ACT V
SCENE i
Shallow hosts Falstaff at his home and gives dinner orders to his servant Davy in a befuddled manner. Falstaff insists on being excused from dinner, but in the end of the scene will accept. (A sign of revision?) In the earlier Shallow scene, Falstaff similarly said initially he “cannot tarry dinner” (III.ii.191-192). He then recruited his four men, went to dinner while some bribing took place, then started the choosing again with “which men shall I have?” (III.ii.242); and it’s the same four (Smidt 112). So this scene with Shallow “must undoubtedly have been designed as part of a single Henry IV play and could only belong to the Shrewsbury plot” (Smidt 111); “the recruiting scene in 2 Henry IV rightly belonged with the Coventry scene in 1 Henry IV” (Smidt 112).
Some manner of in-joke involves calling on William Cook and pigeons (dupes?), and Davy reports that William lost sack at a fair (Chiljan 223-225). “William the cook … ‘lost’ or stole a sack of something at Hinckley fair and the justice practically ignored it. Plays were often performed at fairs” (Chiljan 226).
More enigmatic material concerns one William Visor of Woncote in a legal suit:
I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friend’s request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. (V.i.43-47)
The cryptic reference to this William “Visor” (mask?) who is a knave and who cannot speak for himself is intriguing (Ogburn and Ogburn 997).
Davy beseeches Justice Shallow to countenance William Visor of Woncot or Wilmcote. Though he demurs at first, saying ‘that Visor is an arrant knave,’ Shallow finally relents. William Visor would seem to be William the Mask or William the Frontman, and Wilmcote is the village near Stratford-upon-Avon from which Shakspere’s mother Mary Arden came. The exchange is irrelevant to the plot, but clearly important to the author. (Beauclerk 22)
William Visor of Woncot is to be “countenance[d]” (tolerated), as is insisted on three times (V.i.36, 42, 49) (Chiljan 225).
Of theft visor mask “William Visor was a false front for printers who issued pirated Shakespeare play editions (Chiljan 226).
Is mention of “precepts” (V.i.12) significant (Ogburn and Ogburn 998)? Speculation also includes possible allusions to the Cecils. Davy has served for eight years (V.i.45): parallel to Robert Cecil, knighted in 1590 and serving his father Burghley until the latter’s 1598 death? The name Davy could come from Sir William Davison, former Principle Secretary and scapegoat for the Mary, Queen of Scots matter, who was not asked back due to Cecil (Chiljan 226).
Shallow thinks he’s networking since Falstaff is Hal’s pal and presumably will eventually have an in at the royal court. But Falstaff has no respect for Shallow, as he makes clear: “I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep Prince Harry in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions” (V.i.78-80).
Ultimately though, Falstaff and Shallow: “they are two self-deluded old men unfit to live in Hal’s new world” (Garber 356).
SCENE ii
The Lord Chief Justice hears that Henry IV is dead and worries about his own prospects now that he’s made some enemies, meaning Prince Hal — now Henry V. Warwick agrees that he’s in trouble. In general, everyone expects the worst, and Warwick wishes Hal were more like any of the other brothers: John of Lancaster, Thomas of Clarence, or Humphrey of Gloucester. Clarence anticipates that the Chief Justice will now have to kowtow to Falstaff. But Henry V enters and assures everyone that they need not fear him:
This new and gorgeous garment, majesty,
Sits not so easy on me as you think.
Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear:
This is the English, not the Turkish court;
. . . For me, by heaven, I bid you be assured,
I’ll be your father and your brother too;
Let me but bear your love, I’ll bear your cares:
Yet weep that Harry’s dead; and so will I;
But Harry lives, that shall convert those tears
By number into hours of happiness….
You all look strangely on me:
[to Lord Chief Justice] and you most;
You are, I think, assured I love you not.
(V.ii.44-64)
The Lord Chief Justice justifies himself nobly and eloquently:
I then did use the person of your father;
The image of his power lay then in me:
And, in the administration of his law,
Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,
Your highness pleased to forget my place,
The majesty and power of law and justice,
The image of the king whom I presented,
And struck me in my very seat of judgment;
Whereon, as an offender to your father,
I gave bold way to my authority
And did commit you. If the deed were ill,
Be you contented, wearing now the garland,
To have a son set your decrees at nought,
To pluck down justice from your awful bench,
To trip the course of law and blunt the sword
That guards the peace and safety of your person;
Nay, more, to spurn at your most royal image
And mock your workings in a second body.
…
Behold yourself so by a son disdain’d;
And then imagine me taking your part
And in your power soft silencing your son:
After this cold considerance, sentence me;
And, as you are a king, speak in your state
What I have done that misbecame my place,
My person, or my liege’s sovereignty.
(V.ii.72-100)
To the man’s surprise, Hal commends the wisdom and fairness of the Chief Justice. He plans to assemble the high court of Parliament to select advisors and create a glorious reign.
Peachy, but the Lord Chief Justice will fade. “What became of the Chief Justice in Henry V?” (Goddard, I 202). “The Prince’s insincerity to his father in the crown scene is the promise of the King’s insincerity to the Chief Justice in the ‘father’ scene” (Goddard, I 202). It may also be interesting to trace this new king’s fluctuations between the royal “we” and the familiar “I” (Garber 355).
SCENE iii
Shallow, Silence, Falstaff, and Bardolph drink wine. Paradoxically, Silence becomes the life of the party when drunk and can’t be shut up or stop singing. Davy announces Pistol, who in his blustering way reveals that Henry IV has died and Henry V is now king. For future reference, take note of his use of the word “foutre” (V.iii.99, 115). Falstaff now can anticipate a life of leisure and makes grand promises to Pistol and Shallow. He also will have vengeance on the Lord Chief Justice. Silence has passed out.
SCENE iv
An uncomfortably disturbing and “sordid little episode” before the coronation, this crackdown scene, is rightly considered “uncomfortable” and often omitted from performances (Wells 150): Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet are hauled off by a Beadle and his officers to prison. Apparently order is being restored on all levels, but this seems to signal like police state dynamics. Quickly cries police brutality: a dislocated shoulder; Doll is to be publicly whipped — the punishment for prostitution. She claims to be pregnant and threatens the officials with a possible miscarriage. The Beadle is sure she’s faking pregnancy: if she miscarry, “you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now” (V.iv.14-15). Mention is made of a man or two having been killed, beaten to death by her and Pistol. Are these the consequences of excessive tolerance under Henry IV, now to be amended under a law-and-order king, Henry V?
SCENE v
The rejection scene is the climax of the play. Hal’s comic scenes have diminished in preparation for the rejection of Falstaff, the first drastic indication of the new cold and calculating Henry V. In fact, Falstaff is seen with Hal only twice in this play: in the tawdry scene of erotic pathos with Doll Tearsheet, and then this brutal insult and rejection.
Outside Westminster Abbey where the coronation will take place, the crowd cheers the approaching Henry V. Falstaff arrives with Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph, and his page. Falstaff hasn’t changed into better clothes but figures this will show how zealous he was to rush here. Falstaff has borrowed a thousand pounds from Shallow which he thinks he’ll be able to repay now that he’ll be a favored courtier; Shallow expects he’ll receive a knightship. Pistol reports of the arrest of Doll:
Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,
Is in base durance and contagious prison,
Hal’d thither
By most mechanical and dirty hand.
(V.v.33-36)
Note the short line, drawing attention to “Hal”ed?
Pistol is said to be speaking “nought but truth” (V.v.38) — sort of vero nihil verius. Falstaff thinks he will be able to arrange for Doll’s release.
When Henry passes by and Falstaff joyously greets him: “God save thee, my sweet boy! … My King, my Jove, I speak to thee, my heart!” (V.v.42-45). Perhaps Falstaff’s mistake is to address the wrong person, as it were, saying “boy” (Garber 356). In any case, the moment is “one of the most devastating in any of Shakespeare’s plays” (Garber 357). Henry’s words are:
I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see performed the tenor of our word. Set on.
(V.v.46-71)
“Henry’s chilling denial of Falstaff .. is one of the most piercing lines in the canon” (Farina 120).
Note that he subjects also Falstaff to a lecture about what an embarrassment he is, and a glutton. Henry banishes Falstaff in the form of a restraining order — Falstaff is not to come within ten miles of the King. Holingshed says riotous friends “forbidden to approach closer than that distance” (Asimov, II 417). “Falstaff is thus publicly repudiated and humiliated” (Asimov, II 417).
Is Henry a “coldhearted prig”? “Squadrons of scholars, old-style and new, offer apologies for Henry V, while reassuring us that Shakespeare realistically does not share our outrage” (Bloom 277). One finds no shortage of apologists for Henry V. “Accepting the Shakespearean situation, we must see that Falstaff had invited the public humiliation by accosting the new King publicly, and on the coronation day of all times” (Asimov, II 417). Falstaff will receive a small allowance so that he doesn’t turn to thievery to make a living. “Surely this is decent treatment” (Asimov, II 418). Hal had been “sending himself to school among the people. He is on his way, dramatically at least, to a representative and human kingship” (Garber 353). [Barf.] And we read about the “necessity” of this, that “Misrule must be banished” (Garber 357). “The king’s role … is a quintessentially lonely one, and the lack of forgiveness shown to Falstaff is part of the cost of being King” (Garber 357).
On the other hand, “Hotspur and King Henry IV are in Hal’s way, but they do not menace him inwardly. Falstaff, once Hal is crowned, becomes a figure to be dreaded, to be banished…. In the cruel speech of rejection, Henry V is at some trouble to ensure that Falstaff be given no opportunity for dialogue” (Bloom 277).
“One can’t help feeling that Hal’s transformation from theatrical and bohemian prince to worthy and glorious king is Shakespeare’s assertion that he has put his own wild days behind him, and is now more fit to rule” (Beauclerk 222). The rejection of Falstaff is Oxford’s “pledge of his commitment to fulfill his royal destiny. If only she will trust him, he will lay aside his Falstaff persona and step up to the plate” (Beauclerk 226).
Falstaff inwardly collapses. Henry moves on and Falstaff is immediately concerned about the thousand pounds he borrowed from Shallow. He tries to bluff about the former Prince Hal having to put on this show in public but that he, Falstaff, will be sent for privately; but he doesn’t believe it and neither does Shallow. The banishment resembles Oxford’s from court, though he was in fact welcomed back in a few years later. “Emotionally, however, Oxford never truly returned. The feeling of having been abandoned by the queen and his friends cut like iron into his soul, and — like Falstaff — he became a sort of perpetual exile at heart” (Beauclerk 260).
Falstaff and company all plan to go off to dinner, but the Lord Chief Justice and Prince John enter with officers and Falstaff and the rest are led off to the Fleet — London Prison. Words and wit have abandoned Falstaff, and he can only mutter, “My lord, my lord–” (V.v.92). “Shakespeare spares us the sadness of the hearing; perhaps we might venture that Shakespeare also spared himself, since nothing appropriate remains for Falstaff to experience, except for his beautiful death scene as reported by Mistress Quickly and his other survivors in Henry V” (Bloom 306).
The Chief Justice and John approve of Henry V’s resolve. “He has turned away his former self and will similarly turn away those that kept him company. And the one who expresses approval of his banishment of his followers is his sober brother Prince John” (Wells 150). They expect we’ll all be off with our “civil swords” (V.v.105) to war with France soon, oh happy day. “From snatching travelers’ purses in pure fun, Henry goes on to annexing crowns that do not belong to him in dead earnest…. An amateur retail robber becomes a professional wholesale one. ‘Leave gormandizing,’ he says to Falstaff, and turns to his attempt to swallow France” (Goddard, I 211).
EPILOGUE
An Epilogue, apparently in Shakespeare’s own voice and “written when Henry the Fifth was still only in the planning stage” (Wells 150), speaks directly of the company’s next intentions with the chronicle history. At this point we can expect more fun with Falstaff, but of course Shakespeare’s plans changed and he kills off Falstaff early in Henry V.
Soomeone, perhaps the Cobhams, objected to their ancestor Sir John Oldcastle being depicted in an earlier version of the Henry IV plays, prompting Shakespeare to change the name to Falstaff. “Oldcastle was viewed as a proto-Protestant and martyr” (Asimov, II 329). Note that Epilogue, or Shakespeare, “does not assert, as an author would nowadays do, that he is a fictitious character: he merely states that Falstaff is not Oldcastle; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man'” (Ogburn and Ogburn 716).
FINAL PERSPECTIVE
“Boldly, Shakespeare unreformed Prince Hal. Once again he had to be made to go through the mill. Once more he had to be scolded by the King, once more he had to repent and reform, once more he had to be accepted in a joyous reconciliation. What with this and the new set of rebellions, Henry IV, Part Two became an inferior repetition of Henry IV, Part One, but it was necessary if the incomparable Falstaff was to be brought back, and that meant it was worth the price” (Asimov, II 382).
Some seeming stylistic inconsistencies at one time had Shakespeareans suggesting that latter portions of the play were collaborative. An older Oxfordian explanation was that when Oxford received his short-lived commission for service in the Low Countries he left the half-done play to be finished by his secretaries/associates or the “University Wits” (Clark 746).
One way of mapping the decline is to notice how much of this play is written in prose. Almost every scene in verse is followed immediately by a longer one in prose, full of topical humor, bawdy puns, sexual innuendo and braggadocio, and endless discussions of how much things cost. The prose world is swallowing up the world of poetry…. (Garber 348)
The elder Ogburns think that part of the issue in the final version of the plays we have concerns the rightful heir inheriting vs. an outsider (Ogburn and Ogburn 1195). They also suspect that Oxford tried in the end to bequeath the Shakespeare name onto Southampton (Ogburn and Ogburn 1197): “strong internal evidence that Lord Oxford had taken up that play again near the end of his life, perhaps from a wistful desire to show Prince Hal — now the Fair Youth, a living Henry — succeeding to the throne of England” (Ogburn and Ogburn 1193; cf. 727-728, 853-854, 920).
The rejection of Falstaff makes us rethink Hal throughout the two Henry IV plays and casts an interesting shadow over the supposedly glorious flag-waving thrills of Henry V. Expect repression, a horrifying psychology portrait, and an even more horrifying roar of popularity with Henry V. It’ll be like our own times.