As a history, the Shakespearean Henriad presents a detailed analysis of the period of
transition in political philosophy which defined the dynastic struggles of the post-crusade world. Beginning with the downfall of Richard II and culminating in the reign of Henry V, each of the kings respective plays demonstrates a particular crisis within the Machiavellian political structure: in Richard II, the triumph of concentrated brutality in the form of Bolingbroke over the kings empty poetics; in Henry IV, the collapse of traditional power through revolution and the struggle for ascension in the midst of an ethical vacuum; and in Henry V, the ruthlessness of a good king. Current paradigm shifts in Shakespearean criticism have significantly limited the analysis of the Henriac tetrad to either a purely historicist study of early modern political power (an approach favoured by more recondite or scholastic-leaning critics) or an exercise in sheer bardolatry (a group primarily, of course, following in the footsteps of Blooms Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human). However, while much of the focus of the plays is indeed historical - for after all, they are, at the end of the day, histories - such reductionist analyses have ignored much of the power of the four plays, overemphasizing their roles as either political commentary or Shakespearean masterpiece, and are perfunctory readings at best. Focusing too much on either interpretation forsakes the plays true collective value as a brilliant examination of the cycles of ideology. While each of the four plays has their own respective value, the crux of the ideological weight of the tetrad lies in 1 Henry IV, however, which presents the most compelling examination of Prince Hals transformation from reckless teenage wastrel into Machiavellis paradigmatic prince, Henry V. As he straddles the worlds of the tavern and the royal court, we are shown a world in which a knight is a cowardly libertine, a prince a prodigal rake, and a king Yan 2 a usurping murderer. The world of Henry IV is a vacuum, a Bakhtinian carnival: a world in which individuals, unleashed from the traditional world views and societal roles which normally bind them, are thrust onto a stage of sorts, forced to reimagine and perform new roles and potentialities, or else face their ends. The primary ideology that prevails throughout the four plays is the common ideology of the Middle Ages, which revolves primarily around a system of castes which is upheld through a complex interaction of endogamy, occupational heredity and rigid sociopolitical stratification - all contained within the microcosm of a kingdom. By 1400, when the Henriad takes place, the concept of nobility contained by physical boundaries (ie, in the castle structure which has become nearly iconic of the period) has all but disintegrated. Post-Renaissance developments in English and Italian political philosophy gave nascency to a modern political structure in which the power of a king became significantly more fluid, and the king became less of a figurehead of power and more of a king of the people. This transition from old power to an emergent secular modernity has in turn created a vacuum of power in which tradition has broken down, and everything (except, arguably, extreme violence, even that which still is tenably tolerated) is permitted. It is in this condition, what Bakhtin defines as the world of the carnivalesque, that the dominant figures of the Henriad begin to take their roots, and flourish. In order to define Bakhtins carnival, one must first define the concept of ideology, which is critical to the understanding of the carnival and its relation to normal (or, traditional) values. Kavanagh, in Ideology, defines the eponymous concept through Marxist theory as an agent of power. Rather than constant reliance on force (which he notes includes police and legal court), which he notes is an expensive and inefficient way to assure the stable reproduction of class relations (Kavanagh 308), it is ideology that simultaneously introduces and maintains stability Yan 3 within a sociopolitical structure. Ideology is presented as a subtle force to which the prevalent perceptions of social relations conform. Kavanagh states that, ideology, rather than force, is the primary means of managing social contradictions and reproducing class relations (308), and thus, ideology can be interpreted as an oppressive power structure. Society is divided along ideological fissures, which themselves are divided along politaxonomic fissures, race, ethnicity, gender, political affiliation, and so on. Each of these divides can represent a particular ideological concept, the interpretation and enforcement of which Fiske defines as Althussers interpellation. Similar to both Althusser and Kavanagh, Fiske defines ideology as a means of passive societal control, which produce[s] in people the tendency to behave and think in socially acceptable ways (Fiske 312). Contrasted with state-sponsored repressive institutions such as police and prisons (which, as Fiske points out, are no longer viable structures of primary control in a post-Foucauldian society), ideology is expressed in the form of social norms, which are by definition, [...] slanted in favor of a particular class or group of classes but are accepted as natural by other classes, even when the interests of those other classes are directly opposed by the ideology reproduced by living life according to those norms.
Thus, Fiskes definition of ideology as a construct of oppression, albeit a subtle and insidious form, corresponds with Kavanaghs. Interpellation, then, is the means by which the prevalent ideology is imposed upon the individual, and the process by which the individual is turned into a social object, and either upholds or resists this process. However, the concepts of ideology and interpellation are only relevant in societies which are rigidly constructed, and functional. In analyzing 1 Henry IV, which takes place in a period of societal turmoil and upheaval, normal ideologies are no longer applicable since traditional power structures have been rendered defunct in the lack of interpellative enforcment. Bakhtin sought Yan 4 through an analysis of pagan and folk writers such as Rabelais, who were well acquainted with conditions of societal decay, an explanation for human behaviours in the event of such societal collapse or upheaval, and sought to define the ideologies which arise in the collapse of prevailing ideologies. This collapse is what Bakhtin identified as the carnival: the last rapture before the solemnity of Lent, a period of prodigal excess when prohibitions on carnal indulgence are lifted and the energy of the society is devoted entirely to extravagance and insatiable sin. The normal heads of society (the court and the church) are decapitated, and the very hegenomy not only subverted, but inverted. The jester becomes king, and the drunkards and whores the royal court. It is the reign of what Bakhtin called the grotesque body - the apotheosis of the visceral, the excretive, the micturitive, and the reproductive; an ascension of corporeal existence over spiritual existence, and an upheaval of the repulsive natures which the church and the crown have attempted to either ignore or repress. Carnival is a reminder to the people that when the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box; that shit is shit, whether it be that of the lowliest whore or of the most highborn lady, or even the pope himself. It is an alternative social space, characterized by freedom, equality and absurdity, and possessive of a self-contained, autotelic subjectivity - a spectacle in which the queen can be seen in the bed of a ploughman and the leper adorned with diadem and scepter. In the Henriac structure, it is in the character of Falstaff, the portly knight-turned-jester, that the carnival manifests. Hailed as Shakepeares greatest comic character, Falstaff, from his first lines of dialogue in 1 Henry IV, is introduced as a carnivalesque body, defiant of both time and standard restriction. Hal. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured Yan 5 taffeta, I see no reason why thou couldst be so superfluous to demand the time of day. (1 Henry IV. I.ii.6-11)
His only sense of the passage of time is represented by images of basal pursuits: drunkenness and whoredom, in particular. Objects which are commonly exalted as symbols of order - namely, the sun, a symbol of traditional power, and clock readings, symbols of urgency and schedule - are replaced with sensual preoccupations in the world of the carnival. His figure, corpulent and aging, is associated with the excess and decay characteristic of societal upheaval, and the symbolic figure of the Fat Man. Prince Hal, lean and youthful, represents the antithesis of the carnival. As a portent of the coming age of the rationalistic and effectively bourgeois hegemony of seventeenth-century Europe, within the structure of the carnival, he acts as the figure of Lent, diametrically opposed to Falstaff, and symbolically contained with the caricature of the Thin Man. As once prince and future king, he represents the order which, subdued by carnival, is forced to acquiesce with the chaos of the primal urges until Lent falls; after which, order and utopian materialism take reign. Amidst the disorganization and madness of the carnival, the character of Lent still retains internal order, and understands that he must endure the anarchy before he can usher in peace and stability. Hal, through his stirring soliloquy in Act I, explicitly associates himself with this Machiavellian deception. As he walks amongst the drunkards and beggars, he proleptically speaks of his triumphant transformation which will one day make him the glorious Henry V, comparing himself to the sun: 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 wondred at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapors that did seem to strangle him. (Henry IV, Part 1. I, ii, 202-208) Yan 6
In his reformation, Hal is able to effectively take complete control of the carnival, and emerge as the true king, usurping Falstaff. Like the director of a play wandering his own set (an idea which foreshadows the famous scene in Henry V, where, as the titular king, he wanders disguised amongst the soldiers gathered before the Battle of Agincourt), Hal is able to see through the carnival and transcend it not only by realizing his own role in the carnivalesque, but by ultimately appropriating it to serve his own purposes. It is in the parody of royal nobility in the Boars Head Tavern in Act II, scene iv of 1 Henry IV that the ultimate conflict between the two opposing ideologies of Lent and carnival takes place. Often regarded as the zenith of Falstaffs performances, the scene represents the most explicitly carnivalized episode within the entire Henriad. Falstaff and Hal, engaging in an extempore performance for the other denizens of the bar, mock each other and the other important characters in the play through humorous imitations. Significantly, Falstaff begins the parody by impersonating the king so that he may indirectly extoll himself and the values he upholds. Through his impersonation, he subverts the traditional king, and effectively becomes the king of the carnival, his brief reign celebrating the virtues of the flesh above all others. Even his speech becomes a travesty of the dignified Euphuism which the aging Henry IV is fond of, replete with stilted rhetorical devices and recondite wordplays. In a subsequent reversal of roles, the carnival king is dethroned in accordance to the norms of the carnival; and the legitimate heir, the Lenten prince, replaces him upon the mock throne. Hal, taking up the role of his own father, impetuously indicts Falstaff in character, who is ironically playing the role of Hal himself. In his merciless rebuke of the prodigal and portly wastrel, Hal foreshadows his later abandonment of Falstaff upon his own ascension; even here, as the king in this play-within-a-play, he unconsciously attempts to strike down Falstaff at the Yan 7 height of his performance, which will literally happen later when he himself ascends to the crown and all but abandons his fat friend. Falstaff, sensing the suddenly-serious turn the mockery has taken and perhaps even glimpsing his own symbolic dethronement, responds with an equally impassioned and profoundly moving eulogy of not just himself, but the entire carnival: If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be merry be a sin, than many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharoahs lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord: banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harrys company, banish not him thy Harrys company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world! (Henry IV, Part 1. II. iv. 476-86)
The princes response to his friends grim prophecy is curt, and disturbingly blunt: I do, I will. Though he is still acting under the guise of his fathers royal condemnation, his response hits a personal note. The passage from present tense to future tense intimates Hals understanding that one day, the carnival will end, and when it does, he will have to abandon Falstaff. The latters insistence in itself is not just an attempt at self-preservation, but an attempt to preserve the very ideology embodied within the heart of the carnivalesque - the end of history. Thus, the more complex shades of Falstaffs character become apparent in his frequent attempts to espouse the infinite suspension of history, the superordinate goal of the carnivalesque. His placement within the context of a linear and historical consciousness breeds a dissonance which he attempts to allay by deliberately corrupting various histories in which other characters have partaken. His earlier deceptions regarding his failed robbery at the hands of a disguised Hal, and Hals subsequent pickpocketing in the tavern are only part lies; more so, they are deliberate acts of historical subversion, and carnivalesque resistance against the imminent coming of Lent. This dissonance is best exemplified by the final interaction between him and Hal upon the battlefield. In his final act of carnivalesque resistance in 1 Henry IV, he attempts to destroy Yan 8 the continuity of Hals victory over Hotspur by recreating an antiheroic version of the latters death. Pretending to be dead, he surreptitiously watches Hals confrontation with Hotspur, which, within the characterization of Henry IV as a history, serves as the climax. Within Hals plotline, his slaying of Hotspur signifies his symbolic destruction of the revolution, and the emergentroots of his reign as new ideological king. Thus emerges the beginnings of a linear history, which is that of the nascent Henry V. However, the play does not end here. Rather, Shakespeare allows Falstaff to rise from the dead, much like the mythical Fat Man of the carnival rises after a period of metaphorical annihilation, and usurp the princes honourable slaying. For most people, Falstaffs claim of victory over Hotspur serves only as an indication of his tremendous ethical insensibility. His diatribe against honour just shortly before the battle only seems to strengthen the audiences perception of his cowardice. His dismisal of honour as a mere scutcheon (1 Henry IV. V.i.138) seems at face value a moral infirmity, a great cowardice; however, his later words upon approaching Hotspurs fallen body serve as affirmative vindication against this perception. 'Sblood twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit: to die is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit a dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. (1 Henry IV. V.iv.120-26)
Here, Falstaff simultaneously presents a celebration of the carnivalesque celebration of man's life above all other values - honour included - and a denial of history and heroism. No matter what the ideologically solemn king of Lent will achieve, there will always be an underlying chaos to it suggesting the eventual collapse of the order into carnival, just as Falstaffs reign gave way to Hals. History, Falstaff suggests in his rejection of Hals heroism, is counterfeit, and given to false displays of honour and nobility. Hal himself, who, standing over Hotspurs body, briefly Yan 9 glimpses this absurdity of honour addressing his fallen friend ("When that this body did contain a spirit,/A kingdom for it was too small a bound,/But now two paces of the vilest earth /Is room enough" [1 Henry IV, V. iv. 88-91]), and is able to recognize that that which once inspired a great mans ambition and valour can within a heartbeat reduce him to nothing more than dust and food for worms. Perhaps it is this realization that inspires his subsequent willingness to accept Falstaffs conviction that there is truth in deception, and that a dead honoured man is worse off than a deceptive live man. Although his defeat of Hotspur has marked his emergence as the good king, Hal is nevertheless still in the impression of carnival, and he has not yet altogether renounced appetite in favour of law. Thus, by the time of Hals coronation, while Falstaff is displaced, denounced, and negated as by his very own prophecy, he still persists as a pervasive counter-ideology to the stultifying sovereignty of utopian civil policy which his old friend has set forth. Though he has been abolished first from the court and then from his former friends very person, he remains a constant presence in the kings mind. And though the Lenten figure has triumphed in the public agon of the carnival, he has succeeded only in temporary victory, a victory which has been perpetuated only by a willed forgetting: that of the carnivals resurgence. Shakespeares ability to portray accurately a power struggle that only began to be understood nearly four centuries after his time reflects the true staggering prophetic and intuitive capacity of the Henriad, and here is where the true power of the plays lies. The triumph of Henry IV, and the Henriad on a more general level, is not in its depiction of a history, or even in its depiction of history as carnival, both of which too many prior and contemporary works have explored; but rather, it is the depiction of history as nonlinear and infinitely mutable, a legal fiction. Through the character Falstaff, Shakespeare was able to Yan 10 construct a character perfectly embodying the carnivalesque not just in virtue but in representation; and in Hal, the antithesis, the ideal Machiavellian philosopher-king. Through their struggle, he has crafted an understanding of history that is remarkably modern and complex, that fully captures both the public and the private struggles of the Bakhtinian struggle for ideology. The reign of Lent exists only through the willful of repression of the silent schizoidal conflict which it has installed in place of the prominent agon of the carnival. For beneath all the supposed seriousness and ideological 'gravity' of Lenten history lies the comedy of the carnival, a fallen Falstaff. However serious the issues plaguing man may seem, beneath it all is one long running joke. And though the king of carnival has been seemingly dethroned, he shall rise again. And though Lent can conceal the laughter, it cannot hide a sardonic smirk of recognition that one day, it too shall end, and chaos shall reign once more.
Hotspur Has Boundless Courage and Energy But He Lacks The Political Acumen To Be A Serious Threat To The Throne, To What Extent Does This Reflect Your Understanding of The Play