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The Man Shakespeare

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The subject of the play, a young man of noble gifts led astray by loose
companions, was a favourite subject with Shakespeare at this time; he
had treated it already in "Richard II."; and he handled it here again
with such zest that we are almost forced to believe in the tradition
that Shakespeare himself in early youth had sown wild oats in unworthy
company. Helped by a superb model, and in full sympathy with his theme,
Shakespeare might be expected to paint a magnificent picture. But Prince
Henry is anything but a great portrait; he is at first hardly more than
a prig, and later a feeble and colourless replica of Hotspur. It is very
curious that even in the comedy scenes with Falstaff Shakespeare has
never taken the trouble to realize the Prince: he often lends him his
own word-wit, and now and then his own high intelligence, but he never
for a moment discovers to us the soul of his hero. He does not even tell
us what pleasure Henry finds in living and carousing with Falstaff. Did
the Prince choose his companions out of vanity, seeking in the Eastcheap
tavern a court where he might throne it? Or was it the infinite humour
of Falstaff which attracted him? Or did he break bounds merely out of
high spirits, when bored by the foolish formalities of the palace?
Shakespeare, one would have thought, would have given us the key to the
mystery in the very first scene. But this scene, which paints Falstaff
to the soul, tells us nothing of the Prince; but rather blurs a figure
which everyone imagines he knows at least in outline. Prince Henry's
first speech is excellent as description; Falstaff asks him the time
of day; he replies:

"Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and
unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches
after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly
which thou wouldst truly know...."

This helps to depict Falstaff, but does not show us the Prince, for
good-humoured contempt of Falstaff is universal; it has nothing
individual and peculiar in it.

Then comes the speech in which the Prince talks of himself in Falstaff's
strain as one of "the moon's men" who "resolutely snatch a purse of gold
on Monday night," and "most dissolutely spend it on Tuesday morning." A
little later he plays with Falstaff by asking: "Where shall we take a
purse to-morrow, Jack?" It looks as if the Prince were ripe for worse
than mischief. But when Falstaff wants to know if he will make one of
the band to rob on Gadshill, he cries out, as if indignant and
surprised:

P. Hen. Who, I rob? la thief? Not I, by my faith.

Fal. There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship
in thee, nor thou earnest not of the blood royal,
if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.

P. Hen. Well then, once in my days I'll be a madcap.

Fal. Why, that's well said.

P. Hen. Well, come what will, I'll tarry at home.

He is only persuaded at length by Poins's proposal to rob the robbers.
It may be said that these changes of the Prince are natural in the
situation: but they are too sudden and unmotived; they are like the
nodding of the mandarin's head--they have no meaning; and surely, after
the Prince talks of himself as one of "the moon's men," it would be more
natural of him, when the direct proposal to rob is made, not to show
indignant surprise, which seems forced or feigned; but to talk as if
repenting a previous folly. The scene, in so far as the Prince is
concerned, is badly conducted. When he yields to Poins and agrees to rob
Falstaff, his words are: "Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for
us,"--a phrase which hardly shows wild spirits or high courage, or even
the faculty of judging men, and the soliloquy which ends the scene
lamely enough is not the Prince's, but Shakespeare's, and unfortunately
Shakespeare the poet, and not Shakespeare the dramatist:

"P. Hen. I know you all and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour 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 mists
Of vapours, that did seem to strangle him. ..."

If we could accept this stuff we should take Prince Henry for the prince
of prigs; but it is impossible to accept it, and so we shrug our
shoulders with the regret that the madcap Prince of history is not
illuminated for us by Shakespeare's genius. In this "First Part of Henry
IV.," when the Prince is not calling names with Falstaff, or playing
prig, he either shows us a quality of Harry Percy or of Shakespeare
himself. Everyone remembers the scene when Falstaff, carrying Percy's
corpse, meets the Princes, and tells them he has killed Percy:

P. John. This is the strangest tale that e'er I heard.
P. Hen. This is the strangest fellow, brother John.--
Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back:
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have."

Both in manner and in matter these last two lines are pure Shakespeare,
and Shakespeare speaks to us, too, when Prince Henry gives up Douglas to
his pleasure "ransomless and free." But not only does the poet lend the
soldier his own sentiments and lilt of phrase, he also presents him to
us as a shadowy replica of Hotspur, even during Hotspur's lifetime. We
have already noticed Hotspur's admirable answer when Glendower brags
that he can call spirits from the vasty deep:

"Hot. Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?"

The same love of truth is given to Prince Henry in the previous act:

"Fal. Owen, Owen,--the same;--and his son-in-law,
Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and that sprightly
Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs o' horseback up a hill
perpendicular,--

P. Hen. He that rides at high speed, and with his
pistol kills a sparrow flying.

Fal. You have hit it.

P. Hen. So did he never the sparrow."

But this frank contempt of lying is not the only or the chief
characteristic possessed by Hotspur and Harry Percy in common. Hotspur
disdains the Prince:

"Hot. Where is his son,
The nimble-footed mad-cap Prince of Wales,
And his comrádes that daffed the world aside
And bid it pass?"

and the Prince mimics and makes fun of Hotspur:

"P. Hen. He that kills me some six or seven dozen
of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands and says to his
wife, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.'"

Then Hotspur brags of what he will do when he meets his rival:

"Hot. Once ere night
I will embrace him with a soldier's arm,
That he shall shrink under my courtesy."

And in precisely the same strain Prince Henry talks to his father:

"P. Hen. The time will come
That I shall make this northern youth exchange
His glorious deeds for my indignities."

It is true that Prince Henry on more than one occasion praises Hotspur,
while Hotspur is content to praise himself, but the differentiation is
too slight to be significant: such as it is, it is well seen when the
two heroes meet.

"Hot. My name is Harry Percy.
P. Hen. Why, then I see
A very valiant rebel of that name."

but Prince Henry immediately doffs this kingly mood to imitate Hotspur.
He goes on:

"I am the Prince of Wales, and think not, Percy,
To share with me in glory any more;
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,
Nor can our England brook a double reign
Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales ..."

And so the bombast rolls, and one brags against the other like systole
and diastole which balance each other in the same heart. But the worst
of the matter is, that Prince Henry and Hotspur, as we have already
noticed, have both the same soul and the same inspiring motive in love
of honour. They both avow this again and again, though Hotspur finds the
finer expression for it when he cries that he will "pluck bright honour
from the pale-faced moon."

To the student of the play it really looks as if Shakespeare could not
imagine any other incentive to noble or heroic deeds but this love of
glory: for nearly all the other serious characters in the play sing of
honour in the same key. King Henry IV. envies Northumberland

"A son who is the theme of honour's tongue,"

and declares that Percy hath got "never-dying honour against renownéd
Douglas." The Douglas, too, can find no other word with which to praise
Hotspur--"thou art the king of honour": even Vernon, a mere secondary
character, has the same mainspring: he says to Douglas:

"If well-respected honour bid me on,
I hold as little counsel with weak fear
As you or any Scot that this day lives."

Falstaff himself declares that nothing "pricks him on but honour," and
bragging Pistol admits that "honour is cudgelled" from his weary limbs.
The French, too, when they are beaten by Henry V. all bemoan their shame
and loss of honour, and have no word of sorrow for their ruined
homesteads and outraged women and children. The Dauphin cries:

"Reproach and everlasting shame
Sits mocking in our plumes."

And Bourbon echoes him:

"Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame."

It is curious that Bourbon falls upon the same thought which animated
Hotspur. Just before the decisive battle Hotspur cries:

"O, gentlemen! the time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely were too long."

And when the battle turns against the French, Bourbon exclaims:

"The devil take order now! I'll to the throng:
Let life be short; else shame will be too long."

As Jaques in "As You Like It" says of the soldier: they are "jealous in
honour" and all seek "the bubble reputation, even in the cannon's
mouth."

It is only in Shakespeare that men have no other motive for brave deeds
but love of honour, no other fear but that of shame with which to
overcome the dread of death. We shall see later that the desire of fame
was the inspiring motive of his own youth.

In the "Second Part of King Henry IV." there is very little told us of
Prince Henry; he only appears in the second act, and in the fourth and
fifth; and in all he is the mouthpiece of Shakespeare and not the
roistering Prince: yet on his first appearance there are traces of
characterization, as when he declares that his "appetite is not
princely," for he remembers "the poor creature, small beer," whereas in
the last act he is merely the poetic prig. Let us give the best scene
first:

"P. Hen. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?
* * * * *
P. Hen. Marry, I tell thee,--it is not meet that I should
be sad, now my father is sick: albeit I could tell to thee--as
to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my
friend--I could be sad, and sad, indeed, too.

Poins. Very hardly upon such a subject.
P. Hen. By this hand, thou think'st me as far in the
devil's book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency:
let the end try the man. But I tell thee, my
heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and keeping
such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken
from me all ostentation of sorrow.

Poins. The reason?

P. Hen. What would'st thou think of me if I should
weep?

Poins. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

P. Hen. It would be every man's thought; and thou
art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks; never
a man's thought in the world keeps the roadway better
than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed.
And what accites your most worshipful thought to
think so?

Poins. Why, because you have been so lewd, and so
much engraffed to Falstaff."

By far the best thing in this page--the contempt for every man's thought
as certain to be mistaken--is, I need hardly say, pure Shakespeare.
Exactly the same reflection finds a place in "Hamlet"; the
student-thinker tells us of a play which in his opinion, and in the
opinion of the best judges, was excellent, but which was only acted
once, for it "pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general."
Very early in life Shakespeare made the discovery, which all men of
brains make sooner or later, that the thoughts of the million are
worthless, and the judgment and taste of the million are execrable.

There is nothing worthy to be called character-drawing in this scene;
but there's just a hint of it in the last remark of Poins. According to
his favourite companion the Prince was very "lewd," and yet Shakespeare
never shows us his lewdness in action; does not "moralize" it as Jaques
or Hamlet would have been tempted to do. It is just mentioned and passed
over lightly. It is curious, too, that Shakespeare's alter ego,
Jaques, was also accused of lewdness by the exiled Duke; Vincentio, too,
another incarnation of Shakespeare, was charged with lechery by Lucio;
but in none of these cases does Shakespeare dwell on the failing.
Shakespeare seems to have thought reticence the better part in regard to
certain sins of the flesh. But it must be remarked that it is only when
his heroes come into question that he practises this restraint: he is
content to tell us casually that Prince Henry was a sensualist; but he
shows us Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet engaged at lips' length. To put it
briefly, Shakespeare attributes lewdness to his impersonations, but will
not emphasize the fault by instances. Nor will Shakespeare allow his
"madcap Prince" even to play "drawer" with hearty goodwill. While
consenting to spy on Falstaff in the tavern, the Prince tells Poins that
"from a Prince to a prentice" is "a low transformation," and scarcely
has the fun commenced when he is called to the wars and takes his leave
in these terms:

"P. Hen. By Heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame,
So idly to profane the precious time
When tempest of commotion, like the south
Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt
And drop upon our bare, unarmed heads."

The first two lines are priggish, and the last three mere poetic
balderdash. But it is in the fourth act, when Prince Henry is watching
by the bedside of his dying father, that Shakespeare speaks through him
without disguise:

"Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow
Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
O polished perturbation! golden care!
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night!--Sleep with it now,
Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
As he whose brow with homely biggin bound
Snores out the watch of night."

In the third act we have King Henry talking in precisely the same way:

"O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?...
* * * * *
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge."...

The truth is that in both these passages, as in a hundred similar ones,
we find Shakespeare himself praising sleep as only those tormented by
insomnia can praise it.

When his father reproaches him with "hunger for his empty chair," this
is how Prince Henry answers:

"O pardon me, my liege, but for my tears,
The moist impediments unto my speech,
I had forestalled this dear and deep rebuke.
Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard
The course of it so far."...

It might be Alfred Austin writing to Lord Salisbury--"the moist
impediments," forsooth--and the daredevil young soldier goes on like
this for forty lines.

The only memorable thing in the fifth act is the new king's contemptuous
dismissal of Falstaff: I think it appalling at least in matter:

"I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old and so profane;
But being awake I do despise my dream.
* * * * *
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest,
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
* * * * *
Till then, I banish thee on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile."

In the old play, "The Famous Victories," the sentence of banishment is
pronounced; but this bitter contempt for the surfeit-swelled, profane
old man is Shakespeare's. It is true that he mitigates the severity of
the sentence in characteristic generous fashion: the King says:

"For competence of life I will allow you
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strength and qualities,
Give you advancement."

There is no mention in the old play of this "competence of life." But in
spite of this generous forethought the sentence is painfully severe, and
Shakespeare meant every word of it, for immediately afterwards the Chief
Justice orders Falstaff and his company to the Fleet prison; and in
"King Henry V." we are told that the King's condemnation broke
Falstaff's heart and made the old jester's banishment eternal. To find
Shakespeare more severe in judgement than the majority of spectators and
readers is so astonishing, so singular a fact, that it cries for
explanation. I think there can be no doubt that the tradition which
tells us that Shakespeare in his youth played pranks in low company
finds further corroboration here. He seems to have resented his own
ignominy and the contemptuous estimate put upon him by others somewhat
extravagantly.

"Presume not that I am the thing I was;"

--is a sentiment put again and again in Prince Henry's mouth; he is
perpetually assuring us of the change in himself, and the great results
which must ensue from it. It is this distaste for his own loose past and
"his misleaders," which makes Shakespeare so singularly severe towards
Falstaff. As we have seen, he was the reverse of severe with Angelo in
"Measure for Measure," though in that case there was better ground for
harshness. "Measure for Measure," it is true, was written six or seven
years later than "Henry IV.," and the tragedy of Shakespeare's life
separates the two plays. Shakespeare's ethical judgement was more
inclined to severity in youth and early manhood than it was later when
his own sufferings had deepened his sympathies, and he had been made
"pregnant to good pity," to use his own words, "by the art of knowing
and feeling sorrows." But he would never have treated old Jack Falstaff
as harshly as he did had he not regretted the results, at least, of his
own youthful errors. It looks as if Shakespeare, like other weak men,
were filled with a desire to throw the blame on his "misleaders." He
certainly exulted in their punishment.

It is difficult for me to write at length about the character of the
King in "Henry V.," and fortunately it is not necessary. I have already
pointed out the faults in the painting of Prince Henry with such
fullness that I may be absolved from again dwelling on similar weakness
where it is even more obvious than it was in the two parts of "Henry
IV." But something I must say, for the critics in both Germany and
England are agreed that "'Henry V.' must certainly be regarded as
Shakespeare's ideal of manhood in the sphere of practical achievement."
Without an exception they have all buttered this drama with extravagant
praise as one of Shakespeare's masterpieces, though in reality it is one
of the worst pieces of work he ever did, almost as bad as "Titus
Andronicus" or "Timon" or "The Taming of the Shrew." Unfortunately for
the would-be judges, Coleridge did not guide their opinions of "Henry
V."; he hardly mentioned the play, and so they all write the absurdest
nonsense about it, praising because praise of Shakespeare has come to be
the fashion, and also no doubt because his bad work is more on the level
of their intelligence than his good work.

It can hardly be denied that Shakespeare identified himself as far as he
could with Henry V. Before the King appears he is praised extravagantly,
as Posthumus was praised, but the eulogy befits the poet better than the
soldier. The Archbishop of Canterbury says:

... "When he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences."

the Bishop of Ely goes even further in excuse:

..."The prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness."

And this is how the soldier-king himself talks:
"My learned lord, we pray you to proceed
And justly and religiously unfold
Why the law Salique that they have in France
Or should, or should not bar us in our claim;
And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,
That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading ..."

All this is plainly Shakespeare and Shakespeare at his very worst; and
there are hundreds of lines like these, jewelled here and there by an
unforgetable phrase, as when the Archbishop calls the bees: "The singing
masons building roofs of gold." The reply made by the King when the
Dauphin sends him the tennis balls has been greatly praised for
manliness and modesty; it begins:

"We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard."

The first line is most excellent, but Shakespeare found it in the old
play, and the bragging which follows is hardly bettered by the pious
imprecation.

Nor does the scene with the conspirators seem to me any better. The
soldier-king would not have preached at them for sixty lines before
condemning them. Nor would he have sentenced them with this
extraordinary mixture of priggishness and pious pity:

"K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy. Hear your
sentence.
* * * * *
Touching our person seek we no revenge;
But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death,
The task whereof, God of His mercy give
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences!"

This "poor miserable wretches" would go better with a generous pardon,
and such forgiving would be more in Shakespeare's nature. Throughout
this play the necessity of speaking through the soldier-king embarrasses
the poet, and the infusion of the poet's sympathy and emotion makes the
puppet ridiculous. Henry's speech before Harfleur has been praised on
all hands; not by the professors and critics merely, but by those who
deserve attention. Carlyle finds deathless valour in the saying: "Ye,
good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England," and not deathless valour
merely, but "noble patriotism" as well; "a true English heart breathes,
calm and strong through the whole business ... this man (Shakespeare)
too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that." I find no valour in
it, deathless or otherwise; but the make-believe of valour, the
completest proof that valour was absent. Here are the words:

"K. Hen. Once more unto the breach, dear friends,
once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base...."

And so on for another twenty lines. Now consider this stuff: first comes
the reflection, more suitable to the philosopher than the man of action,
"in peace there's nothing so becomes a man..."; then the soldier-king
wishes his men to "imitate" the tiger's looks, to "disguise fair
nature," and "lend the eye a terrible aspect." But the man who feels the
tiger's rage tries to control the aspect of it: he does not put on the
frown--that's Pistol's way. The whole thing is mere poetic description
of how an angry man looks and not of how a brave man feels, and that it
should have deceived Carlyle, surprises me. The truth is that as soon as
Shakespeare has to find, I will not say a magical expression for
courage, but even an adequate and worthy expression, he fails
absolutely. And is the patriotism in "Ye, good yeomen, whose limbs were
made in England" a "noble patriotism"? or is it the simplest, the
crudest, the least justifiable form of patriotism? There is a noble
patriotism founded on the high and generous things done by men of one's
own blood, just as there is the vain and empty self-glorification of
"limbs made in England," as if English limbs were better than those made
in Timbuctoo.

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