One of the things that Shakespeare does in almost all of his works is to set up a comparison point for the hero(es) of the story. Sometimes, this is a friend, as in Macbeth vs Banquo or King Lear vs Gloucester. Most of the time, they are an antagonist. Thus, we get Othello vs Iago, Hamlet vs Laertes, or Romeo vs Tybalt. In Henry IV, the comparison point is between Prince Hal and Harry Hotspur, the two young men who will eventually meet on the battlefield at the end of the play. But this is part of a larger familial comparison since the king is going to war also against Hotspur’s father, the Earl of Northumberland. We can represent this as follows with the top row being the father and the bottom the son and heir:-
That’s the way it should be, but we know by now that it is not the way it is because Hal is not fulfilling his duties as either son or prince. Meanwhile, it is Harry Hotspur who is making waves by running amok in the north, conquering everything in his path. His deeds earn him the grudging respect of the king who laments the fact that his own son is not doing likewise. There is an irony here. Henry IV’s kingdom and his own life are under threat from the very man that he admires. Meanwhile, his eldest son, who is not causing trouble to anybody, is the one who is supposedly in the wrong.
Prince Hal is the odd one out because he has detached himself from the mentality that the other men assume, which is that the pursuit of honour on the battlefield is the sole good in life. Hal is, at the very least, exploring other possibilities. He has a mentor in that respect, and this gives us the classic Orphan-Elder relationship that appears in so many stories and which I have written about extensively in the past. Falstaff is the older man who has initiated Hal into the wrong side of the tracks known as “Eastcheap”, which was a real street in London that, in Shakespeare’s day, was the place to go if you wanted to have some fun.
(Fun etymological note: the word “cheap” used to mean “market” in English. Thus, Eastcheap was the east market. The word “cheap” is related to the German “kaufen”, meaning “to buy”).
A better way to think of the comparison that Shakespeare sets up in the story is that we have a three-way split. Hal has separated from his father and is receiving an initiation into wine, women, and song from Falstaff. Due to his recalcitrance, he has been kicked out of the royal council and his place taken by his younger brother, John of Lancaster:-
Recall that the main body of every story features a hero who enters the sacred state where their identity is un-whole, unholy, and unhealthy. The state of affairs we have described counts as sacred for several reasons. Firstly, Hal is estranged from his father and his family more generally. Secondly, he is engaging in immoral and illegal behaviour. Thirdly, his absence violates the rule of primogeniture whereby the inheritance of the father must be passed to the eldest son. His younger brother has stepped in to fill the void, but this cannot be a permanent state of affairs.
As discussed last week, the sacred state of affairs is easily rectified in the story since Hal simply rejoins his father at the start of Act 3 when the war breaks out between the king and the rebels, led by Harry Hotspur. This would be a violation of the “rules” of storytelling because the middle part of any story is supposed to be the sacred state, but what we see instead is really the holy state of a dutiful prince helping the king to win a war. But it turns out that the story is not really about Hal and his father, but something very different.
Shakespeare gives us a very different sacred state by having Hal do something wacky. Once the war breaks out, the young prince make Falstaff an officer in the army and gives him a contingent of troops to lead. Into the middle of a warzone, Shakespeare inserts the classic pleasure-loving Fool character who had been a stock figure in comedies since ancient times. He sets up a possible confrontation between a drunk, womanising criminal and the gallant but overzealous Harry Hotspur. Shakespeare is exploring what can be thought of as two parts of Hal’s identity or two models that Hal has for living. On one side is the Warrior. One the other side is the Fool.
All of this is fitting because Henry IV is a comedy and it is funny to watch Falstaff find various ways to weasel out of the fighting. But the larger theme of the story is not just a personal one in relation to Prince Hal but a matter of culture. Shakespeare calls into question an assumption that had dominated since ancient times which is that society should be organised around an ethic of military valour. The question is: does such an ethic create the need for bloody battles even in situations where there is no real reason for it. The king has offered an olive branch to the rebels but they reject it because, for them, the only way to resolve disagreements is by killing each other.
Harry Hotspur is the character who most personifies this mentality and so let’s take a moment to sketch out his journey using our now familiar three questions. 1) What is Hotspur’s starting holy state? 2) What is the sacrifice he makes to begin the transformation? 3) What may he get out of the transformation?
The answer to the first question lies in the story that precedes Henry IV in the four-play sequence that is called the “Henriad”: Richard II. As we alluded to a couple of posts ago, the main problem for Richard was that he failed to beget a son and heir, and this opened up the problem of succession for his reign. However, he is also portrayed as a weak and indecisive king who commits an injustice against his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke leads a rebellion against Richard that includes Harry Hotspur as an ally. Although his role is small in the story, Hotspur is therefore a fighter on the side of justice alongside his father. Both are allies of the future king Henry IV. This is the holy state for Hotspur.
Another relevant detail that is introduced in Henry IV is that Hotspur is married. When we bear in mind that the nation has been at peace for some time when the story begins, we might expect a young man in Hotspur’s position would settle down and have a family. Instead, what Shakespeare shows us is that Hotspur seems addicted to the thrill of battle and the honour that it wins him. The one person who doesn’t care about any of this is his wife, Kate. She complains that she never sees him, and there is a scene before the rebels commit themselves to the war where Hotspur, Mortimer and their wives enjoy a moment of domestic tenderness that doesn’t last because the young man is too eager to get into the fighting.
Shakespeare makes it clear that not only is Hotspur’s addiction to war damaging to the nation, it is damaging to his own family. Here is a man who does not know how to enjoy the finer things in life. He is always dreaming of the next battle. Since war is a sacred state, we might say that Hotspur is addicted to the sacred and cannot abide the holy state of peace. He sacrifices peace for war. That is the answer to our second question.
Our third question is, ‘What does he hope to gain from this battle?’ In truth, he has very little to gain in economic or political terms. He has some legitimate grievances against the king, but these could be easily resolved without recourse to fighting. We are led to the conclusion that Hotspur simply likes fighting for its own sake and invents whatever justifications lead to that outcome. Thus, the main thing he stands to gain is one more victory to bolster his reputation as a fearsome warrior. But he already has that reputation and one more battle isn’t going to make that much difference. Therefore, Hotspur has little to gain and everything to lose.
Hotspur is addicted to honour. Honour is the exoteric, outward-facing aspect of identity. There is nothing wrong with honour as long as it corresponds to real virtue. While Hotspur was supporting Henry Bolingbroke in a just war, his honour was deserved. However, the fighting he has been engaging in recently is based on far more spurious grounds. While it is true that he has won battles based on his obvious merits as a warrior, the question is whether those battles are themselves just. If not, are they really deserving of honour?
Hotspur’s endless striving for more honour is explicitly contrasted against the behaviour of Prince Hal at the start of the play and especially his mentor Falstaff, who is a man that is completely without honour, being a fat, ugly, petty criminal who hangs around in a bad part of town. In any other circumstances, a man like Hotspur would be judged infinitely superior to Falstaff. He is courageous, skilful, and passionate. But, as we have already alluded to, it is Hotspur who instigates a civil war which could easily have been avoided. The kingdom has been at peace, and Hotspur simply does not know what to do with himself.
Hotspur represents out-of-control ambition which seeks honour for its own sake rather than as subservient to higher principles like truth, justice, and pragmatism. In a time of peace, Hotspur insists on war. Meanwhile, Prince Hal and Falstaff are making use of the relaxed conditions to have themselves a good time, something which Hotspur seems physiologically incapable of doing.
Of course, Falstaff is no better. He is physiologically incapable of courage, discipline, and truthfulness. Shakespeare presents us with two men whose characters exhibit opposing vices. Virtue lies at the midpoint between them, and the man who sits at the midpoint is Prince Hal himself. During the peace at the start of the story, Hal hangs around with Falstaff having a good time. When war breaks out, he takes up his place at the head of the army and shows courage, valour, and skill equal to Hotspur. Hal is able to adapt to the circumstances, something which neither Hotspur nor Falstaff can achieve.
Although it is true to say that Hotspur and Falstaff are just as bad as each other, it is also true that Shakespeare does give the advantage to the Fool. There is a very good reason for that. Classical literature from ancient times all the way through the Renaissance had foregrounded heroes like Harry Hotspur. Indeed, in the ancient world, winning honour in battle was the only game in town. The same was true of the medieval world, and this led to certain dysfunctions that Shakespeare must have been aware of because he builds them into the core of the plot of Henry IV.
Prince Hal is the eldest son and, according to the rules of primogeniture, the sole heir. Families in this era had many children to make up for the high rate of infant mortality. This was especially true among the aristocracy who had the wealth to afford it. If the entire inheritance goes to the eldest son, while the daughters get married off with a dowry, what happens to the other sons? Well, for aristocratic sons in the medieval world, there was only one real option open to them, and that was to become a knight. Thus, the only option to accrue some kind of honour was to fight in battle.
Many of the younger sons of the aristocracy took this path, but it was also the case that many chose instead the exact path represented by Falstaff, i.e., crime and debauchery. The Middle Ages had a real problem with wayward younger sons of the aristocracy causing trouble. Thus, Shakespeare’s dichotomy between Falstaff and Hotspur doesn’t just work at the personal level but also at the societal.
Once we understand that, we understand another subtly of the story which is that the Bard flips the standard roles around and make the eldest son, Prince Hal, the one who engages in crime and debauchery while the younger brother, John of Lancaster, becomes the dutiful child to his father. This gives John an opportunity to win himself honour without having to leave the family, something that was denied to the younger sons in medieval times. Meanwhile, Prince Hal gets to have some fun, which was exactly what was denied to eldest sons. The result is a royal family that becomes more balanced and well-rounded by the end of the story.
The future King Hal has therefore learned something that his father is ignorant of. He has learned that the pleasures of life have their own place and should be pursued for their own sake. He has also learned that the endless striving for honour is not a good in itself. King Henry is aware of the problems caused by ambition but his solution is to try and start a war externally so that the aggression of men like Harry Hotspur is turned outwards rather than inwards. The future King Hal will have one more potential solution to that problem, which is to encourage his subjects to simply enjoy themselves.
However, it is not Hal but his Elder, Falstaff, who Shakespeare has make these points in his soliloquies in the final act of the play. Included here is the classic line “Discretion is the better part of honour”, meaning that ambition and valour are not goods in themselves but must be tempered by the pragmatism which Hotspur lacks.
But Falstaff asks an even more philosophical question: “What is honour?” He answers, “A word. What is that word honour? Air.” Honour is nothing more than the idea which other people have of you. Chasing honour therefore implies placing your self-esteem in the hands of others. That is one problem.
A second problem is that, because honour is nothing more than the opinion others have about you, it is easily tarnished by those with ulterior motives. As Falstaff notes, “Detraction will not suffer it.” The trouble with honour is that it is far too easily destroyed by slander. Thus, the pursuit of honour for its own sake is flawed because honour is too easily taken away.
As we alluded to a couple of posts ago, the royal court in the time of Shakespeare attempted to uphold the honour of the royal family by way of laws and various measures to protect against slander. But, of course, the royal court also conducted extensive propaganda, such as the fictitious story of Henry V. That is a third problem with honour. By the same process by which the bad money drives out the good, propaganda drives out truth. Honour loses value by a process almost identical to monetary inflation.
Therefore, Falstaff represents Shakespeare’s solution to the problem of honour. In a world where people are going to slander you anyway, you might as well pursue your own happiness and pay no attention to what they say. That lesson could not be more applicable than it is in our time, where the internet has made lies and slander as easy as a mouse click . You can laugh about it with Falstaff, or you can cry like Harry Hotspur.