingship than Richard had. He is able to successfully thwart the rebellion against him; a task at which Richard failed. Yet one can easily see that the crown both protects the king from such insurrections and makes him all the more vulnerable to them. Should the king miscalculate his trust, his image, even once he may end up deposed or dead; he can have no friends, “The kind of suspicion raised on suspicion on which men must risk their lives in this world where truth is impossible to come by…he helped the king,
27 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1 3.2.52-74
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the king can never forget this and will always fear that his former friends will think themselves not fully rewarded and therefore must always fear the king who may fear them”.28 Bolingbroke capitalized on this exact miscalculation from Richard; the king did not know how to manage his people or court, “In general Richard treats his kingdom and subjects in an arbitrary manner and the play realizes his implication in his own destruction in the scene in which he uncrowns himself and names Bolingbroke his successor and confesses the sins which brought him down”.29
The disloyalty of the court, the fickle nature of public opinion is something Henry was all too aware and wary of. The change in the public’s opinion surrounding King Henry is a force unto itself. He goes from beloved conqueror to hated ruler. The crown itself seems to guarantee public ire for its occupant. Unlike Richard who was seen as inept and unfit Henry is instead viewed as illegitimate. Henry is keenly aware of this problem. He knows his name, his rule, is stained by his crime much in the way he thought Richard’s stained by Gloucester’s death. In his most iconic utterance he bemoans this, ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”.30 This poetic musing is indicative of a larger problem with kingship. Henry muses, “Tis not ten years gone since Richard and Northumberland, great friends did feast together, and in two years after were they at wars. It is but eight years since this Percy was the man nearest my soul who like a brother toiled in my affairs and laid his love and life under my foot”.31 Henry cannot even trust his heir as Hal too seems to prematurely murder his father, “Just as his father before him had usurped Richard II’s crown so does Hal…who now thinks his father dead appropriates his crown”.32
28 Kernan 1970, 254 29 Ibid. 249 30 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 3.1.31 31 Ibid. 3.1.57-63 32 Hodgdon 1932, 170
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The way that Bolingbroke brought about Richard’s fall will haunt King Henry IV throughout his reign and even after his death well in to Henry V’s reign. Kernan explains the pitfalls of how King Henry claimed his crown, “In seizing the throne from the weak and politically inept Richard, Henry sought his own advancement and perhaps even the good of the state (his motivation is never clear even to himself) but the result is a life of anxiety and travail for him and for England. His life and reign are a great continuing irony: the politically effective king creates a disordered kingdom”.33 It is from this moment that the discord in Henry’s reign originates. He can never be comfortable in his kingship as he was never, can never be, a rightful king. He is unable to follow the sage advice he gives Hal, “Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”34 because his own reign was “sick with civil blows”35. It is through
Henry’s succession that Richard is revived. “As enthroned king [Richard] fails, in deposition he succeeds: that is his triumph and his tragedy, that falling he rises and rebukes his usurpers and the ethos they bring with them”.36 Richard is never more beloved than under the rule of the man who murdered him. All he lacked in life seems to have fallen away replaced only with sweet and gentle perfection. Richard who once embodied all that a king lacked now embodies all Henry IV lacks as king. Where once he was a failure he has become the standard. Henry once revered throughout the land with allies aplenty and political loyalty to spare becomes hated by those that stood by him; he has become “this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke”.37 Richard transforms from one forced to proclaim, “What says King Bolingbroke – will his majesty give Richard leave till
33 Kernan, 259 34 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 4.5.213 35 Ibid. 4.5.133 36 Farrell 62 37 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 1.3.180
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Richard die”38 in front of his former courtiers in a show of base humiliation to “Richard, that sweet lovely rose”39 by the same men who spit on his name not a decade before. This transformation illustrates perfectly the fickleness of the opinions of men. Yet, it also highlights the constancy of the crown. Richard was deposed for his ineptitude as king and yet is paid more respect as king in death than life. This too will be true for Henry IV. What he lacked in life, the reasons for the rebellions against him, will be forgotten in favor of his strengths so as to build up
Henry V’s celebrity all the more through mention of a great father.
Bolingbroke’s deposition and murder of Richard is strikingly similar to Richard’s murder of Gloucester. Henry has become the king “haunted by the ghosts they have deposed”40 as
Richard foretold. He pays dearly for Richard’s death, though few ever doubts that it was a political necessity, nor even questions Henry’s rightness of action in the deposition itself; York being the main exception to this. Despite the public opinion surrounding Henry’s usurpation of the throne it is Henry’s opinion of his own actions that plays a larger role in his actions as king.
In his younger years he may have been able to justify his actions with thinly veiled excuses and claims of honorable action. Though many scholars doubt even this, “The consummate actor is
Bolingbroke who hardly ever tells the truth”.41 Regardless of one’s opinion on Bolingbroke’s actions King Henry is clearly obsessed with the effects Richard’s murder has had on his kingship. For much of Henry IV part 1 he seems unaware of the fact that Richard could still have effects on his life, but as the rebellion progresses and more of his old friends turn from him claiming Richard a truer king the veil is lifted. Richard hangs over him always. Perhaps this is because “[Richard] like the rest of men has no stable identity certified by the order of things
38 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 3.3.172 39 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 1.3.179 40 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 3.2.158 41 Farrell 66
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immutable”42, or perhaps it can simply be attributed to the passage of time, or even more sardonically to the whims of people’s needs. Even on his deathbed Henry laments the effects his past has wrought on his present and the possible effects it will have on Hal. “God knows, my son, by what bypaths and indirect crooked ways I met this crown and I myself know well how troublesome is sat upon my head. To thee it shall descend with better quiet, better opinion, better confirmation for all the soil of the achievement goes with me into the earth”.43 Henry’s desperation to escape the onus Richard’s death has placed on him is palpable in his death. He cries out, “How came I by the crown, O God forgive me”.44 It is not unintentional that the news of Hal and thus Henry’s victory over the rebels comes just as the king lay dying. The kingdom can only begin to regain a sense of peace and composure once the imposter king is dead and gone. If Henry IV is an imposter, with no rightful claim to the succession of the throne, what does that make Henry V? Hal is beloved as a king and no claims of delegitimacy follow his rule.
Yet, he too cannot forget Richard.
O not today, think not upon the fault my father made in compassing the crown. I,
Richard’s body, have interred new and on it bestowed more contrite tears than from it
issued drops of blood. Five hundred poor I have yearly pay who twice a day their
withered hands hold up toward heaven to pardon blood; and I have built two chantries
where the sad and solemn priests sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do though all
that I can do is nothing worth since that my penitence comes after all imploring pardon45
These actions are not those of a king that has the liberty to forget the ills of his father. Even the revered and beloved Henry V exists under the shadow of the feeble Richard II.
42 Kernan 253 43 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 4.5.183-90 44 Ibid. 4.5.218 45 Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry V (1995), 4.1.290-302
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The question of when Richard loses his kingship, if ever, is central to the conflict between the cousins in Richard II. In much the same way, the question of whether Henry IV ever truly owns the crown he wears is central to his namesake plays. At the end of Richard II he has the full support of the court in his claim. Richard’s supporters have been summarily executed, banished, or silenced and Henry is king beyond a doubt. Yet in the ten or so years between the final action of the first play to the second there is an essential shift in how Henry’s kingship is viewed not just by the plays’ characters but by Henry himself and even the audience. The question of Henry’s legitimacy rests on the question of desert. For a hereditary prince born into his station there is no question of whether he deserves the crown by means of succession; that is the nature on monarchy. But Henry does not have the privilege of being born a prince. He had to earn his crown, or more appropriately take it. Since this task was not accomplished alone he is beholden to the opinions of those that granted him his title. Hotspur raves, “My father and my uncle and myself did give him that same royalty that he wears”.46 From this necessity to constantly meet expectations civil war and rebellion erupts. Yet, one can easily point out that
Richard was beholden to the same standard once king. The crown acts as a leveling agent. Once king all kings are equals. If Henry is Richard’s equal in this way then his kingship must be legitimate. To suggest otherwise would be to insinuate that Richard too is not rightful heir. Hal’s acceptance as the undisputed crown prince and successor to Henry IV is further proof of Henry’s legitimacy. If he was not a proper king Hal would be no prince and have no rightful claim to the throne. Yet, neither Henry, nor Richard, nor Hal are in control of this office. Richard clings to the vestiges of his kingship as it is ripped from him and lays claim to his royal station even when it is clearly lost. Henry through nothing more than his own willpower becomes king, secondary
46 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 4.3.60
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only to god on earth, ripping the office from its rightful holder and forcing that right upon himself. Hal claims that same right from the broken lineage his father has established and breaks the line even further when he claims the crown before Henry is properly dead. There seems to be no right to kingship. Only the office exists and it is unbiased as to its occupant to the point of caprice.
The ideas kingship as holy are further subverted by the idea that Richard is the most holy king of the three, fully anointed, the last of the Plantagenet kings to come into his crown purely through succession. He is the purest of them. The only one under whom England was orderly.
“What is passing in the course of Richard II is innocence, a sense of living in a golden world and no one is more innocent than Richard himself”.47 Yet, he is overthrown with little care and less respect. The claim that for a new king to be born the previous king must die is thoroughly subverted in Richard’s fall. In Richard II there are three kings in existence all at once, Richard,
Henry, and Hal. From Shakespeare’s perspective, and from every perspective since, they exist in the past – all already kings fully vested by history and acknowledged by the annals of the monarchy. To discuss their legitimacy seems almost foolish when it had been so long established, so long accepted. They are clearly all legitimate kings in this present moment though they had nothing in common in their reigns. The only common link is the crown, that very office of kingship by which we question their legitimacy. To say that these three kings somehow earned their station is dissatisfactory at least for one of the three no matter which definition one give of earn. So instead one must look to the crown itself. Does the very act of placing a crown upon someone’s head and proclaiming him king make him so? No clearly not. Yet when one marries this ceremony with tradition, with the idea that kingships of certain kinds are holy and legitimate
47 Kernan 247
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in their own rights then all kings under that office are legitimate. Thus I feel that it is fair to assert that the crown makes the king but the king can undo the crown. That is how the fall of monarchy happens. Richard was made a legitimate ruler not by his own mettle or right but by the office he was born into and inherited but he lost the crown by his own actions. Should
Bolingbroke not have been there to take up the mantle, and the monarchy ended with Richard, one would not blame the crown but the king. It is at this moment when the king takes the crown into his own hands, when he begins to have influence over it as an institution, that he loses his kingship.
King Henry IV has a fraught relationship with his kingship. He is all at once incredibly confident in his rule, taking the kingship from a rightful heir and embodying the office himself through nothing but his own merit, call to honor, and competence. At the same time he is haunted by how he gained his station. Richard’s murder places him too close to the grievances he laid against his predecessor and calls into question the legitimacy of his rule and lineage. By virtue of being king, however, he is able to call himself king despite his failings or past wrongs.
The crown cares not for its occupant, often calling on him to make personally reckless decisions or sapping his energy to the point of early death. Yet, it is the trade off for the crown’s power, its authority, by which all kings rule. Without the legitimacy of the crown a king is nothing.
Without the king the crown cannot exist. They strike a delicate codependent balance that saps the energy of king and crown. But by virtue of wearing the crown and becoming all the more vulnerable to attack all the more mortal the king is guaranteed the immortality that can only come from the crown. He is always dead and always living. He ceases to be mortal man and becomes his station. The king becomes the crown.
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Chapter 2: The Problems of Kingship
Bolingbroke’s usurpation of Richard and his subsequent assentation to the throne have transformative and damaging effects on kingship. Where the king’s two bodies once referred to the doubling within the king of his public and personal self, his divine and mortal self, it now, in the wake of usurpation, must refer to a doubling that occurs between the kings or between the king and his former self. Kingship has lost its divine properties and is now confined to a mortal office. Due to this each successive king following the usurpation cannot be king in the way
Richard was. This complication of kingship and of the king’s two bodies requires the kings to redefine themselves and appropriate language and philosophies from Richard to legitimize their reigns. In this quest for legitimization the kings attempt to reestablish the meaning of kingship and come to terms with the alterations Henry has brought about that can never be undone.
2.1 Bolingbroke’s Character
Out of the four main players in the Henriad, Henry Bolingbroke experiences the most dramatic shift in position and personality. His shift from usurper to king requires such a change but it also calls into question how much of Bolingbroke’s personality and motivations are maintained as King Henry IV. Where Bolingbroke is passionate in his ideals and sure of his right to call Richard’s actions into question he is also naïve of the more difficult decisions that come with being a king. When it comes time for his own kingly decisions to be questioned and for rebellion to be raised against him he is as staunch in his ideals of his own kingship as Richard ever was. He heavily relies on divine right to justify his rule just as Richard had. For every ounce of youthful passion possessed by Bolingbroke, Henry answers with somber realism. Henry accuses Hal of acting too much like Richard and yet it is he himself that becomes too much like the deposed king.
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Bolingbroke’s introduction establishes him as an upright and passionate man committed to his ideals and the rightness of law. As he comes before Richard to accuse Mowbray of treason he too accuses Richard of thinly veiled murder. This boldness shows Bolingbroke’s intrinsic understanding of how the royal court works. Though he cannot accuse Richard of Gloucester’s murder without risking treason he can seek to rectify the injustice done to his uncle through other means. This illustrates his commitment to upholding justice, a trait that will later serve to win
Richard’s court to his cause. He frequently utilizes ceremony, as in the duel against Mowbray, or technicalities, such as accusing Mowbray of murder instead of Richard or breaking his banishment as Lancaster instead of Hereford, to avoid claims of treason. After Bolingbroke claims, “As I was banished, I was banished Hereford; but as I come, I come Lancaster”48, York is clearly unconvinced by his argument and yet he quickly relents as Bolingbroke has already amassed a great deal of support to his cause. York states, “But in this kind to come – braving arms be his own carver and cut out his way to find out right with wrong – it may not be. And you that do abet him in this kind cherish rebellion and are rebels all”.49 In York’s response following
Bolingbroke’s justification for his return one can also see how, though Bolingbroke is undoubtedly a more skilled statesman than Richard, he cannot win York to his side on his rhetoric and reasoning alone.
Bolingbroke’s greatest strength lies in his charisma, a quality so lacking in Richard. This is confirmed by the report of Bolingbroke Richard receives, “Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and
Green observed his courtship to the common people, how he did seem to dive into their hearts with humble and familiar courtesy, what reverence he did throw away on slaves”.50 He knows
48 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 2.3.112 49 Ibid. 2.3.141-6 50 Ibid. 1.4.23-7
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the value of being well liked and by compounding his charisma with his valid claims of injustice against Richard he is able to raise a rebellion all while claiming to want nothing but his lands back. This claim is one Bolingbroke never waivers from. Even as Richard is actively abdicating to him, Bolingbroke states, “My gracious lord I come but for mine own.” While his fellow rebels are more than happy to believe this and to further this narrative for their own ends Richard is unconvinced, “Your own is yours and I am yours and all”51, much in the way York has been previously unimpressed with Bolingbroke’s return from banishment. Bolingbroke is, however, both times unbothered by his failure to convince his listener. This is because he does not have to be concerned with the believability of his claims as he already has the force necessary to achieve his ends. He has no need to flatter when he can simply take.
The claim that Bolingbroke is insincere about his reasons for returning to England is controversial as many argue that Bolingbroke is sincere about his reasons for returning, not once does he say he desires the crown and addresses Richard as King to the very last. However, this argument is forced, as there is ample evidence to point to the deposition being intentional.
York’s admonishment of the rebels provides an instance where Bolingbroke could have quashed the rebellion; instead he makes excuses about his inheritance and allows Northumberland to declare them rebels. Bolingbroke could easily have stopped the deposition. Though Richard unkings himself by relinquishing titles before he is necessarily asked, Bolingbroke did not need to accept that relinquishment. It is in the deposition scene where one most clearly sees
Bolingbroke’s true intentions. As Mack notes, “The ceremony of the deposition scene is organized by Bolingbroke to legitimize his power; it fails because Richard instigates his own
51 Ibid. 3.3.194-5
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ceremonies of disrobing, giving up the crown, and regarding his face in the mirror”.52 Where
Bolingbroke lacks divine right he compensates with authority, but as is seen in this exchange that authority can be undermined more easily than divine right. After his coronation this becomes a less viable ruling strategy.
As he becomes surer of his success he also becomes more brazen, “Methinks King
Richard and myself should meet with no less terror than the elements of fire and water when their thundering shock at meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven. Be he the fire, I’ll be the yielding water”.53 Fire of course never yields to water and this analogy’s implications are not lost on his companions. He makes it abundantly clear that he holds the upper hand by mocking
Richard in his parlay speech, “Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley into his ruined ears, and thus deliver: Henry Bolingbroke, on both knees doth kiss King Richard’s hand…”54
The use of the word ruined as well as the fact that Richard could not possibly refuse to meet
Bolingbroke’s demands makes the entire parlay nothing more than a mocking farce. Richard is unafraid to point out Bolingbroke’s egotism and false deference, “Your heart is up, I know, thus high at least [pointing to his crown], although your knee be low”.55 Richard’s teasing gives him the upper hand in this situation as in the deposition scene. Though Bolingbroke possesses more power his authority is not always guaranteed. Thus Shakespeare illustrates the authority, different in kind from Bolingbroke’s power, which comes from the divine right of kings. Should that right be weakened from within it may fall but external power alone cannot fell it. Elliott comments on this, “In Shakespeare the deposition of Richard comes about less through the strength of Bolingbroke's arms than through the weakness of Richard's philosophy of
52 Maynard Mack, Killing the King (1973), 27 53 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 3.3.53-7 54 Ibid. 3.3.32-5 55 Ibid. 3.3.192-3
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kingship”.56 This weak philosophy is one that Bolingbroke is not yet prey too but he soon becomes all the more vulnerable to the idea of the divine right of kings.
The Bolingbroke of Richard II and his later iteration in Henry IV are vastly different in how their pursuits of right rule and justice are presented. Where Bolingbroke seems without fault
Henry IV is riddled with cynicism, guilt, and questionable morality. Many scholars have noted that the more heinous acts committed by Bolingbroke against Richard, as reported by Holinshed, are glossed over in Richard II. This is not, however, to claim that Shakespeare presents him as wholly innocent or as lacking force. As John Elliott notes, “Shakespeare by no means glosses over Bolingbroke's capacity for force and guile in the accomplishment of his aims, but at the same time he shows these qualities arising as responses to political situations rather than as the innate characteristics of a villain”.57 Though he wants Richard to appear pitiable he cannot overplay Bolingbroke’s faults or else risk having him be too much hated in Henry IV. He takes a note from Holinshed, “Holinshed does not excuse the illegality of Bolingbroke's seizure of the throne, but he also presents a Richard who habitually violates the traditional legal restraints on the power of the king, committing such abuses as the murder of political enemies, the arbitrary imposition of taxes, the denial of justice, and the renunciation of the essential rights of a lord”.58
Thus much of Bolingbroke’s personality and motivations are reliant on his relationship to
Richard. This remains true even after Richard is dead.
The first shift in Bolingbroke’s character comes after he has deposed Richard. As Richard hands over his titles and lands Bolingbroke states, “In God’s name I’ll ascend the regal throne”.59
He utilizes the ‘royal we’ almost immediately to set his coronation date, “On Wednesday next
56 John R. Elliott, History and Tragedy in Richard II (1968), 14 57 Ibid. 13 58 Ibid. 8 59 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 4.1.114
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we solemnly set down our coronation”.60 His uncle York, the last surviving remnant of the old order that valued God’s will above all, also validates his claim, “But heaven hath a hand in these events to whose high will we bound our calm contents to Bolingbroke we are sworn subjects now whose state and honor I for aye allow”.61 Bolingbroke’s most noticeable and drastic shift in character comes with the murder of Richard. Though it is true, from Exton’s own words that
Henry did not order the murder directly he made it abundantly clear that he wanted Richard dead. “He wishtly looked on me, as who should say ‘I would thou wert the man that would divorce this terror from my heart’ – meaning the King at Pomfret”.62 A king must be aware of his words in a way that subjects are not; a king’s idle musings can fast become reality if the listener seeks to gain favor. As Henry has amply shown that he is adept in court politics he is undoubtedly aware of this. Yet, when news of Richard’s murder id brought to him he says,
“Exton, I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought a deed of slander with thy fatal hand upon my head and all this famous land…Though I did wish him dead I hate the murderer, love him murdered…With Cain go wander thorough shade of night and never show thy head by day nor light”.63 This is the same scenario Richard finds himself in after the murder of Gloucester.
Caught between right justice and political necessity Richard made the choice to have Mowbray murder Gloucester and then summarily banish the murderer. Now Henry has made the same choice, a choice for which, at the beginning of the play, he publically condemned Richard and
Mowbray.
From this decision springs the guilt that will haunt Henry for the next two plays. Though
Shakespeare spends little time on the king’s introspection in I Henry IV, as the king comes nearer
60 Ibid. 4.1.319-20 61 Ibid. 5.2.37-40 62 Ibid. 5.5.8-10 63 Ibid. 5.6.34-44
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to rebellion and death his past decisions torment him. Beginning in Richard II he verbalizes his guilt. When forgiving Aumerle’s treason he vows, “I pardon him as God shall pardon me”.64 He speaks these words as if speaking their actuality into reality. If he pardon’s Aumerle as God’s deputy on earth then God cannot fail to pardon him. This is, of course, reliant on Henry being
God’s true deputy. But it is in his final speech of the play that one sees how the guilt of killing the king will follow Henry into the next plays, “I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land to wash this blood off from my guilty hand”.65 The Holy Land becomes a symbol not only of the king’s redemption but also of his death. The foretold location of his demise, Henry seems desperate to run towards it instead of away. Throughout Hotspur’s rebellion Henry not once loses sight of his desire to lead a crusade to the Holy Land. He feels that God has not yet forgiven him and is actively punishing him for killing Richard, “I know not whether God will have it so for some displeasing service I have done that, in his secret doom, out of my blood he’ll breed revengement and scorn for me. But thou dost in thy passage of life make me believe that thou art only marked for the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven to punish my mistreadings”.66 Though the audience has the benefit of knowing Hal’s outward behavior does not reflect his inner self as closely as the king believes it is nonetheless significant that Henry believes his heir to be a punishment. So he goes on seeking salvation. On his deathbed, when he realizes that he has been in Jerusalem all along, he again begs forgiveness, “How I came by the crown O God forgive”.67 Richard’s death marred Henry’s entire reign.
The personal guilt Henry feels throughout his reign is compounded by his need to legitimize his rule. As a usurper he falls prey to claims of illegitimacy that Richard never faced.
64 Ibid. 5.3.130 65 Ibid. 5.6.49-50 66 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 3.2.5-12 67 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 4.5.218
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He manner by which Henry came to power also leaves him beholden to others in a way Richard never was. This is one of Hotspur’s main claims against the king, “My father and my uncle and myself did give him that same royalty he wears”.68 As others threaten his rule Henry falls further and further into the divine right defense. Though he seized the throne by force he now acts the rightful heir as passed down by right of heaven. As James Winny notes, “The regal manner that he assumes does not suggest the impudence of a usurper, conscious that he is merely impersonating the king, but a monarch whose legal right is established beyond dispute”.69 Yet the king himself finds this a hard narrative to maintain. When lecturing Hal about the importance of political popularity he recounts his own ascension, “And then 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”.70 Caught between his former self and his present self he must advance two separate conflicting narratives in tandem. These conflicting narratives are harmful to his rule as they highlight the inconsistencies within his claims to legitimacy. Because Henry was not the rightful heir he can always be attacked on this front, “Bolingbroke had enjoyed none of Richard’s royal favor, but the phrase
‘abuse the countenance of the king’ [pt. 2. 4.2.13] associates him very closely with the man
[Richard] whom his son is condemning. As a spurious figure of kingship who has taken his sacred office by force, Bolingbroke is abusing the symbol of anointed majesty”.71
The strain this doubleness places on the king leads to an inward struggle and political inconsistency, Richard’s greatest weakness. Winny notes, “He still does not understand that the endless disquiet and strain that he has suffered stem from the effort of maintaining a false
68 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 4.3.60-1 69 James Winny, The Player King: a Theme of Shakespeare’s Histories (1986), 93 70 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 3.2.52-6 71 Winny 97
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position and supplying by force of will the authority divinely implanted in a lawful king”.72 The king’s intrinsic characteristics as Bolingbroke seem to be all but entirely abandoned as king.
Where once he was a champion of the right to rule by strength and support he now champions divine right, where once he condemned injustice for self-interest he now advances such a position. Henry becomes more like Richard with every minute spent as king. He cannot maintain both his former and current selves while calling himself a true king; and call himself true king he must or else risk dethronement. For this reason Bolingbroke and Henry cannot exist in the same time, though they may exist in the same person. This dichotomy leads to a contradiction of self as well as ideology. Winny observes, “Yet despite his long record of deceit, Bolingbroke appears genuinely unaware of the course of deliberate subversion that brought him to the throne”.73 Of course he would not view his rise as a product of subversion; if he did then his rule would be illegitimate, his sins all the worse for their false pretenses. Above all else Henry is devoted to legitimizing his rule. It is for this reason that he adopts the narrative of divine right.
As Henry becomes less Bolingbroke and more Richard he begins to make the same mistakes that lead to Richard’s demise. He never entirely loses his political acumen but his decisions become more self-serving. Winny notes, “It is of course clear that Bolingbroke has the natural gifts of a politician and no inclination to suppress private interest when the crown appears within his grasp, but…too much of the later Bolingbroke is incompatible with his namesake in
Richard II for the two figures to be accepted as the same man”.74 Killing Richard was the first of his mistakes, and like Richard he seeks to rid himself of the vestiges of his sin through banishment. However, the most damaging mistake was failing to honor the promise made to
72 Ibid. 102 73 Ibid. 94 74 Ibid. 89
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Northumberland and Hotspur in regards to their lands, titles, and rewards. Much like Richard seizing Bolingbroke’s lands this failure to uphold promises and inheritance led Henry to face rebellion. As the men he is beholden to are the same who know of his trespass against Richard he seeks to rid himself of them at one blow, “The king is weary of dainty and such picking grievances. For he hath found to end one doubt by death revives two greater in the heirs of life, and therefore will he wipe his tables clean and keep no telltale to his memory that may repeat and history his loss to new remembrance”.75 This desire is both anti king and anti Bolingbroke.
This again calls into question of how much of Bolingbroke’s personality and character is maintained after he becomes king. Winny offers a less forgiving conception of Henry’s changes,
“Unlike his earlier counterpart, the Bolingbroke of Henry IV is a cynically adept politician who has dispossessed the rightful king by guile, having assured himself of popular support by ingratiating behavior towards the common people, and by deflecting their loyalty from Richard to himself”.76 Henry’s transformation into a quasi Richard is completed in his journey to legitimize his reign.
Henry’s conception of kingship severely shifts as he moves from usurper to king. The understandings of kingship, as held by the main characters, are central to the tetralogy. Henry’s shift is the most severe as he is the one character who successfully moves from noble to usurper to king. Winny states, “Bolingbroke’s reign entails a prolonged struggle to capture the reality of kingship, by adding to his personal dignity and command the invested honor that he could not steal from Richard. The struggle imposes strains upon him that drain his previously buoyant energy and wear him down to the point of exhausted collapse”.77 He is highly introspective about
75 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 4.1.197-204 76 Winny 87 77 Ibid. 101
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his kingship and what his role in his kingship is. He knows that his reign is less legitimate than his predecessor’s and he tries desperately to rectify this situation. It is through Hal that Henry is finally able to legitimize his rule. The king states, “God knows, my son, by what bypaths and indirect crooked ways I met this crown and I myself know well how troublesome is sat upon my head. To thee it shall descend with better quiet, better opinion, better confirmation for all the soil of the achievement goes with me into the earth”.78 Henry is only able to become a true king by way of succession, as only true kings can pass on the crown legitimately. Divine right must accept him as king if it is to accept Hal and thus, as Hal does not suffer from the dichotomy of usurper and king that existed in his father, Henry is king even if he is a true king only in death.
Henry’s shift from Bolingbroke to King Henry IV is dramatic and drastic. He throws off the vestiges of his past self and embraces much of what he condemned in Richard. This change is necessary for the legitimization of his reign and for the redemption of his sins. He suffers for his decisions and sees firsthand the impossible choices that faced Richard and the new trials he has created for himself as a usurper. Richard’s essence is recycled in King Henry and Bolingbroke is ultimately, and necessarily, lost.
2.2 Usurpation
“As thou art to this hour was Richard then… And even as I was then is Percy now”.79
Henry’s observation about the cyclical nature of the role of king and usurper is complicated by his placing Hal in the position of king, as Richard. In regards to Hotspur’s rebellion it is Henry himself who should hold Richard’s former position, who should mirror the king. I have made my case for Henry becoming more and more Richard during his own kingship, complicating his role
78 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 4.5.183-90 79 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 3.2.97-9
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as usurper and his identity as Henry Bolingbroke. Why then does Henry place Richard’s essence in Hal? Hal’s inheritance of Richard’s essence, of his belief in the divine right of kings, distinctly separates him from his father. While Henry can never embody Richard’s ideology he desperately seeks it for his son. Usurpation, a blight on Henry’s rule, changes the very meaning of kingship for Hal. While all three kings seek to fully embody the true essence of kingship none truly succeed.
At the time this line is spoken Henry has all but lost faith in his son’s ability to act as a proper prince or future king, “My young Harry. O, that it could be proved that come night tripping fairy had exchanged in cradle-clothes our children where they lay and called mine
‘Percy’ and his ‘Plantagenet’”.80 By equating Hal to Richard, Henry is passing judgment on his son just as he did on the former king. Hal too seems to have given his ear to the whispers of flatterers and fools; Falstaff’s undue influence over Hal as seen from the king’s perspective is more than worrisome and directly reminiscent of Richard’s fall, “a thousand flatterers sit within thy crown”.81 Though I maintain that Hal does become more like Richard, or more appropriately that he was always like Richard, in this instance Henry attributes Richard’s qualities to Hal inaccurately. One cannot blame Henry for this misattribution since Hal has intentionally misled all those around him as to his true nature. Instead of mirroring the former king in the qualities of his fall, Hal has appropriated Richard’s philosophy of kingship. The imagery of the sun that
Richard so often called upon as a comparison to his kingly persona becomes the essence of Hal’s identity: “Yet herein will I imitate the sun, who doth permit the base contagious clouds to
80 Ibid. 85-8 81 Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare: Richard II 2.1.100
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smother up his beauty from the world, that, when he please again to be himself, being wanted, he may be more wondered at”.82
The shadow of usurpation hangs over Henry’s reign from its inception and extends past his death. Richard, the last true Plantagenet, came from a pure and unbroken line of legitimacy.
Henry breaks this line and with that break loses that claim to a legitimate rule. The usurpation necessarily doubles the king; in that crowning moment Henry is both a true crowned king and a king who has seized the throne through usurpation. Henry must then juggle this doubling with the already intrinsic doubling of the king’s two bodies. Not only this but there exist two physical embodied kings, Richard and Henry in a single moment. The act of usurpation has effectively splintered the king into a multitude of persons, each with their own identity and degree of legitimacy. Henry is obsessed with the idea of legitimizing his reign, and thus reuniting his doubled person of true king and usurper. Ultimately his quest to legitimize his rule is unsuccessful in his own lifetime. As James Winny notes, “In Henry IV Bolingbroke offers an image of royalty which the action proves false by persistently questioning the attitudes he takes up; exposing his fraudulence by ironic parallels with other ambitious rebels, and making implicit the standards of genuine kingship which Bolingbroke cannot reach”.83 The rebellion against him is proof of his failure to remove the onus of usurper from his kingly self. His obsession with legitimacy is highly damaging to him as king, as father, and as man. The question of whether
Hal’s reign is legitimized through primogeniture has yet to be addressed. Though Henry desperately seeks to strengthen and legitimize his rule it is he, or more appropriately the Henry
Bolingbroke of the past, that dooms his reign to insurrection and delegitimacy.
82 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 1.2.204-8 83 Winny177
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In Henry’s quest for rightful kingship he too unkings himself. Unlike Richard, who seems to willingly hand over his crown, Henry desperately holds onto his crown but at the same time thrusts it prematurely onto Hal. This causes an internal conflict, all at once Henry knows that because he is incapable of self-legitimization he must give his son the crown but at the same time he does not want to end his hard won kingship. “God knows, my son, by what bypaths and indirect crooked ways I met this crown and I myself know well how troublesome is sat upon my head. To thee it shall descend with better quiet, better opinion, better confirmation for all the soil of the achievement goes with me into the earth”.84 Hal’s confusion, his willingness to take the crown before it is even rightfully his, and his shame at unintentionally attempting to usurp his father, though Hal believes it to be Henry’s deathbed, “O dear father, pay thee plenteously. My due from thee is this imperial crown, which as immediate from thy place and blood derives itself to me. [Puts on crown.] Lo, where it sits, which God shall guard. And put the word’s whole strength into one giant arm, it shall not force this lineal honor from me. This from thee will I mine leave, as ‘tis left to me”.85 This show that Henry’s lack of clarity on this issue is prematurely affecting his son’s ability to rightfully rule. Once again, Henry’s double nature as usurper and king wars for dominance over his decisions. Even his desire to strengthen the legitimacy of his reign by passing the crown to Hal may be misplaced. If Henry is not legitimate in his own right then his ability to pass down the crown is compromised. One could argue that
Hal and all the kings originating from Henry’s line stretching into perpetuity are illegitimate.
If neither Henry IV nor Henry V, and therefore their whole successive line, are true kings then one is left to question what must constitute true kingship, and whether we are willing to commit ourselves to this definition or else commit to a definition that allows the usurper to be a
84 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 4.5.183-90 85 Ibid. 4.5.39-45
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true king. In light of the concept of the king’s two bodies, and the importance that it places on the office of the king versus the heavenly right of the king, the king is necessarily the person who holds the office of king. Yet according to this same theory the right to claim the kingship must be based on divine right and that this ruler is, through divine right, connected to and chosen by God.
What then does this theory make of usurpation? On the one hand the usurper is rightfully king by virtue of holding the office of king, but on the other the usurper can never be rightful on the basis of divine right. Being king by virtue of holding the office is simply the more practically accepted version of kingship in regards to politics and how the king interacts with his subjects. If one then disregards divine right the problem of usurpation disappears, but so too does the king’s two bodies. There also remains the problem of how the usurper views himself. Henry does not regard himself as a fully rightful king, as evidenced by his behavior and efforts to legitimize his reign.
The more he attempts to legitimize himself the more he proves his illegitimacy. He states, “I know not whether God will have it so for some displeasing service I have done that, in His secret doom, out of my blood he’ll breed revengement and a scourge for me”.86 The only way to escape the cycle of proving his delegitimacy through self-legitimization would be to stop his attempts and accept his legitimacy as is. This is of course impossible as he is not truly legitimate in the way he wishes to be and thus he is forever trapped in this cycle. As the king’s two bodies has been shown to be a legitimate conception of kingship through Richard’s fall and double death it must be concluded that true legitimate kings possess this double body. Therefore Henry, Hal and all their progeny are kings in the practical political sense but not but not in the heavenly sense.
This complication of the definition of kingship and the realization that the usurper can never fulfill the theory of kingship found in the king’s two bodies forces one to reconsider
86 Ibid. 3.2.5-8
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whether Henry and Hal’s kingships are affected by their illegitimacy. As was stated above Hal seems able to escape the onus of illegitimacy where his father is crushed beneath it. The only true differences in their legitimacy fall under two categories: self perception and perception of the people. Henry does not view himself as being entirely legitimate and his guilt over killing
Richard follows him throughout his kingship. Hal, by comparison, is staunchly confident in his right to rule. “Bolingbroke’s son has no need to strain after the identity counterfeited by his father, for he is king by right both of due inheritance and of natural authority”.87 His confidence may be misplaced, as the right of his inheritance is shaky at best. In the shallowest sense he of course inherits the crown from his father but that does not make it his right. However, if not his right then whose? There is no one with more right than Hal and thus this may be the source of his confidence, a technicality instead of a fact of right. This difference in confidence is clear from the way in which Hal appropriates Richard’s analogy to the sun. The sun analogy that Hal is fond of invoking in reference to himself is a direct harkening back to Richard’s usage of it but it is not the same in its essence. Richard truly believes in his status as rightful holder of the everlasting office of king. Hal by comparison appropriates the metaphor in such a way that the sun is less constant, less powerful to determine its own destiny. Hal believes he can use the sun, his status as the sun, to manipulate popular opinion whereas Richard was never concerned with such a thing; Richard embodied the sun whether it benefitted him or not and did not do so for the benefit of his reign. In Richard it was an intrinsic quality while in Hal it is a costume worn to fulfill a role.
Henry not once appropriates the sun analogy in his time as king. He comes close once when describing how he enthralled the people, “By being seldom seen, I could not stir but like a
87 Winny 195
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comet I was wondered at, that men would tell their children 'This is he'”.88 The parallels to how his son uses Richard’s analogy are clear; it is a mode for political gain not an intrinsic quality.
Henry’s conception of his own kingship, though more detrimental to his reign, is more accurate than his son’s. Henry has none of Hal’s possibly misplaced confidence and is more highly and realistically aware of the shortcomings of his right and authority. Though this harms his legitimacy in court, with the people, and to himself it is nonetheless more seated in reality.
Through his struggle to legitimize himself and his son, Henry gains insights into how best to maintain an unruly and distrustful kingdom, “Therefore my Harry, be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days. More would I, but my lungs are wasted so that strength of speech is utterly denied me.
How came I by the crown, O God forgive and grant with thee in true peace live!”89 Hal’s use of these tactics show not only how he has been granted the leniency from his citizens and nobility to engage in foreign wars instead of civil ones but also Hal’s recognition of the fragility of his position.
Unlike Richard’s staunch surety in his divine right to rule Hal’s surety is complicated by his father’s status as the usurper king, “My gracious liege, you won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me. Then plain and right must my possession be, which I with more than with a common pain
‘gainst all the world will rightfully maintain”.90 If his father lacks the right to rule so too must
Hal. Instead of entertaining this possibility outwardly, Hal fully devotes himself to the narrative of divine right. As Hal transitions from prince to king the gravity of usurpation and birthright comes to a head. Henry V enjoys a kingship unmarred by the civil rebellion that plagued his
88 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 3.2.48-50 89 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 4.5.212-9 90 Ibid. 4.5.220-4
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father and Richard. However, the relative peace of Hal’s reign leaves one with the question of whether Hal has become a legitimate king. Henry never truly achieves the legitimacy he craves but he, aware of his own failure to legitimize his kingship, thrusts the crown upon Hal and it would appear from the general love and acceptance of Hal’s kingship that this plan of legitimization is successful. Hal’s legitimacy, however, may be nothing more than a technicality of time’s passage. It follows that Hal cannot be legitimate if Henry was not legitimate. Under the divine right of kings, which Hal ascribes to with an almost holy devotion, Henry, and therefore
Hal, can never be a legitimate king. Hal is caught between two warring ideologies, one that delegitimizes his kingship while being necessary for his authority as king and the other that weakens his authority while legitimizing his rule.
Though Hal is aware of his position’s tenuousness he does not view that tenuousness as stemming solely from delegitimacy. The king is vulnerable by virtue of his position regardless of who occupies the office and Hal is aware of this. He outwardly denies the other form of vulnerability his kingship is threatened by: illegitimate rule. Winny notes, “Shakespeare gives him no reason to look into the legality of his title to a throne which should be occupied by
Edward Mortimer”.91 In Hal’s first appearance as king he wastes no time invoking kingly authority, using the royal we, and distancing himself from his past self. This brief glimpse of the new king at the end of Henry IV pt. 2 allows us to form expectations for the king in Henry V.
King Henry V is much transformed from his younger counterpart in the previous plays. Where there was a prince consumed by self-image now stands a king fully come into his own. This self- staging is the paradox of Hal, he both seems to lack a genuine self or at least his genuine self is inaccessible to his audience while also revealing his true nature through soliloquy. He is
91 Winny 178
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confident in his ability to lead his people into battle and to pursue the glory of England in his name: “The game's afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'”92 Once again one hears the voice of Richard, of divine right. Winny notes,
“Where Richard II and Bolingbroke struggle to possess the royal identity which neither adequately fills, Henry V is allowed to capture this elusive reality; only to discover that its premises of spiritual authority are suspect”.93 Henry V distinctly lacks the introspective qualities of his father, Richard, or even his past self. He is more divided that even his father, who truly existed as two distinct and incompatible versions of himself. Where once he masterfully manipulated Falstaff, his father, and the British people into believing only the version of himself he wanted them to see, Henry V now seems to lack this ability. Motivational leadership has replaced introspection.
Hal is accepted as the rightful king of England by the king of France, even being allowed to marry the French king’s daughter Katherine. This allowance is the ultimate form of recognition of legitimacy. After this moment Hal is recognized by every earthly power needed to legitimize his rule. As was stated before he can never attain heavenly recognition but this seems a non-issue for the success of his reign and successive line. Even though he cannot truly possess the divine right of kings stemming from God’s authority Hal does not stop this from invoking that authority: “He wills you in the name of God Almighty that you divest yourself and lay apart the borrowed glories that by gift of heaven, by law of nature and of nations, longs to him and to his heirs, namely the crown and all wide-stretched honors that pertain by custom and ordinance of times unto the crown of France”.94 Hal’s self assurance and his belief that the disputed lands
92 Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry V 3.1.33-5 93 Winny 191 94 Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry V 2.4.77-84
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are his by right reflect the way he reigns. His shift in self-assurance and his ability to follow through on his words show a distinct difference from both his father and Richard’s version of kingship. Winny notes,
Richard’s failure to assume more than the majestic appearance of kingship does not
discredit the reality of the role he wishes to play: his own weaknesses as a man, and not
some insubstantiality in the conception of kingly majesty and power, brings about the
collapse of his unconscious imposture. In Henry V Shakespeare suggests an almost
opposite state of affairs. The king possesses all the qualities of sovereignty, both natural
and acquired; his legitimacy is not in doubt, he has an exemplary respect for justice, and
is well loved by his subjects.95
This recounting of the kingly authority possessed by Richard and Henry V may be too simplistic.
Though Richard is a weaker king than Henry V he does more than assume the appearance of kingly majesty. He is kingly majesty. By virtue of his true undisputed and heaven ordained kingship he embodies exactly what it is to be the king in a way that is impossible for Henry V or his father. It is, however, true that Henry V’s kingship is not in doubt. As Winny claims Henry V is able to achieve a level of legitimacy amongst the people that his father and Richard, as evidenced by the rebellions against them, were unable to achieve.
Henry is clearly able to see the parallels between his son and Richard, himself and Percy during Hotspur’s rebellion despite the fact that Hotspur is rebelling against Henry and not Hal.
Henry embodies Richard’s shortcomings as king, the qualities that lead to his own rebellion, while also struggling to embrace Richard’s ideology. Hal mirrors Richard in a way Henry never achieves; Hal shares Richard’s ideology, his belief in his right to rule, and his ability to embody
95 Winny 213
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the divinity of kingship regardless of whether he truly deserves it. Percy by comparison mirrors
Bolingbroke’s devotion to justice, his staunch commitment to the honor of his family, and his resolve to grab at the throne regardless of birthright. Each character then grows out of their foundations, each in a way reflecting each other and reflecting Richard most of all.
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Chapter 3
3.1 Is it Really Recycling?
Confusion of the self, of the boundaries of the self, is a central concern for the kings.
Richard acts as the origin for the archetype embodied, or imitated, by the later kings. Each in turn cyclically recreates Richard, his vices, his fall, his deposition, or they recreate Bolingbroke, his rise, his opposition, and his transformation. A counter argument to the recycling of Richard and Bolingbroke’s characters and traits would be to claim that the office of kingship is the sole mode by which the characters change. In short, it is not that the personality or character of
Richard has been recycled but simply that becoming king requires one to move more towards
Richard’s conception of self and kingship. This objection has the support of the fact that neither
Henry nor Hal is fully Richard; though they move steadily towards becoming him they never arrive at this end. However, the claim that Richard has been recycled does not require that he be wholly transferred into Henry and Hal. It only requires that Richard, even in parts, appear in the characters of Henry and Hal where there had previously been no trace of him, and that this appearance be brought on by kingship defined by the relation between identities instead of as a byproduct of attaining kingship. I have shown various ways Henry and Hal become more and more Richard and now will illustrate that this is not solely a product of attaining kingship.
While the change wrought in Henry Bolingbroke is still involved with kingship, and the changes kingship itself has undergone moving from divine to mortal, it is also a product of
Shakespeare forcibly inserting the change regardless of prior opinions or established personality traits. This insertion on the author’s part is connected to the changes kingship has undergone and is used to highlight how Henry’s conception of kingship is forced to mold to these changes, which he himself has caused. Henry would have embraced the divine right of kings earlier and
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more fully had the change been a natural product of changes in station. It is not the moment of attaining kingship, or even the moment of realization of impending kingship, that marks the change of personhood. Henry, following the deposition, is still very much Bolingbroke, not yet
Henry IV and most certainly lacking the Richard-like qualities he later possesses. Hal embodies
Richard’s qualities before he is king and before he fully embraces his status as prince. Kingship is not the sole mode by which Henry and Hal experience changes leading them to mirror
Richard, though it does undoubtedly influence these changes to a degree. It is simply the connective tissue by which the three share an identity. Central to my claim that Richard has been recycled is the proof that the parts of Hal and Henry that resemble and become like Richard arise independently of traits originally possessed by them. The Richard-like traits emerge from sources external to Hal and Henry, arising from the already established personalities and motivations observed in the king and prince. I argue that this is exactly the case especially in regards to Henry. Henry becomes more like Richard, embodying Richard, in regards to his view on kingship, legitimacy, and the divine right of kings. Prior to the appearance of these opinions there is nothing in his character to indicate that he may come to hold these views. In fact
Bolingbroke’s worldview directly contradicts these later opinions. While his accession to the throne plays a part the shift in opinion is simply too drastic to have been organically occurring.
Perhaps the most obvious instance of recycling takes place in the rebellion against Henry
IV. Henry observes that Hotspur is as he once was and though he equates Hal, not himself, to
Richard, his willingness to compare Hotspur to his past self indicates an awareness of the similarities in their rebellions. Hotspur as a mirror to Bolingbroke lacks the inner complexity of the Richard mirroring, but it is nonetheless significant. Shakespeare is making this instance of recycling as obvious as possible so as to highlight the other more subtle instances as well as to
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provoke a serious commentary on the changes Bolingbroke has gone through since becoming king. No longer can Henry claim to be the righteous rebel fighting for the good of justice and
England; that position is now occupied by another and he has been relegated to the position of lackluster king. Though Hotspur’s rebellion fails where Bolingbroke’s succeeded it is no less valid in its grievances. Both Hotspur and Bolingbroke feel that a breech of justice has occurred due to the king overreaching his authority and in their quests to right the personal family wrongs done to them both are willing to overthrow the king if necessary though that was never the original intention when they attempted to rectify their grievances. This is a direct recycling of both the plot device and character motivations that drove Bolingbroke throughout all of Richard
II. To have those motivations thrown back in Henry’s face is the ultimate commentary on how changed the king is from his former self and a cue to the audience to not expect Bolingbroke’s former self to have survived the shift from usurper to king.
Bolingbroke’s rebellion is entirely dependent on his rejection of the divine right of kings; if he were to accept divine right he would have no authority to remove Richard. Bolingbroke’s staunch refusal to accept divine right does not come across as disingenuous. One of
Bolingbroke’s key personality traits is his unflagging belief in his right to take the kingship. It is not merely a byproduct of some less noble trait such as greed or megalomania. Therefore one can clearly see that Bolingbroke could not and did not support divine right and in fact actively embraced its exact opposite. When he later embraces divine right it is in such a way that it completely disregards his previous rejection of it. If this new embracing of divine right were the product of kingship he would have been able to maintain some vestiges of his previous worldview, at least in private. Yet, even in his most private moments while talking to Hal or on his deathbed, he never once entertains the idea that Hotspur’s rebellion may have a valid claim to
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the throne. Even when he conflates Hal with Richard and Hotspur with his younger self it is not a validation or acknowledgment that his and Hotspur’s rebellions arise from the same place; if he were acknowledging that fact he would have cast himself and not Hal as Richard. By leaving himself out of the comparison, though he is king and Hotspur is rebelling against him and not his son, he illustrates how far he has taken his belief in his right to rule. It exceeds the scope of an opinion change. It is as if he cannot remember what it was to be in Hotspur’s shoes, what it was to not believe in divine right as the definitive view of kingship. It is not an organic shift and so it must come from a source external to his self or his experiences. It is not simply that he adopts
Richard’s view of kingship and right but that he embodies it, and in that embodiment loses his former self.
The comparison of Hal to Richard is easier to comprehend as Henry points out that his son has mirrored the former king in the worst possible ways: his willingness to be influenced by low flatterers, his poor image with the nobility at court, his disinterest in the crown and the responsibilities of being king. However, the same counterargument that could have applied to
Henry can be made for Hal…is his mirroring of Richard also a product of his princely and then kingly status? During his time as a debauched prince Hal mirrors Richard but Hal also mirrors
Richard following his assentation to the throne; Hal undergoes a major transformation of self that leaves Henry V almost unrecognizable from Hal and thus the way he mirrors Richard changes as well. Hal is shown to hold the divine right of kings as the definitive view on kingship from the beginning of Henry IV pt. 1. His analogy of the king as sun is a perfect appropriation of
Richard’s language. Though this may be more performative and less genuine than Richard’s usage of the analogy. He then must embody Richard in ways different from his father. Though
Henry’s conflation of his son and the deposed king is not fully informed, as Hal has been
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misleading his father as to his true intentions, he is closer to the truth of his son’s faults than he may know. Henry, directly comparing Richard to his son, states, “The skipping king, he ambled up and down with shallow jesters and rash bavin wits soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state, mingled his royalty with capering fools, had his great name profaned with their scorns…grew a companion to the common streets enfeoffed himself to popularity”.96 Hal, though not quite as awful as his father thinks him to be, is not the prince so wholly opposite from his low persona that he believes himself to be; he allows Falstaff to influence him, his poor reputation is the product of poor decisions, and as he has been separated from court and spends all his time in taverns. He cannot claim to be informed as to the responsibilities of the crown. In this way he fully resembles Richard’s lack of kingly responsibility. Later as Henry V, however, he dismisses all these vices as if he were a completely different person. Though this transformation is intentional, if we take his soliloquys to be genuine reflections of his intentions, it is far from organic or even plausible. Henry V is so wholly different from Hal that it is questionable whether Shakespeare was even writing the same character from one play to the next. Yet, even as Hal completely transforms into Henry V, he still resembles Richard.
His resemblance to Richard changes in scope but does not change in degree. Henry V fully embodies Richard’s view of the supremacy of the king as well as his view that he is the fully legitimate king. This second point is something that Henry V’s younger counterpart and his father struggled to embrace. Henry IV notably failed to legitimize his reign in the terms of
Richard’s philosophy. As was explored in the previous chapter of this thesis, Hal, though the terms by which he embraces his legitimacy are unstable in regards to how much he truly believes the narrative he endorses, does outwardly reap the benefits of a fully legitimized kingship: he is
96 Shakespeare, The History of Henry IV Part 1, 3.2.61-71
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recognized as the true king by the people and by other governments. Hal is aware of the disconnect between his true legitimacy and the narrative he advances, but the older Henry V seems completely unconcerned or even oblivious to this disconnect. Henry V interacts with his kingship in the way an entirely legitimate king would, and because he is accepted as such it is only in the metaphysical argument about kingship that he is any less legitimate than Richard; kingship has now become signs of kingship because the divinity of the office has been lost and it’s legitimacy is now wholly dependent on public approval and kingly power of rule. While this is an important distinction for this thesis and for the discussion of kingship it does not have great bearing on the cohesiveness of Henry’s change in viewpoint. In this way the older Henry is more in line with Richard’s viewpoint. One must then examine whether the older Henry’s new stance on legitimacy can have organically arisen from his previous view. As the two views are diametrically opposed and could not exist at the same time in the same person without causing illogical contradiction it must be concluded that if the latter view, that of a fully legitimate king, arose organically the former, that of a king in need of legitimization, needed to be entirely abandoned first. If this were to have happened it would have had to occur in the time unseen between Henry IV pt. 2 and Henry V.
As I stated above Hal is completely transformed into an almost unrecognizable character in that time. Bernard Paris notes, “There are debates about whether Henry is the same person as
Hal or an entirely new character, about whether he is realistically drawn or a cardboard figure…”97 To claim that this shift is then naturally occurring or a product of experience seems disingenuous to how characters grow. If Shakespeare changed Hal’s character so drastically it is more than plausible that he inserted the Richard originated viewpoint of fully legitimate
97 Paris (1991), 91
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kingship. If the opinion were to have been naturally arising it would require that Henry completely disregard or forget all of his former misgivings. As that would require a sort of amnesia one must conclude that the shift from Hal to Henry V took with it, along with many of
Hal’s other traits, the vices that resembled Richard as well as Hal’s misgivings about his own legitimacy. In their place Henry V has been left with a staunch view of his own kingship that could not have arisen from his previous opinion free of all misgivings. Whether this is the view he should take or whether it is a valid view is not the question. Richard, found twice in the same character, is erased from and subsequently rewritten into Henry V. This doubling of the character in a single person perfectly illustrates my earlier claim that Richard does not need to be wholly recycled in order to be found in Henry IV and Hal. Two distinct parts of him appear in Hal and
Henry V and yet both maintain the recycled quality of the character and allow for readers to harken back to the source when confronted with those same opinions and vices in the later prince and king.
3.2 Conclusion
I have illustrated how Henry, Hal, and Hotspur are caught in a doubling of the narrative as well as a mirroring of Richard and Bolingbroke long after those characters cease to exist. By showing that the changes in opinion, vice, and personality wrought on the characters of Hal and
Henry could not possibly have happened as a product of experience or the natural progression of opinion, one is led to conclude that Shakespeare has recycled the characters of Richard and
Bolingbroke. The implications of this recycling are that Hal and Henry are not able to remain fully themselves once they become king and that to fill the gaps created in their personalities pieces of Richard are inserted to coherently fill the gaps left by the changes wrought by kingship.
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The recycling allows one to focus on the intrinsic differences the characters and narrative display following the established qualities seen in Richard II by highlighting the similarities found in the mirrored aspects of that same narrative. The king’s, all containing aspects of their predecessors, are doubled over and over within themselves and by highlighting their similarities we are made acutely aware of their differences.
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