William Shakespeare-chronicle Plays 2f61t

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE The Chronicle Plays/ Histories Shakespeare’s Chronicle Plays After having tried his hand at an imitation of Roman comedy (The Comedy of Errors) and of a Roman tragedy (Titus Andronicus), William Shakespeare turned to the composition of this type of drama that had no classical prototype, but which held a particular fascination for the English public in the 1590s and helped create a sense of a collective national memory. The first tetralogy: dealing with the Wars of the Roses: the three parts of Henry VI (c. 1589-1591) and Richard III (c. 1592-1593). general features: leaning heavily on Marlowe and probably the result of Shakespeare’s collaboration with other dramatists as well; uneven, sometimes crude both in dramatic movement and verse technique; Yet, they have their ‘Shakespearean’ moments and show Shakespeare seeking a way from the episodic chronicle play to a more dramatic and fully integrated handling of historical material. Sources: Raphael Holingshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Edward Hall’s chronicles, in particular his Union of the Two Noble and Illustre [Illustrious] Families of Lancaster and York (1548), might also have provided Shakespeare with useful information especially for the last play of the trilogy. However, Shakespeare had to conflate or alter historical events so they would fit within a dramatic context.) The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 1 probably written about 1592; focused on the events following the death of Henry V, covering the origins of the War of the Roses and the loss of Britain’s territories in . characters: Henry VI, the Protector of Gloucester, the Dauphin Charles, captain Talbot, Joan of Arc, Winchester – the Church leader, the Countess of Auvergne, Richard Plantagenet – the Duke of York, Somerset, Warwick, Burgundy, Talbot’s son John, Suffolk, Margaret. The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 1 Why a chronicle play? Another 16th-century British playwright, Thomas Nashe (often credited with coauthoring this play), wrote about the importance of the history play as a genre, stating that they helped to preserve the memories of glorious English heroes such as the chivalrous Lord Talbot in this play. Nashe said that the history play creates a collective memory of the national past for the masses, celebrating the realm’s heroes and particularly patriotic moments in English history. Accuracy in the representation of the historical events: Shakespeare drew on historical records of the times about which he wrote, but he condensed dates and events, reordering things if necessary in order to create dramatic tension and compelling plots. (e.g. Henry VI, the real-life character, was only 9 months old when Henry V died; in Shakespeare’s play, he is much older, of marriageable age.) Besides, some of the play’s most striking scenes are of his own invention, not based on historical facts. (e.g. the scene

in the Temple Garden, in which the followers of Richard Plantagenet and Somerset pick white and red roses as emblems of their opposing opinions.) The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 1 Shakespeare’s perspective on history: Without developing any consistent philosophy of history, Shakespeare gives equal voice to two predominant theories on the cause of 15thcentury British turmoil, i.e. the Wars of the Roses: one theory reasons that history is the result of human choices and actions; the other one posits that a higher power watches and judges our actions and rewards or punishes accordingly – by this particular theory, the violence of the 15th century came as punishment for Britain’s illegal dethroning of Richard II. In this play, some events certainly result from human decisions – and particularly human rivalries, yet we also see evidence of other higher powers at work, particularly in Talbot’s apparently inevitable fall and in Joan’s ability to communicate with the supernatural world. Main themes: conflict (between Henry VI of England and the Dauphin Charles of ; between the Duke of York and Somerset; between the Protector of Gloucester and Winchester; between Talbot and Joan of Arc): The message within these struggles is that petty rivalries and internal divisions among the nobility can be as dangerous to England as the French soldiers. Henry seems to recognize this truth, when he speaks about dissention as the “worm” gnawing on his kingdom, yet he is unable to end the crisis. The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 1 The changing warrior culture of the age: Talbot represents the end of a tradition of valiant knights whose sole desire is to fight for the glory of their homeland. He is a man from a lost world where valour and honour were shared masculine ideals ed from father to son. By the end of the play, both Talbot and his son lay dead, and the future of English chivalry has died with them. The dangerous public figures of women: Joan of Arc: Although Joan claims to enjoy the praise of the French as a virginal maid, the English call her a whore and attribute her powers to witchcraft. As a woman dressed in men’s armour and playing a man’s role on the battlefield, Joan violates the assigned place of a woman. Her identity slips between the two polarities of “innocent virgin” and “immoral whore,” as people assume a woman able to influence men must draw her power from some extreme of sexual existence. The Countess of Auvergne and Margaret While all three women function as threats to English men, they are also more complicated than merely being the vessels for the birth of more warriors. Suffolk is consumed by his uncontrollable desire to turn Margaret into something greater than a pawn for international settlements; the French are unable to win without the extraordinary aid of a woman; even strong kings like Henry V do not necessarily create strong successors in their sons. This play creates heroes of a masculine world, but it also acknowledges the potential weaknesses of men. Sometimes, a woman must step in (even becoming a monarch). The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 2 2 different versions of the play: 1594 and 1623

plot in a nutshell: continued scheming at the court, first between Gloucester and Beaufort, then between York’s faction and the other lords. The infighting between the lords and the popular uprising by Jack Cade show what happens to the nation when the king in power is too weak to rule effectively. The play charts the rise and fall of many lords and lesser figures within the kingdom. main characters: Henry VI, Suffolk, the Queen Margaret, Gloucester and his wife, the feuding ‘camps’ – Beaufort, Buckingham, Somerset/vs./Salisbury, Warwick, York; York’s sons, Edward and Richard; the petitioners Peter and Horner; Jack Cade. The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 2 Main themes: the weak king: Henry VI, crowned while very young, never completely gains control of the kingdom. He is pushed around by his nobles, who each have a scheme of their own, and by Margaret, his French wife. Henry is a pious man, mocked by Margaret for his weakness. In fact Margaret manages to nearly reverse their gender roles, urging the King to flee and commanding the army by the end of the play. Henry is powerless to stop her even from having an affair with Suffolk (though banishing Suffolk temporarily weakens her). power struggles: The scheming of the nobles first comes to a head when Gloucester, protector of the kingdom during Henry’s youth, is plotted against by Margaret, Suffolk, and Beaufort, and killed. After the death of this truly honourable man, no one remains to protect the King from York and his ers, who dominate the action thereafter. Both Henry’s weakness and the rebellion of the lower classes create risk for the kingdom, but the real danger to England lies in the ambition of the nobles of the court. violence inflicted on human bodies: symbolic of the failure of the monarchy and of the kingdom being torn apart by feuding factions. As the body of the kingdom is threatened by popular revolt and civil war, this suffering first s in the death and destruction of actual bodies. Gloucester’s death draws much attention to the state of his body; the unnaturalness of his bulging eyes and disordered features show signs of murder rather than peaceful death. However Beaufort’s unnatural death which soon follows signifies his is a soul weighed down by sin. Other mutilated bodies: Suffolk beheaded by pirates, Stafford and his brother dragged by Cade behind his horse all the way to London; Lord Saye and his son-in-law beheaded; Cade beheaded and his head delivered to the king. The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 2 punishment as an expression of the sometimes irrational nature of the so-called royal justice. Gloucester’s wife, the Duchess, is banished for having dealt in the occult, but first she must endure the public humiliation of being led through the streets with written records of her crime pinned to her body. parody of justice: the conflict between Peter and Horner which is settled by a single combat. the egalitarian tradition: Jack Cade seems to be a champion of the people, who appears when Gloucester, the only noble who cared about the commoners, has fallen. Yet he has also been hired by York as part of a scheme to test whether the people the idea of another rightful heir to the throne. Cade declares that his new kingdom will only honour workmen, so artisans or skilled labourers will fall in rank. His rhetoric echoes a tradition

of popular radicalism, which stressed that there was as much nobility in the labour of an honest man as in the educated speeches of a gentleman. Cade mobilizes the anger of the commoners against the nobles, directing most of his violence against those who can read or write. Yet Cade contradicts these same egalitarian claims by insisting that he will someday be king, and from his mouth will come the new law of the land. His army seems to recognize his hypocrisy, but they do not mind it, as they are stirred on by their dislike of the nobles. The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 3 published in 1595 in an octavo volume under the title The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth., republished in 1623 in the First Folio under the title, The Third Part of Henry the Sixth. plot in a nutshell: a continuation of the depiction of the War of the Roses, it ambitiously depicts many significant battles fought during that civil war, from the Battle of Wakefield (1460), when the Duke of York was killed, to the Battle of Tewkesbury (1471), when Edward, York’s eldest son, defeated the Lancastrians. main characters: Henry VI; the Duke of York; his sons Edward, Rutland, Richard and George; Warwick; Montague; the Queen Margaret; Clifford; prince Edward, Henry VI’s son; Lady Gray; Somerset; Hastings. The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 3 the most important characters: Henry VI – the weak but pacifist king. As the representative of legitimacy in a time of social disorder, he is fated to be thwarted and disgraced at every turn of the plot. Yet Shakespeare has not designed him only to be an object of scorn. Henry VI becomes more and more clearly a representative of peace and its blessings. However, that does not change radically the final message of the play: A weak monarch like Henry VI means chaos in a kingdom torn apart by selfish feuding lords. Richard III - a hunchback who, throughout much of the play, endeavours to continue his father’s quest for the crown. Near the end of the play, Richard kills Henry and declares that he had no father or brothers, thus, announcing his separation from kinship networks that define the rest of the play. Richard blames his isolation on his deformity, which makes a convenient excuse for his villainous behaviour. Yet the relationship between deformity and the breakdown of the social order is more complex than Richard portrays it to be. Richard’s physical deformity is perhaps less the cause of his vicious behaviour, and rather an outward sign of his inner evil. The First Tetralogy – Henry VI, Part 3 Main themes: the degradation of social ties, particularly those of family: The struggle for the throne is played out among various branches of the descendants of Edward II; the Lancaster line followed Henry IV, the fourth son of Edward II, while the York line descended from the third son of Edward II. This struggle between opposing wings of the same family has infected the familial tone of an entire nation. Family ties become fragile and threatened. E.g. Henry VI agrees to the crown to York after his death not to his son.; The vision of the 3 suns is interpreted by Edward as proof that he, Richard, and George will succeed together; in fact, it seems to mean that, without their father to unite them, each will break out on his own until only one remains standing. As

family bonds weaken, the social identities provided by networks of kinship and feudal loyalty disappear, giving birth to a kind of monstrous individualism. “mirror scenes”: Henry watches a battle from afar and sees two soldiers drag the bodies of soldiers they have killed away from the scene of the fight, hoping to find some loot on the bodies to steal. The first discovers he has accidentally killed his father, and the second, his own son. Both are horrified, just like their king, underscoring the social disintegration that occurs when the ties between father and son erode. the assertion of individual will: Richard reveals his frustrations and his desires for the throne, along with a rough plan to get there. In quick succession, he counts the number of people before him in line to the throne, resigns himself to seek the pleasures of the court, despairs because of his deformity, and resolves to seek the crown by transforming himself into a smiling persona in order to achieve his end. By the end of the play, Richard has announced his isolation from the titles of “son” or “brother,” and while he kisses Edward’s new baby, he likens himself to Judas. The previous chapters of the War of the Roses served to set branches of a family against each other; with no other enemies to fight, of a single family will struggle among themselves, and vicious ambition will threaten to bring down the nation. The First Tetralogy – Richard III source: Holinshed’s Chronicles; main characters: King Edward IV of York; his wife, Queen Elizabeth; his brothers, George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester; the two princes, Edward I’s sons; young Elizabeth, Edward I’s daughter; Lady Anne; Hastings; Buckingham; Henry, Earl of Richmond. Shakespeare’s manipulation of history: The play centres on the figure of Richard of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III, physically deformed, ambitious, sanguinary, bold and subtle, treacherous yet brave, a murderer and usurper of the crown. Bloody though he was, nevertheless, the historical King Richard III was not necessarily more murderous than the kings who preceded or succeeded him. Nor is it likely that he was deformed, as Shakespeare portrays him. When Shakespeare wrote this play, Queen Elizabeth I ruled England; Elizabeth was a descendant of King Henry VII, the ruler who overthrew Richard. Thus, the official party line of the Elizabethan era was that Richard was a monster, an illegitimate ruler of England. It would have been thoroughly dangerous for Shakespeare to suggest otherwise. Richard III- the Machiavellian villain Richard III is an intense exploration of the psychology of evil, centred on Richard’s mind. Like the “Vice” character of medieval morality pageants, who simply represented the evil in man, Richard does not justify his villainy—he is simply bad. Yet, there is more to him than this mere resemblance with Vice. Watching Richard’s character, Shakespeare’s audiences also would have thought of the “Machiavel,” the archetype of the scandalously amoral, power-hungry ruler that had been made famous by the Renaissance Italian writer Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince. Furthermore, especially in the later scenes of the play, Richard proves to be highly self-reflective and complicated— making his heinous acts all the more chilling. However, despite his open allegiance to evil, he is such a charismatic and fascinating figure that, for much of the play, we are likely to sympathize with him, or at least to be

impressed by him. Even characters such as Lady Anne, who have an explicit knowledge of his wickedness, allow themselves to be seduced by his brilliant wordplay, his skilful argumentation, and his relentless pursuit of his selfish desires. Shakespeare uses Richard’s monologues brilliantly to control the audience’s impression of Richard, enabling this manipulative protagonist to work his charms on the audience. Richard uses his deformity as a tool to gain the others’ sympathy. His evil is a much more innate part of his character than simple bitterness about his ugly body. But he uses his speech to win our trust, and he repeats this ploy throughout his struggle to be crowned king. After he is crowned king and Richmond begins his uprising, Richard’s monologues end. Once Richard stops exerting his charisma on the audience, his real nature becomes much more apparent, and by the end of the play he can be seen for the monster that he is. Richard III – Themes, Motifs, Symbols The Allure of Evil. When Richard claims that his deformity is the cause of his wicked ways, he seems to manipulate us for sympathy, just as he manipulates the other characters throughout the play. As a result, Richard III does not explore the cause of evil in the human mind so much as it explores its operation, depicting the workings of Richard’s mind and the methods he uses to manipulate, control, and injure the others for his own gain. The Connection between Ruler and State. The so-called window scenes in Richard III— the conversation of the common people in Act II, Buckingham’s speech to the masses and Richard’s acceptance of the crown in Act III - provide a glimpse of how the drama in the royal palace affects the lives of the common people outside its walls. As a history play, Richard III is at least somewhat concerned with the consequences of the behaviour of those in power, and with ideas of good rulership and governance. Richard III explores a theme Shakespeare later revisited in Hamlet and Macbeth—the idea that the moral righteousness of a political ruler has a direct bearing on the health of the state. The Power of Language. His extraordinary skill with words enables him to manipulate, confuse, and control those around him. Interestingly, language also seems to be the only defence against Richard, as shown when the princes match his skill at wordplay and thus indicate their ability to see through his schemes. In such cases, Richard simply uses violence as an expedient and has his enemies, including the princes, put to death. Richard III – Themes, Motifs, Symbols The Birth of the Tudor Dynasty. As a playwright in sixteenth-century England, Shakespeare had to court the favour of those in power, who literally could make or break his career. As a result, Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard III as a Machiavellian villain is in part designed to set up a glorious ascension for Henry VII at the end of the play. Of course, such political considerations are by no means the main focus of the play— Shakespeare’s exploration of the psychology of evil stands on its own and transcends mere propaganda. Still, it is important to realize that the history Shakespeare presented in his play was still very much alive when he wrote it, and that the considerations of his own time strongly affected his portrayal of the past. The Supernatural. For a play supposedly based on actual history, Richard III involves an extraordinary number of supernatural elements: prophetic dreams, witchcraft, curses, references to devils and demons. By far the most prominent case is the parade of the eleven ghosts that visits Richard and Richmond the night before the battle of Bosworth.

These supernatural elements create an atmosphere of intense dread and gloom that matches the malice and evil of Richard’s inner self, and also heighten the sense that Richard’s reign is innately evil, transforming England into a kind of Gothic netherworld. The political lesson of the play: Civil disorder shakes a nation into chaos and inevitably raises a tyrant to supreme power. His tyranny, corruption and crime may be put an end to only by the united forces of those who stand for righteousness in the world (i.e. the Tudors). The Great Chronicle Plays Shakespeare apparently thought it unwise to take up the story of English monarchs with Henry VII’s seizure of the throne since such continuation would have carried him dangerously close to Queen Elizabeth’s immediate ancestors. He turned to the reign of John and Richard II, far into England’s medieval past. The Life and Death of King John (c. 1595-1597) was adapted by Shakespeare from an earlier work. The reason for Shakespeare’s choice of John’s reign was the opportunity to dramatize its events in a way that would make them serve as a favourable commentary on the political and religious struggles in which Elizabeth was involved. The play with some departure from historical accuracy deals with various events in King John’s reign. Anchored in the conflicts with Rome and its claims to supremacy, the play shows concern with the ethics of rebellion, the unity of England and the character of the good ruler, thus anticipating, to some extent, the political interest emerging later in Henry IV. King John is an interesting and promising transitional play, which occupies an important though lonely place in the Shakespearean canon. The Great Chronicle Plays In the early chronicle plays Shakespeare detailed the disaster brought on the kingdom by a weak monarchy. Now that he belonged to the prosperous middle classes, he shared his class’s ideal of order, authority and security. Shakespeare the humanist still condemned absolute power and oppression, but the bourgeois in him demanded a firm enlightened rule to check up any manifestation of social chaos. After the re-opening of the theatres in 1594: Richard II (1595-1596), 1 Henry IV (1596), 2 Henry IV (1597) and Henry V (1597-1599). The Great Tetralogy – Richard II Sources: Holished’s Chronicle and Daniel’s History of the Civil Wars Novelty of the play: a new development in the poet’s composition of his “histories.” The catastrophe is caused neither by a villain, not by fate, nor by the pressure of events but by a serious flaw in the protagonist’s nature. Main characters: Richard II; his uncle – John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; his cousin – Henry Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt’s son; Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; the king’s ers - Bushy, Bagot, Green and the Duke of Aumerle; Exton. The Great Tetralogy – Richard II Richard II: A complex character, Richard appears as petulant, childish, emotionally selfindulgent, incapable of asserting his authority over factious noblemen but brooding and poeticizing over his royal status once he is on the point of losing it, and Shakespeare manipulates the audience’s sympathy towards him (first against, then in Richard's favour). Actually, Shakespeare’s character results from a combination of two trends of opinion regarding the king’s personality and rule: on the one hand, Richard was the

Lord’s anointed, the last English king to rule in virtue of his direct and undisputed descent from William the Conqueror; on the other hand, the Lancastrians ing Henry saw him as a weak, foolish king who voluntarily abdicated because he recognised his own unfitness to carry out his royal duties. The play actually opposes Richard as the medieval king to Henry Bolingbroke as the ‘modern’ man of action, impatient with the stylized forms of medieval life (e.g. the deposition scene as an inversion of the coronation ritual). The self-indulgent lyricism of many of Richard’s own speeches reflects the predominantly lyrical interest that seems to have been a feature of Shakespeare’s dramatic art at this phase in his development (see Romeo and Juliet), but it also helps to build Richard's character and to differentiate it from that of his more realistic and practical supplanter. The Great Tetralogy – Henry IV, Part 1 The first play to deal with the historical rise of the English royal House of Lancaster (set in the years 1402–1403). Novelty of the play: Falstaff, Prince Harry’s fat, aged, and criminally degenerate mentor and friend: He has many historical precedents: he owes much to archetypes like the figure of Vice from medieval morality plays and Gluttony from medieval pageants about the seven deadly sins. His character also draws on the miles gloriosus figure, an arrogant soldier from classical Greek and Roman comedy, and the Lord of Misrule, the title given to an individual appointed to reign over folk festivities in medieval England. Ultimately, however, Falstaff is a Shakespearean creation, second among Shakespearean characters only to Hamlet as a subject of critical interest. The play mixes history and comedy innovatively, moving from lofty scenes involving kings and battles to base scenes involving ruffians drinking and engaging in robberies. Its great strengths include a remarkable richness and variety of texture, a fascinatingly ambiguous take on history and on political motivations, and a new kind of characterization, as found in the inimitable Falstaff. The Great Tetralogy – Henry IV, Part 1 Plot in the nutshell:1 Henry IV has two main plots that intersect in a dramatic battle at the end of the play. The first plot concerns King Henry IV, his son, Prince Harry, and their strained relationship. The second concerns a rebellion that is plotted against King Henry by a discontented family of noblemen in the North, the Percys, who are angry because of King Henry’s refusal to acknowledge his debt to them. The play’s scenes alternate between these two plot strands until they come together at the end of the play. Main characters: King Henry IV; his son, Prince Harry; Glyndwr; Harry Percy (alias Hotspur); Falstaff; Poins. The Great Tetralogy – Henry IV, Part 1 Prince Harry. He is at the centre of events in 1 Henry IV. As the only character to move between the grave, serious world of King Henry and Hotspur, and the comical world of Falstaff and the Boar’s Head Tavern, Harry serves as a bridge uniting the two major plotlines. An initially disreputable prince who eventually wins back his honour and the king’s esteem, Harry undergoes the greatest dramatic development in the play, deliberately transforming himself from the spendthrift he pretends to be into a noble

leader. He is, nevertheless, a complicated character. As the play opens, Harry has been spending his time with Falstaff and earning the displeasure of both his father and England as a whole. He then surprises everyone by declaring that his dissolute lifestyle is all an act, which proves him clearly intelligent and already capable of the psychological machinations required of kings. But the heavy measure of deceit involved in his plan seems to call his honour into question, and his treatment of Falstaff further sullies his name: though there seems to be real affection between the prince and the roguish knight, Harry is quite capable of tormenting and humiliating his friend (in 2 Henry IV). Shakespeare seems to include these aspects of Harry’s character in order to illustrate that Falstaff’s selfish bragging does not fool Harry and to show that Harry is capable of making the difficult personal choices that a king must make in order to rule a nation well (as Henry V). The Great Tetralogy – Henry IV, Part 1 Sir John Falstaff. Old, fat, lazy, selfish, dishonest, corrupt, thieving, manipulative, boastful, and lecherous, Falstaff is, despite his many negative features, perhaps the most popular of Shakespeare’s comic characters. Though he is technically a knight, Falstaff’s lifestyle clearly renders him incompatible with the ideals of courtly chivalry that one typically associates with knighthood. Falstaff seems to scorn morality largely because he has such a hearty appetite for life and finds the niceties of courtesy and honour useless when there are jokes to be told and feasts to be eaten. Largely a creature of words, Falstaff has earned the iration of some Shakespearean scholars because of the selfcreation he achieves through language. He redeems himself largely through his real affection for Prince Harry, whom, despite everything, he seems to regard as a real friend. This affection makes Harry’s decision, foreshadowed in 1 Henry IV, to abandon Falstaff when he becomes king (in 2 Henry IV) seem all the more harsh. King Henry IV . Though Henry is not yet truly an old man in 1 Henry IV, his worries about his crumbling kingdom, guilt over his uprising against Richard II, and the vagaries of his son’s behaviour have diluted his earlier energy and strength. Henry remains stern, aloof, and resolute, but he is no longer the force of nature he appears to be in Richard II. Henry’s trouble stems from his own uneasy conscience and his uncertainty about the legitimacy of his rule. With these concerns lurking at the back of his reign, Henry is unable to rule as the magnificent leader his son Harry will become. 1 Henry IV– Themes, Motifs and Symbols The Nature of Honour: The very multiplicity of views on honour that Shakespeare explores suggests that, in the end, honour is merely a lofty reflection of an individual’s personality and conscience. In other words, honour seems to be defined less by an overarching set of guidelines and more by an individual’s personal values and goals. Hotspur – honour = glory on the battlefield and defending one’s reputation and good name against any perceived insult; Henry IV – honour = the well-being of the nation and the legitimacy of its ruler; Prince Harry – honour seems to be associated with noble behaviour, but for a long time Harry is willing to sacrifice the appearance of honour for the sake of his own goals, confident that he can regain his honour at will. Harry’s conception of honour is so allinclusive that he believes that, by killing Hotspur, Hotspur’s honour becomes his own. Falstaff – honour = nothing but hot air and wasted effort that does no one any good. 1 Henry IV– Themes, Motifs and Symbols

The Legitimacy of Rulership. The play questions what makes a ruler legitimate, which qualities are desirable in a ruler, when it is acceptable to usurp a ruler’s authority, and what the consequences of rebelling against a ruler might be. The concept of legitimate rule is deeply connected in the play with the concept of rebellion: if a ruler is illegitimate, then it is acceptable to usurp his power, as Hotspur and the Percys attempt to do with King Henry. While the criteria that make a ruler legitimate differ—legitimate rule may be attributed to the will of the people or to the will of God—on some level the crack in Henry’s power results from his own fear that his rule is illegitimate, since he illegally usurped the crown from Richard II. The qualities that are desirable in a ruler are explored through the contrast inherent in the major characters: the stern and aloof Henry, the unpredictable and intelligent Harry, and the decisive and hot-tempered Hotspur. Each man offers a very different style of rulership. In the end, Shakespeare seems to endorse Harry’s ability to think his way through a situation and to manipulate others without straying too far from the dictates of conscience. Harry emerges as Shakespeare’s most impressive English king two plays later, in Henry V. 1 Henry IV– Themes, Motifs and Symbols High and Low Language. One of the characteristics that sets 1 Henry IV apart from many of Shakespeare’s other plays is the ease with which it transitions between scenes populated by nobility and scenes populated by commoners. One result of these transitions is that the play encomes many different languages and manners of expression. From the Welsh and Irish not understood by the English characters to the bartenders’ coarse language Harry picks up and uses to insinuate himself in their society, these languages display the extremely diverse cast of characters that populates Shakespeare’s world. Although language is seldom discussed by the characters in 1 Henry IV, the sheer variety of spoken language in the play suggests that one of Shakespeare’s aims in this work was to portray something of the scope of the English language. The play combines high speech and low speech, poetry and prose, as well as various accents of Britain’s various locales. Shakespeare uses various rhetorical and formal strategies to distinguish his various types of speech without sacrificing his unifying style: generally, for instance, well-born characters tend to speak in verse, while commoners tend to speak in prose. Doubles. Harry/ Hotspur; Falstaff/ the king; the Boar’s Head Tavern/the royal palace. British Cultural Stereotypes. Welsh characters such as Glyndwr (portrayed as an ominous magician) and Scottish characters such as the Douglas (portrayed as a hotheaded warrior) The Sun. The sun in 1 Henry IV represents the king and his reign. Both Harry and his father, Henry, use an image of the sun obscured by clouds to describe themselves. The Great Tetralogy – 2 Henry IV Set in the early 1400s, it also mixes history and comedy, moving from “high” scenes of kings and battles to “low” scenes of city taverns and country life, and continues to develop on the two main themes of Henry IV’s struggle with the heavy burden of royal power and Henry V’s transformation from a young hell-raiser into a wise king.

main characters: rebel leaders, i.e. the Archbishop of York, Lord Mowbray, and Lord Hastings/ vs./ Henry IV and his sons, Prince Hal and Prince John; Falstaff; the Earl of Northumberland; Lord Chief Justice. The Great Tetralogy – 2 Henry IV Juxtaposed moral and social levels: statesmen and rebels; the king, his sons and his advisers; Falstaff and his companions Peto, Bardolph, Mistress Quickly, and Doll Tearsheet; Percy and his friends; the country justices Shallow and Silence. → each of these levels reveal something about England, about the relation between moral character and human behaviour, about the nature of men. Falstaff: presented as a recruiting officer in order to attain a double goal, i.e., on the one hand, to reveal new forms of his comic ‘business’, on the other hand, to suggest an attack on a social evil. Falstaff describes how he takes bribes from able-bodied men on the draft list who do not want to go to war; this leaves him with only those recruits who are penniless and poor-spirited. In showing Falstaff eventually rejected by the new king Henry V, Shakespeare makes his meaning clear: frivolous doings are not compatible with a king’s responsibilities. Falstaff belongs to the amoral world of the Boar’s Tavern, but not to the moral world of the dedicated Christian ruler. The Great Tetralogy – Henry V main characters: Henry V; the Dauphin of ; Bardolph, Pistol, Nim; Scrope; Fluellen; Catherine, the daughter of the French king. Henry V: the play’s protagonist and hero, a young man of great intelligence and charisma who initiates all significant action in the play. His most prominent features: determination: once he has set his mind to accomplishing a goal, he uses every resource at his disposal to see that it is accomplished. This tactic may seem morally questionable, but it is a valuable psychological weapon that Henry uses to pressure his enemies into doing what he wants. Again and again, Henry acts in a manner that would be deplorable for a common citizen but that makes him an exemplary king. (e.g. his political game with the French) facility with language: Henry’s rhetorical skill is a forceful weapon, the strength of which nearly equals that of his army’s swords. With words, Henry can inspire and rouse his followers, intimidate his enemies, and persuade nearly anyone who hears him. With Henry’s speeches, Shakespeare creates a rhetoric that is, like Henry himself, at once candidly frank and extremely sophisticated. Henry has a very special quality for a king: the ability to present himself honestly while still manipulating his audience. commitment to his responsibilities: Shakespeare does not comment explicitly on Henry’s motives for invading , but it seems clear from his speeches about the weight of his responsibility that Henry is not motivated exclusively by a lust for power or land. Henry clearly takes kingship very seriously, and he is dedicated to fulfilling the obligations of his rank. It seems clear from Henry’s undeniably uplifting speeches that Shakespeare intends for us to see Henry as a hero, or, at the very least, as an estimable king. Insofar as Henry is a hero, he is made so by his commitment to his responsibilities above his own personal feelings. Henry V – Themes, Motifs, Symbols the nature of leadership and its relationship to morality: The play proposes that the qualities that define a good ruler are not necessarily the same qualities that define a good person. Henry is an extraordinarily good leader: he is intelligent, focused, and inspiring to

his men. He uses any and all resources at his disposal to ensure that he achieves his goals. Shakespeare presents Henry’s charismatic ability to connect with his subjects and motivate them to embrace and achieve his goals as the fundamental criterion of good leadership, making Henry seem the epitome of a good leader. By inspiring his men to win the Battle of Agincourt despite overwhelming odds, Henry achieves heroic status. However, the play’s treatment of King Henry V is more problematic than it seems at a first glance. Henry is a model of traditional heroism, but his value system is confusing. After all, his sense of honour leads him to invade a non-aggressive country and to slaughter thousands of people. He sentences to death former friends and prisoners of war while claiming to value mercy, and he never acknowledges that he bears any responsibility for the bloodshed he has initiated. It is useful to read the play with an eye toward these discrepancies, which Shakespeare examines in a complicated exploration of the nature of kingship. All in all, the perspective he seems to suggest his spectators/ readers to embrace is that the massive responsibilities laid on the shoulders of a king render him distinct from all other people, and the standards that can be brought to bear in judging a king must take that distinction into . Henry V – Themes, Motifs, Symbols the diversity of the English: The play introduces numerous characters which belong to different social classes and nationalities united under the English crown during Henry’s reign. Many of the characters represent large groups or cultures: Fluellen represents the Welsh, Pistol represents the underclass, Jamy represents the Scottish, and MacMorris represents the Irish. These characters are often given the stereotypical traits thought to characterize each group in Shakespeare’s day—MacMorris, for instance, has a fiery temper, a trait thought to be common to the Irish. The catalogue of characters from different countries both emphasizes the diversity of medieval England and intensifies the audience’s sense of Henry’s tremendous responsibility to his nation. For a play that explores the nature of absolute political power, there is something remarkably democratic in this enlivening portrayal of rich and poor, English and Welsh, Scottish and Irish, as their roles intertwine in the war effort and as the king attempts to give them direction and momentum. In this way, the exploration of the people of Britain becomes an important facet of the play’s larger exploration of power. As the play explores the ruler, it also examines the ruled. Henry V – Themes, Motifs, Symbols male interaction. There are almost no women in Henry V. Catherine is the only female character to be given many lines or presented in the domestic sphere, and most of her lines are in French. With this absence of women and the focus on the all-male activity of medieval warfare, the play presents many types of male relationships. The relationships between various groups of men—Fluellen and Gower; Bardolph, Pistol, and Nim; and the French lords—mirror and echo one another in various ways. The cowardice of the Eastcheap group is echoed in the cowardice of the French lords, for instance. Perhaps more important, these male friendships all draw attention to another aspect of Henry’s character: his isolation from other people. Unlike most of the play’s other male characters, Henry seems to have no close friends, another characteristic that makes the life of a king fundamentally different from the life of a common citizen. the tun of tennis balls. The Dauphin knows that Henry was an idler before becoming king, and he sends Henry a tun, or chest, of tennis balls to remind Henry of his reputation

for being a careless pleasure-seeker. This gift symbolizes the Dauphin’s scorn for Henry. The tennis balls enrage Henry, however, and he uses the Dauphin’s scorn to motivate himself. The tennis balls thus come to symbolize Henry’s burning desire to conquer . As he tells the French ambassador, the Dauphin’s jests initiate a deadly match, and the tennis balls become cannonballs.