“Hotspur comes from an older world of drama. The king’s descriptions of Percy, “Mars in swaddling-clothes” and “his infant warrior” (3.2.112–113), have a definitive mythological ring to them. The King bemoans the comparison of the two Harrys,Ī son who is the very theme of honour’s tongue. Hotspur, fiery-tempered and impetuous, is nevertheless valor and heroism personified. The realms of Glendower and the King have their effect on Hal but the dichotomy of the worlds of Hotspur and Falstaff, with their differing concepts of “honour,” seems to be where his real inner battles lie. Falstaff himself points out in 2 Henry IV, that the drinking of sack has, “in Hal warmed the cold Bolingbrokian blood.”
This befriending serves a deeper purpose. Hal’s dilemma is grappling with the fine line between the unapproachable ruler into which his father has morphed and the merits of befriending one’s subjects in order to better understand and love them. “The England of Henry IV is a fallen world, a world, we might say, made up too much of politics and plotting, and not enough of fellowship and love” (Garber, 321). Henry simultaneously faces a second rebellion, the recalcitrant rebels/revelers of Eastcheap under Falstaff’s tutelage. He ceases to be the tour de force we witness in Richard II. Unable to dulcify former allies, he becomes aloof, defensive, and resolute.
Henry iv part 1 i know you all full#
No longer the confident soldier/statesman, he is now full of complaint at the thought of battle, “we doff our easy robes of peace/ To crush our old limbs in ungentle steel” (5.1.12–13). Act 3 scene 2 further reveals that he views Hal’s irresponsible behavior as an affliction caused by his sins. Henry feels the disasters perched over his kingdom are punishments from God. King Henry is a man weighed down by a double sin, the usurpation of Richard’s throne and the subsequent murder of Richard” (316). Henry has aged from the Bolingbroke of Richard II. Garber again points out, “His very first words in act 1, ‘So shaken as we are, so wan with care,’ seem personal rather than general or public. The court of Henry IV is a world of skepticism and wariness. Hotspur will rue his disrespectfulness when in act 5, Glendower eschews the battle at Shrewsbury citing he is “overruled by prophesy” (4.4.18). The disrespect Hotspur shows Glendower, supposedly an ally, encapsulates the colliding worlds of the wizard-magician versus the warrior-cynic. an outmoded way of looking at human events” (Garber, 319). “Glendower and his family thus represent. Glendower. I can call spirits from the vasty deep.īut will they come when you do call for them? (3.1.12–21, 51–53) If you suppose it as fearing you it shook. Hotspur. And I say the earth was not of my mind Glendower. I say the earth did shake when I was born. Had but kittened, though yourself had never been born. The frame and huge foundation of the earth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Glendower, or Glyndwr, the last Welshman to proclaim himself “Prince of Wales,” envisions himself invincible, an indomitable wizard-magician: Wales was populated with bards spreading folklore, magical warriors, and even wild Welshwomen in Henry Vand Cymbeline. Shakespeare wrote of the supernatural when referencing Wales, a place full of mystical mountains and vales. Let’s examine these four worlds beginning with the least influential and graduating forward. Marjorie Garber identifies them as “each a vital sphere of influence: the court world ruled by King Henry the tavern presided over by Falstaff the world of the rebels, which is also the world of the countryside and of the feudal lords, dominated by Hotspur and the world of Wales, a world of magic and music, represented by Owen Glendower” ( Shakespeare After All, 318). Several reasons may be posited for Auden’s high praise, but among them has to be the unique structure that many critics have defined as the four dramatic spheres or worlds in Henry IV Part One. “It is difficult to imagine that a historical play as good as Henry IV will ever again be written” ( Lectures on Shakespeare, W.
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