Political Animal. Victor L. Cahn
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outside the Prince’s company. When the two were together, Falstaff’s jibes were aimed at his superior, and therefore their impudence was inspiring. But when he lounges alone in this setting, his gargantuan mind and manners seem wasted on figures unworthy of him. Such a feeling will recur with increasing poignancy in this play and in Part 2.
When the Prince returns here, so does a comforting tone, as he and Falstaff resume bawdy jokes about Mistress Quickly. The Prince then defuses Falstaff’s accusation against the Hostess by confessing that Hal himself stole, then repaid, the money in question, and we are reminded how terms of finance suffuse Hal’s language (Garber 330). In his first soliloquy, he prepared to “pay the debt I never promised” (I, ii, 209). Later he returned the money stolen at Gad’s Hill, and in the previous scene he promised his father to “redeem all this on Percy’s head” (III, ii, 132). Here he commands Falstaff to meet him in the Temple Hall:
There shalt thou know thy charge, and there receive
Money and order over their furniture.
The land is burning, Percy stands on high,
And either we or they must lower lie.
(III, iii, 201–204)
Why is Hal preoccupied with payment? Is he assuming responsibility for his father’s debt to England over the conflict caused by the usurpation of the throne? As usual, we cannot be certain of the Prince’s motivations, but these last lines suggest that he is seized by exigency. In other words, his public role has begun to supersede his private pleasure. Falstaff, however, is unimpressed: “Rare words! brave world! Hostess, my breakfast, come!/ O, I could wish this tavern were my drum!” (III, iii, 205–206). He never will understand either Hal’s passion or sense of responsibility, and that deficiency becomes intrinsic to Falstaff’s wondrousness as well as his downfall:
His misrule generates fun in contrast to the greater misrule in the state, and wasting time with him separates Hal from his father, symbolically releasing him from the taint of usurpation through his mockery of the façade of piety and righteousness Bolingbroke has to maintain as king. (Foakes 92)
The closing portion of this scene has one other particularly striking set of lines, when the Prince says: “I am good friends with my father and may do any thing” (III, iii, 181–182). Does he regard the King as a tool for his own advancement? Certainly Falstaff thinks so, for he replies: “Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest . . . ” (III, iii, 183–184). Second later he adds, “Well, God be thank’d for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous” (III, iii, 190–191). However willing Hal may be to fight, Falstaff regards war as yet another opportunity for thievery. This devotion to self has a bizarre charm, but it is also part of the teaching that Hal adapts for his own ends.
In Act IV, scene i, Hotspur prepares for battle, and his overblown passions become almost maniacal. Earlier, for instance, he disparaged a soldier whose presence violated Hotspur’s military decorum:
He was perfumed like a milliner,
And ‘twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A poucet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took’t away again . . .
(I, iii, 36–39)
Subsequently his wife commented upon how restlessly Hotspur slept:
And thou has talk’d
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners’ ransom, and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady night . . .
(II, iii, 50–55)
At these moments Hotspur’s antics seemed isolated and therefore more amusing than worrisome. Now, however, battle looms, and we realize that his behavior will have widespread consequences.
For instance, after Worcester worries that Northumberland will not join the fight against the King, Hotspur is undeterred:
You strain too far.
I rather of his absence make this use;
It lends a lustre and more great opinion,
A larger dare to our great enterprise.
(IV, i, 75–78)
According to Hotspur, the reason behind the combat is subordinate to the opportunity for individual renown. This attitude is exacerbated when Vernon extols the appearance of Prince Henry:
I saw young Harry with his beaver on,
His cushes on his thighs, gallantly arm’d,
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel [dropp’d] down from the clouds
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
(IV, i, 103–110)
At that panegyric Hotspur shouts: “No more, no more! Worse than the sun in March,/ This praise doth nourish agues” (IV, i, 111–112). He cannot abide a figure more glamorous than himself, but also worries that his troops will be discouraged, and Hotspur does not want to lose any opportunity to fight. Finally, he ends the scene with a tragicomic couplet: “Come let us take a muster speedily./ Doomsday is near, die all, die merrily” (133–134). These words reflect someone who has lost all sense of reality. Any rational person would realize that hundreds, if not thousands, will perish in the upcoming conflict, and these victims will not necessarily understand the cause for which their lives are cut short. But Hotspur is oblivious. Whenever I read his rousing words, I am reminded of columns of soldiers adorned in their dress uniforms, marching snappily behind a flag and to the relentless beat of band music. The soldiers look impressive, but I wonder how many of them stride to their deaths. Hotspur never wonders. Or if he occasionally does, he never cares.
We contrast this attitude with the one presented by Hal in the next scene. Falstaff appears with his “charge of foot” that Hal ordered (III, iii, 186), and admits that they are:
. . . but discarded
unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers,
revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fall’n, the cankers
of a calm world and a long peace, ten times more
dishonorable ragged than an old feaz’d ancient . . .
(IV, ii, 27–31)
In other words, he has recruited dregs who could not buy their way out of service. The Prince surveys the lot, then comments: “I did never see such pitiful rascals” (IV, i, 64). He knows the fate that likely awaits them, and he refuses to romanticize it. Yet Falstaff hardly cares: “Tut, tut, good enough to toss, food for powder, food for power, they’ll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men” (IV, ii, 65–67). His callousness makes us deny some of the warm feelings for him that we previously held. He also reminds us of one of the eternal truths of history: rich men start wars, but mostly poor men die in them. This humanistic perspective gives Hal a standing he will never lose. True, over the next two plays he will become more militaristic, but even when does, his motive for fighting is never joy in combat or desire for individual glory.
This quality may be contrasted with the goals that Hotspur states in IV, iii. In response to Sir Walter Blunt’s demands to know why “You stand against anointed majesty” (IV, iii, 40), Hotspur replies that despite the earlier support of Northumberland, Worcester, and Hotspur himself that helped Henry gain the throne, the King has offered no gratitude. Instead, Hotspur claims, Henry has:
Disgrac’d me in my happy victories,
Sought to entrap me by intelligence,
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