The prince and the rogue

I once read all Shakespeare's historical plays in chronological order. Not in the order he wrote them, but in the order of the historical events they supposedly relate. (See historical notes.)

Like many before me, I discovered that (1) the historical plays are of very uneven quality, (2) the historical plays are not historically accurate, (3) you don't have to know history to appreciate the best of them, and (4) my school teachers were right — Henry IV, Part 1 is the one to read, if you are likely to read only one. 

Part 2 is almost as good and Henry V is all right too. But Henry IV, Part 1 introduces the ever-popular rascal, Falstaff, whose subplots steal the play from the more serious and boring themes of maturation and responsibility exemplified by the young prince Hal and his father Henry IV. 

This also is the play in which Hal first makes the transition from fun-loving member of Falstaff's band of rogues to responsible prince-in-waiting, and comes to his father's defence. This makes for greater drama than in Part 2, which more or less continues the transformation and is most interesting for Hal's discarding of the hopeful Falstaff in the end. 

Reading the historical plays in order also made clearer for me the biases that Shakespeare wove into the dramas, based either on his self-interest as a playwright dependent on the pleasure of his current monarch (Elizabeth I and James I, both of the Tudor line) or on the unreliable sources of the day from which he drew his plots. The Henrys IV, V, VII and VIII were definitely good guys in his books. 

Shakespeare was writing when the British monarch had long ago given up the Divine Right of Kings and ruled as the accepted embodiment of the nation. A king or queen was seen as sacrificing his or her own personal benefit for the sake of England. Symbolized by the monarch, Britain was forging ahead to new heights of commerce, exploration and art. Backing royalty against the rebellious parties that would break up the kingdom was to promote not an individual despot, but the unity of the nation in this period of growth. In Shakespeare's plays, characters are always warning that a united England can never be defeated from without, only by internal division. As a dramatic device, the internal divisions are often mirrored by contradictions within the hearts and minds of the monarchs at the centre of the action. Their resolution of these contradictions, or their overthrow, is what leads the nation forward.

This was a time when the interests of the people seemed to coincide with the interests of a dutiful monarch. In the history plays, we see Shakespeare's favoured monarchs are those thought to have had the interests of the nation most at heart — the Henrys (though he has to spin-doctor the behaviour of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, quite a bit to make him fit, and Henry VI is represented as pathetic more than bad, and not as evil as the Yorkists who seek his overthrow). The kings he disparages are those portrayed as placing their own interests above the nation — John, Richard II and III.

In Henry IV, the king is certainly cast in the mould of duty before self — "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" (from Part 2) and all that. The prince's transformation is seen as a response to this duty, rather than to personal ambition, and in Henry V the prince, now king himself, becomes the most embodiment of the English nation to date in his patriotically inspiring performance at the battle of Agincourt.

Shakespeare though is hardly a jingoistic sword-rattler. He also knows many in his audience side with Falstaff's own cynical views that "honour is a mere scutcheon", and the exploits of this bumbling rogue are played to their entertaining hilt, to make Hal's acceptance of princely responsibility all the more profound.

— Eric