1 Henry IV is the second in a series of
Shakespearean history plays. The first play, Richard
II, is the tragedy of a young king who abuses his authority and is
usurped by his cousin, who becomes the present play’s King Henry IV. Because
Richard lost the throne under suspicious circumstances, Henry’s authority is
threatened by a kingdom divided between those who are loyal to him and those who
believe that Richard was wrongly deposed and murdered. The ensuing rebellion is
complicated by the fact that it is led by the Percy
family—Northumberland, his brother Worcester, and his son Henry Percy or
“Hotspur”— characters who were once loyal to Henry and
instrumental in his rise to power.
For all its concern with this national rebellion and impending civil war, 1 Henry IV is also about a domestic rebellion, that
of the king’s son, Prince Harry. The play’s scenes alternate between these two
rebellions and the king’s efforts to contain them. As the Percys’ plot to take
the throne from Henry is thwarted, the young Harry (or Hal as his friends call
him) is transformed from mischievous truant to responsible prince and future
king.
If Richard II is both a history play and tragedy,
1 Henry IV is perhaps best described as a
history/comedy. For whereas Richard is a king in tragic decline, the Henry IV plays together with Henry V chart the making of a warrior king. The
rise of prince Harry from obscurity as a tavern wastrel (briefly mentioned in
Richard II, 5.3.1-22) to dutiful prince in 1 Henry IV is an archetypal comedic plot, the
biblical tale of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).
As is typical of tragedy (though not always the case with Shakespeare), Richard II has a single unified plot. 1 Henry IV, like most Shakespearean comedies,
has two plots:
The first of these plots picks up where Richard
II left off: the former Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, is planning
a crusade in the Holy Land in order “To wash this blood off from my
guilty hand” (RII 5.6.50)—presumably the
blood of Richard whose murder the new king may have ordered (see RII 5.4). Whatever his involvement in Richard’s
death, King Henry must fortify his claim to the throne against the scandal
surrounding it. For though Richard seemed willing to relinquish the crown,
the deposition of a living monarch had no legal precedent and was therefore
doubtful. Indeed, it might be argued that not even Richard had the authority
to depose God’s anointed. Much of the play, then, is devoted both to the
gradual consolidation of a new royal power and an interrogation of its
philosophical justification. If Richard II
questions and destabilizes the ideology of divine-right (the doctrine
according to which a king’s authority is sanctioned by God), I Henry IV seems genuinely to ask, “What
is the basis of political power?” This question becomes most pressing
when a group of the king’s former allies, the Percy clan, plots a rebellion
and denies the legality of his royal claim.
The second plot in the play—the maturation of King Henry’s son Harry—is a classic tale of adolescent freedom yielding to the sobering realities of duty and responsibility. Harry is a highly compelling character. We delight in his triumphant rise to eminence as Prince of Wales and heir apparent. But we also recognize that growing up has its costs, and we are left wondering in the end whether some of the old tavern Harry might yet remain.
Just as the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream has
two worlds, each contrasting and complementing the other, I Henry IV is structured around two intricately
related locales, the court world and the tavern world. These worlds in turn
correspond to the play’s two plots as described above.
The court is the bureaucracy and network of relations among the nobility surrounding the king. It is a world of political power, and thus also one of considerable danger and unpredictability—particularly given the circumstances of Henry’s rise to power.
The tavern world too is a network of social relations, though here the characters are not the English nobility but rather a colorful blend of the lower social order: tapsters and barkeeps, thieves and pimps and prostitutes.
The bridge linking these two worlds and plots is the Prince of Wales himself. Though at ease among his tavern friends, Harry tells us very early in the play that he plans to use his sojourn in their world as a foil against which to contrast his rise to glory (1.2.173-95). This sun-king soliloquy, as it is sometimes called, seems to reveal Prince Harry’s easy confidence about his destiny as heir to the throne. If this were all there is to it, however, his character throughout the remainder of the play would elicit little curiosity from the audience. Not merely foreshadowing a certain outcome, the speech is as much Harry telling himself what he must do as what in fact he will do. From this moment on we watch with interest as he seeks to fulfill his destiny while maintaining an obvious affection for the world he would leave behind.
Shakespeare reinforces the play’s double structure through one additional means, the foil character. A foil is a secondary or minor character whose dramatic function is to highlight the personal attributes of a primary character. Prince Harry has at least two such foils: Harry Percy, or Hotspur, and Jack Falstaff. Hotspur and Falstaff are distinct personalities, and they embody symbolically the play’s two worlds. As a noble warrior, Hotspur represents the courtly values of honor, chivalry, duty, and fame (reputation). Falstaff, on the contrary, epitomizes tavern values—pleasures of the flesh and self-preservation:
When at the end of the play Prince Harry stands between the dead Hotspur and the pretending-to-be-dead Falstaff, he stands in effect between two sets of values that have been vying for his allegiance throughout. Harry’s father, the former Bolingbroke, laments his wayward son’s reputation early in the play, openly wishing that Northumberland’s Harry had been switched at birth with his own Harry—that Hotspur, as it turns out, is his true son (1.1.77-89). And though the king never criticizes Falstaff directly, Harry imagines what his father thinks of his son’s companion when he (Harry) plays his father during a mock interview in the tavern. Falstaff, says Harry/King Henry, is a “villainous, abominable misleader of youth, an old White-bearded Satan” (2.5.421-22). Hotspur and Falstaff are thus extreme manifestations of Harry’s two sides—their opposed values somehow coexisting within the personality and psyche of a single man. How and to what extent these values are reconciled in the prince and future king is a question not easily answered—even at play’s end. It is this uncertainty, however, that makes Harry one of the more memorable of Shakespeare’s comic protagonists. If he were to remain entirely loyal to Falstaff and the tavern world, he would never realize his royal destiny. If he were to abandon that world without any reluctance or reservation, he would have betrayed and used his friends as mere props in a self-aggrandizing performance of the Prodigal Son made good. As is typical of Shakespeare’s best characters, Harry’s motives are far more complex than either of these simple alternatives suggests, and in this he is more plausibly human.
There is no question that Harry’s transformation is the most interesting and
entertaining aspect of the play. But that subplot also effectively mirrors the
history-play dimension of 1 Henry IV. Encouraged by
his reformed son’s military bravado during the real interview (3.2.129-59)—the
one for which the mock-interview in 2.5 is preparation—King Henry declares,
“A hundred thousand rebels die in this” (3.2.160). This single line
nicely captures the play’s parallel plot structure: Harry’s progression from
truant son to loyal and responsible prince is matched scene for scene by his
father’s success in defeating his enemies. Two rebellions, Harry’s and the
Percys’, are put down simultaneously.
But just as Harry at the end remains tied to the tavern values he ostensibly rejects—evident in the penultimate scene when he offers to lie for Falstaff and in effect secure him a place at court (5.3.150-51)—so too is the rebels’ defeat accompanied by lingering doubts as to the security of Henry’s claim to power. The final scene, with its unsettling references to a residual rebellion in Scotland and Wales, suggests circumstances not all that different from those of the opening scene—thus reminding us that despite the king’s successes, there are those who remain skeptical of his legitimacy.
The reasons for this have everything to do with the deposition of Richard and the
Percys’ involvement therein. Recall that Northumberland, Hotspur’s father, was
loyal to Bolingbroke in Richard II. It is
Northumberland who, during the deposition, repeatedly urges Richard publicly to
read a confession of his supposed crimes (RII
4.1.212-17, 233, 243, 259). Hotspur also briefly appears in Richard II, introduced to Bolingbroke by
Northumberland and pledging his service to Bolingbroke’s cause (2.3.36-50).
Later, just as he is about to be imprisoned, Richard prophesies that
Northumberland will one day regret having joined with Bolingbroke. For though
the latter has become king, argues Richard, he will always suspect the Percys of
disloyalty. Henry, argues Richard, will think that the Percys, having
participated in the deposition of one king, will not hesitate to bring down
another (RII 5.1.57-68).
Richard’s prediction could not be more accurate. Indeed, in 1 Henry IV it is Northumberland’s brother,
Worcester, who offers a motive for rebellion identical to the one foreseen by
Richard. “For, bear ourselves as even as we can,” he says,
“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”
(1.3.279-82). This pre-emptive strategy—turn against the king before he turns
against us—is only one reason why the Percys rebel. Another is that they feel
they deserve to be treated more generously, given their instrumental role in
helping Henry to the throne (1.3.10-13). A third, more problematic, reason is
also offered: the claim that Hotspur’s brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer, is the
rightful heir to the throne, not Henry (1.3.139-50). The problem with this
position, of course, is that the Percys said nothing about Mortimer back in Richard II when they supported Bolingbroke. Hotspur
goes to great lengths to explain this apparent contradiction, arguing that their
intention back then extended only so far as to help Bolingbroke reclaim what was
rightfully his: the dukedom of Lancaster, Bolingbroke’s inheritance seized by
Richard when Bolingbroke was in exile (4.3.54-90). Rather than a genuine motive,
this argument is mere subterfuge—a legal pretext for what otherwise must be
construed as high treason.
1 Henry IV is remarkable for its variety. Riotously
funny tavern scenes alternate with the high drama of court politics, intrigue,
and armed rebellion. Exuberant prose dialogue in the one world contrasts with
the stately iambic poetry of the other. Drunkards, thieves, prostitutes, and
pranksters occupy the same stage trod by princes, nobles, dignitaries, and
national armies. Unlike the stylized and highly artificial world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or the consistently
ceremonial tone of Richard II, this play
exemplifies a quality unmatched in any drama or work of fiction hitherto
conceived: the illusion of the real. The variety of characters and their
convincing depth; dialogue so effortless it seems but the transcription of
recorded conversation; the seamless and complementary interweaving of two plots:
these and other qualities make this play more than a history or comedy or any
other generic label. 1 Henry IV, rather, is what we
might call Theater of the World.