Rocco D’Ambrosca: 10/05/2007
The Middle Ages were the time of kings. The kings were absolute monarchs who ruled over their lands with an iron fist answering to no one but possibly the Pope. Kingship was passed from father to son generation by generation unless disrupted by international or civil war. In the case of Henry IV, he gained power through a bloody and brutal civil war and now his son young Harry awaited the crown. The views of kingship between the two of them couldn’t be any different. It is King Henry’s view that a king should rule in isolation from his people to gain respect and authority, while it is Harry’s view that by spending time with the commoners, to the detest of his father, he will lower the kingdom’s expectations as well as gain insight into the English people for when he will serve them as king.
King Henry’s theory of kingship is rightfully based on his own life experience. King Henry tells Harry that you must limit the amount that the people see you to maintain deep respect and reverence. King Henry says that you need to limit your appearances so that when they do see you they are blown away by your presence and honored to have just laid eyes on you. King Henry said:
Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap to vulgar company,
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,
Had still kept loyal to possession
And left me in reputeless banishment,
A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.
By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wondered at;
That men would tell their children
“This is he.” Others would say
“Where? Which is Bolingbroke?” (3,2,39-49)
King Henry says that mingling with the people was King Richard’s downfall and is what allowed him to take the throne from Richard as they were sick of seeing him and no longer revered him. King Henry said:
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 cap’ring fools,
Had his great name profanèd with their scorns,
And gave his countenance, against his name,
To laugh at gibing boys and stand the push
Of every beardless vain comparative;
Grew a companion to the common streets,
Enfeoffed himself to popularity,
That, being daily swallowed by men’s eyes,
They surfeited with honey and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.
So, when he had occasion to be seen, ” (3,2,60-74)
King Henry continues to stress in the importance of limiting your appearance to the people saying that Richard’s continued appearances made him as common as bird in the summer saying, “He was but as the cuckoo is in June, / Heard, not regarded” (3,2,75-76). The continued appearances just made them ignore him because of his boring regularity that dumbed down the majestic image of divinity that a king must have according to King Henry.
The first part of Prince Harry’s theory of kingship is very much a calculated gamble on his supposed “acting” foolishly and immature in his youth to gain respect later as an adult when he makes this triumphant reemergence as a mature and respectful king. When Poins questions Prince Harry spending time with Falstaff and the other drunkards, he responds with his grand plan saying in soliloquy:
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humor of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mist
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work,
But when they seldom come,
they wished for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promisèd,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will. (1,2,165-187)
Hanging with these commoners has only been a deep dark fog to obscure his true inner light that he will let permeate through this fog when he redeems himself later. When Prince Harry emerges from this fog the kingdoms expectations will have been so low that this new diligent mature King Harry will get the greatest praise as they all relish in his new found glory as they reflect on his wild youth.
The second part of Prince Harry’s theory of Kingship is getting to know the people as a youth so that he can better serve them when he becomes king. Prince Harry is very much doing what modern day presidential candidates do when they campaign. The candidates go out making appearances at public places, taking pictures with people, shaking hands, and talking with people to appear down to earth and just a regular average Joe to gain the publics favor. Harry does this very well, spending ample time with Falstaff and the others in the tavern. In another conversation with Poins, Prince Harry brags of how close he has gotten with the common men of the tavern saying:
They take it already upon their salvation that though I be but
Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy,
and tell me flatly am no proud jack,
like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a lad
of mettle, a good boy—by the Lord,
so they call me—and when I am King of England,
I shall command all the good
lads in Eastcheap.
They call drinking deep “dyeing scarlet,”
and when you breathe in your watering,
they cry “Hem!” and bid you “Play it off!” (4,1,8-15)
This ability to drink in the company of average men and have lively and humorous conversation greatly increases Harry’s image as a good humble down to earth guy among the people of the tavern. Harry also now has a better idea of the people he will be ruling by getting in the mix with them in an intimate party type setting.
King Henry’s practice of kingship has lead to a revolt against him. When King Henry was younger he got much help from Northumberland, Worcester, and Hotspur to become king as told by Hotspur:
My father and my uncle and myself
Did give him that same royalty he wears,
And when he was not six-and-twenty strong,
Sick in the world’s regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,
My father gave him welcome to the shore;
And when he heard him swear and vow to God
He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,
To sue his livery, and beg his peace,
With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,
My father, in kind heart and pity moved,
Swore him assistance and performed it too.
Now when the lords and barons of the realm
Perceived Northumberland did lean to him,
The more and less came in with cap and knee,
Met him in boroughs, cities, villages,
Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,
Laid gifts before him, proffered him their oaths,
Gave him their heirs as pages, followed him
Even at the heels in golden multitudes.
He presently, as greatness knows itself,
Steps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father while his blood was poor
Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh,
And now forsooth takes on him to reform
Some certain edicts and some strait decrees
That lie too heavy on the commonwealth,
Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep
Over his country’s wrongs, and by this face,
This seeming brow of justice, did he win
The hearts of all that he did angle for,
Proceeded further—cut me off the heads
Of all the favourites that the absent King
In deputation left behind him here
When he was personal in the Irish war. (4,3,55-90)
In short time after, he deposed the King,
Soon after that deprived him of his life
And, in the neck of that, tasked the whole state.
To make that worse, suffered his kinsman March
(Who is, if every owner were well placed, Indeed his king)
to be engaged in Wales,
There without ransom to lie forfeited,
Disgraced me in my happy victories,
Sought to entrap me by intelligence,
Rated mine uncle from the council board,
In rage dismissed my father from the court,
Broke oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong,
And in conclusion drove us to seek out
This head of safety, and withal to pry
Into his title, the which we find
Too indirect for long continuance. (4,3,92-107)
King Henry’s lies to the Percy family of his intentions of going back to England on top of his imprisonment and banishment of the true heir Mortimer are horrible moral atrocities. But, don’t even compare to how after all of the bloodshed for his own greed he then kicks out all of the Percy family from the kingdom and gives them no payment or patronage in thanks. He just used the Percy’s for his own gain and has now brought another civil war to his lands. Furthermore his kingship theory of distancing himself from the people has aggravated the situation even more so with Worcester saying:
And ’tis no little reason bids us speed
To save our heads by raising of a head,
For, bear ourselves as even as we can,
The King will always think him in our debt,
And think we think ourselves unsatisfied,
Till he hath found a time to pay us home.
And see already how he doth begin
To make us strangers to his looks of love. (1,3,279-286)
This distance to them appears to be a shunning of them and possible fear of retaliation which makes them feel they are even more justified in their revolt because of the guilt they perceive on his part.
Prince Harry’s practice of kingship correlates very well with his theory and overall plan. Harry has already gained the love of the common people at the bar through his patronage there and as stated above told Poins how well he gets along with them. Harry has also already lowered the nobles view of him, especially his father who right at the beginning of the play wishes Hotspur was his son instead of Harry saying:
In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son, 80
A son who is the theme of Honor’s tongue,
Amongst a grove the very straightest plant,
Who is sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride;
Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,
See riot and dishonor stain the brow 85
Of my young Harry. O, that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And called mine “Percy,” his “Plantagenet”!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine. (1,1,77-89)
King Henry again berates his son directly saying that he has brought shame to his name, lost his place on the council, and has gained the reputation of a failure:
Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost,
Which by thy younger brother is supplied,
And art almost an alien to the hearts
Of all the court and princes of my blood.
The hope and expectation of thy time
Is ruined, and the soul of every man
Prophetically doth forethink thy fall. (3,2,32-38)
Even Falstaff comments on the nobles opinion of him saying, “An old lord of the council rated me the other day in the street about you” (1,1,73-74). However, this negative view of Prince Harry like he said is just an act which Harry proves towards the end of the play when he becomes the prince he is meant to be.
When the war begins, Prince Harry’s public image starts to change. Vernon reports back to the rebels that Prince Harry looks like the Roman god Mercury saying to Hotspur:
All furnished, all in arms,
All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed,
Glittering in golden coats like images,
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer,
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly armed
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropped down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship. (4,1,97-110)
Apparently to Vernon, Prince Harry is no longer a foolish little boy and is starting to let his light shine through. The next huge action on Prince Harry’s part to gain him honor is his saving of his father in battle from Douglas who runs off leaving his father to commend him greatly saying:
Stay, and breathe awhile.
Thou hast redeemed thy lost opinion
And showed thou mak’st some tender of my life
In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me. (5,4,46-49)
After Prince Harry gains the ultimate glory he has been seeking when he killed Hotspur in battle he pays honor to his brother at the end of the battle instead of taking it all for himself like Hotspur, or neglecting to share the wealth like his father. Harry lets his brother take Douglas as a bounty saying:
Then, brother John of Lancaster, to you
This honorable bounty shall belong.
Go to the Douglas, and deliver him
Up to his pleasure, ransomless and free.
His valor shown upon our crests today
Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds,
Even in the bosom of our adversaries. (5,5,25-31)
Prince Harry completely lives up to his theory of kingship in his practice.
It is King Henry’s view that a king should rule in isolation from his people to gain respect and authority, while it is Harry’s view that by spending time with the commoners, to the detest of his father, he will lower the kingdom’s expectations as well as gain insight into the English people for when he will serve them as king. Being king is a huge responsibility and can be hazardous without a philosophy to live by. Some kings are better than others because of their philosophy. But the best kings are the ones who actually follow their philosophy.
Works Cited:
Shakespeare, William. Henry IV P1. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997, 1157-1222.
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