Valerie McLean ENGL 4165 Prof. Radcliff 11/10/15 The Power of People: Democracy and Machiavellianism in the Henriad Democracy in England has always held a peculiar place. By the time that Shakespeare started writing plays, England had officially been a Constitutional Monarchy for almost 400 years. Compared to the Magna Carta, the ink on the Declaration of Independence isn’t even dry. That being said, democracy in England was a gradual build over a period of time, slowly moving power from the king to the House of Lords to the House of Commons. English America started off a democracy with Jamestown’s General Assembly, and has pretty much stayed that way ever since. But that does not mean that democracy isn’t as important in England as it is in America, and even during Tudor England, the reigning monarch was still beholden to Parliament. Not as much as today, certainly, but it was still there. And Shakespeare would have understood this— even though Elizabeth I typically held more power than Parliament during her reign, England still had a sense of what democracy was about. The Oxford English Dictionary defines democracy as “Government by the people… a form of society in which all citizens have equal rights, ignoring hereditary distinctions of class or rank, and the views of all are tolerated and respected; the principle of fair and equal treatment of everyone in a state, institution, organization, etc.”. This is not how most would define Tudor England, unless you severely limited the definitions of words like “person” and “citizen”. However, during the Renaissance, new ideas about government were starting to form, courtesy of political scientists like Niccolo Machiavelli and philosophers like Sir Francis Bacon. Machiavelli in particular was embraced by burgeoning republicans, and became the foundation for political modernity, which produced many Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu and John Locke. Shakespeare picked up on Machiavelli’s ideas as well, and thoroughly explored them in the Henriad, a word which here means “a series of four plays dealing with the rise of Henry IV to the throne and his succession by Henry V, his son”. Shakespeare applied Machiavelli’s ideas in terms of kings, because at the time monarchs were pretty much the only heads of state (Italy notwithstanding), and asked the question “What makes a good leader?” throughout the cycle. Most of the people viewing his plays, if asked this question, would probably have answered “The Queen. Queen Elizabeth makes a good leader”, but at the time of writing the Henriad, Queen Elizabeth had yet to announce an heir, and was rapidly declining. Her death in 1603 would mark the end of the Tudor line and bring the Stuarts of Scotland down into England in the form of King James I. In response to an uncertain future, the Henriad looks at three monarchs that become catalysts of one of England’s most violent conflicts, the Wars of the Roses. He had already written about these wars in an earlier cycle, but the reason for these wars and the context for them are laid out in the Henriad, due to Henry IV’s possibly illegitimate ascension to the throne. The contention is such that after Henry IV dies, Hal is left with the position of legitimizing the throne once again. Up to even the final lines of Henry V, it is left ambiguous as to whether or not he has. But a Machiavel does not need to rule by legitimacy, they rule by exploiting those around them, for good or for ill. So why does a Shakespearian king need to? After all, his most famous Machiavels (MacBeth, Richard III) were not successful kings, though they were successful at being Machiavellian, because they were illegitimate. Hal is arguably the most successful king of all of the history plays, and is also a Machiavel, and so what separates him from the others? Is his claim to England’s throne legitimate, let alone France’s? These are the questions Shakespeare asks of us, and given different backgrounds, different people have different answers. A Brief History of English Democracy The beginnings of English democracy are usually traced back to the Magna Carta, or “Great Charter”, which was signed in 1215 by King John, a king so unpopular that despite his name being the most common English name ever, there’s only been one of him. The Magna Carta itself is not a constitution like the US has, but it does guarantee some rights “TO ALL FREE MEN OF OUR KINGDOM [sic]”, that among these are life, liberty, and the ability to pass on debts from Jewish debtors without interest to surviving children “so long as he remains underage”. While some of the ideas are a bit out of date, there are some surviving ideas, like articles 28, 30, and 31, which protects from unlawful seizure of property and land, or article 39 which states that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned… except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land”. In fact, many of the more enduring ideas in the Magna Carta ended up in the US’s Bill of Rights. The beginnings of a monarchy limited by democracy come in in article 61, which details an election of 25 barons to act as a judiciary, which would become the first attempt to limit the king’s power. This did not work out quite as the barons had planned, and England became embroiled in civil war for some time. The origin of what we would now call the British Parliament were established during the reigns of Henry III and Edward I. Historian J.E.A. Jolliffe states that “In [Edward I’s] later years… parliament was a visible and omnipresent reality… though contemporaries had as yet no certain name for it.” Fast forward to Edward’s great-great grandson, King Richard II. It is to this day a controversial issue over whether or not the deposition of Richard was in fact a legal one, but the facts remain as such: after Henry Bolingbroke was banished and John of Gaunt died, Richard seized Gaunt’s lands and disinherited Henry, extending his banishment for life. Many nobles at this point decided to side with Bolingbroke, among them Henry Percy of Northumberland, Henry “Hotspur” of Northumberland, and Ralph Neville of Westmoreland. While Richard was in Ireland suppressing rebellion, Bolingbroke returned and the nobles forced Edmund of York to submit to them. By the time Richard returned to court, a Parliament had been called to “encourage” him to “voluntarily” abdicate. As B. Wilkinson points out, “Such a procedure was, and remained, outside the realm of fourteenth-century experience and ideas.” Wilkinson states that there could be an argument of precedent in the case of a similar deposition of Edward II, but that “…it may be questioned how far [Parliament] has as yet absorbed the representation of magnates and people in the time-honoured[sic] act of electing a new king.” Wilkinson ultimately argues against the idea that Henry IV was “elected” king by Parliament. In the beginning of Henry IV’s reign, there remains evidence that he worked closely with Parliament, particularly the Commons, including episodes where the Commons insisted that Henry’s advisors should be appointed by Parliament, much like members of the US Cabinet, which Henry conceded to. Fast forward again to Queen Elizabeth I’s first Parliament. In December of 1558, they appointed a committee “for consideracion[sic] of all thinges[sic] necessary for the parlyamente[sic]” with two ecclesiastical experts, as Elizabeth’s early reign was characterized by her sister’s counter-reformation in the reign prior. The House of Commons was working on a committee as well. Il Schifanoya, a Mantuan that witnessed Elizabeth’s coronation, noted that “There was great talk about giving the title of Supreme Head of the Anglican Church… to the queen.” There were many religious disagreements during Elizabeth’s early reign, but J.E. Neale argues that it eventually came to a compromise, “with the queen conceding the most”. Given that these are the early years of her reign, this would have characterized her relationship with Parliament throughout. That being said, she did not call Parliament very often, only around 13 times in her 44 year reign, and they never met for more than a few months at a time. The Cycle of Machiavels This is the context from which Shakespeare wrote the Henriad. Of course, he also took a lot of inspiration from Machiavelli. Machiavelli is interesting, because while he wrote on a character that he called a prince, his works were readily embraced by the rising republican movement throughout Europe. Nevertheless, Shakespeare patterned many of his more famous literary kings after Machiavelli’s philosophy, including Henry IV and Henry V (who will be called Bolingbroke and Hal respectively when referring to Shakespeare’s texts). In Richard II, he introduces the audience to two sorts of leaders, a Romantic leader in the form of Richard, and a Machiavel in the form of Bolingbroke. Throughout the play, Richard is convinced that he is the one true king, and is secure via Divine Right, as seen in this passage from act 3: “Not all the water in the rough rude sea/Can wash the balm from an anointed king./The breath of worldly men cannot depose/The deputy elected by the Lord” (Richard II, 3.2.50-54). He says this after he hears that Bolingbroke has returned to England and is staging a rebellion against him. His only hope left at this point is that his right to rule is secure, which he soon abandons when he hears just how many of the people are rising up against him.