Henry IV, Part 1first lecture

Shakespeare’s best history play?

• Multiple structures of opposition.

• Court and political world vs. tavern world.

• Hotspur vs. Falstaff.

• Prince Hal vs. Hotspur.

• King vs. Falstaff.

• Comedy vs. historical seriousness.

• Humoral oppositions.

The humors

• The four humors?• “Sanguine”: an excess of blood; makes one cheerful,

optimistic. • “Melancholy” – an excess of black bile; makes one

gloomy, pessimistic. • “Choleric” or bilious: an excess of yellow bile in the gall

bladder; makes one angry and short tempered.• “Phlegmatic”: an excess of phlegm; makes one slow and

lethargic.• Derives originally from Hippocrates, the Greek physician

and medical writer.

Humors and their associations

• And refined by Galen, Roman medical writer.• As a medical theory it persisted into the mid 19th century.• Four elements?• Air – associated with sanguine personality.• Earth – associated with melancholy personality.• Fire – associated with choleric personality.• Water – associated with phlegmatic personality. • “Dyscrasia”: the badly mixed temperament: one humor

predominates.• “Eucrasia”: the harmonious mixing of humors. • Bodily humors understood as ascending into the brain to

produce their effects.

Hotspur

• He’s the Harry Percy, Northumberland’s son, who was introduced to Bolingbroke in Richard II amid great promises of future service and loyalty.

• I, 3, 241ff: flashback to Richard II.• In historical fact he was the same age as the

king; here Shakespeare suggests he is roughly the age of Prince Hal.

• King’s envy of Northumberland over Hotspur: I, 1, 78ff.

Hotspur’s humor?

• Angered by the “certain lord, neat and trimly dressed.”

• Anger over king’s demand for Scots prisoners: I, 3, 125ff; 211ff.

• Anger over Mortimer: I, 3, 131; 219ff. • Worcester and Hotspur: I, 3, 253ff. • His extravagant idealizing: “By heaven, methinks

it were and easy leap/ To pluck bring honor from the pale-faced moon.” (I, 3, 201ff).

• His disdain for caution, careful planning: 2, 3.

“That roan shall be my throne”

• Venus vs. Mars: II, 3, 36ff.

• “A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen/ As you are tossed with.” (l. 77-78).

• “This is no world to play with mammets and tilt with lips.”

• Quarrel with Glendower: III, 1

• His aversion to verse, poetry, III, 1, 126ff.

• His restlessness: III, 1, 231ff.

Clip of BBC production of play, III, 1, 210ff.

Falstaff’s humor?

• “What a devil hast thou to do with the time of day?” 1, 2.

• Phlegmatic humor.• His opposition to Hotspur?• Hotspur’s restless activity• Falstaff’s relentless inactivity.• Hotspur’s courage and military prowess• Falstaff’s cowardice: II, 2, 97ff.• II, 4: 132ff.

Falstaff’s fantasy of martial courage

• “What? Fought you with them all?” (II, 4, 177)

• At least fifty of them.

• Multiplying rogues in buckram suits.

• “Art thou mad, art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?”

• Falstaff’s “instinct”!

• “The lion will not touch the true prince.”

Falstaff and Hotspur• Hotspur’s military prowess.• And Falstaff’s: IV, 2, 11ff. • “Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder,

food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better. . . “

• Falstaff’s “pistol”: “’Tis hot, ‘tis hot. There’s that will sack a city.”

• Hotspur: “By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap/ To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon,/ Or dive to the bottom of the deep . . .” (I, 3, 201ff)

• Falstaff’s “catechism” of honor: V, 1, 1219.

Final stage juxtaposition of Falstaff and Hotspur

• On stage Falstaff appears dead; we need to forget what we know from stage direction: Falstaff “who fall(s) down as if he were dead.”

• Hotspur also dies.• Prince Hal stands between them.• “Oh, I should have a heavy miss of thee/ If I

were much in love with vanity.”• “Falstaff riseth up” (!)• Stabs the dead Hotspur, and picks him up.

• And claims to have killed him.

• “Why, Percy I killed myself and saw thee dead.”

• Falstaff: “Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying.”

• “If I do grow great, I’ll grow less; for I’ll purge, leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should.”

• Yeh, right!

Prince Hal between Hotspur and Falstaff

• Stage image at V, 4, may suggest his position between the humor extremes.

• But Falstaff “riseth up.”

• His use of the tavern world: “I know you all and will awhile uphold/ The unyoked humor of your idleness. . .” (I, 2, 188)

• Tavern world as foil.

• “Redeeming time.”

Hal’s reformation

• King’s characterization of the prodigal prince (III, 2): fathers and sons.

• “For all the world/ As thou art to this hour was Richard then/ When I set foot at Ravensburgh;/ And even as I was then is Percy now.”

• Hal’s claim: “I will redeem all this on Percy’s head.”

• “And I will die a hundred thousand deaths/ Ere I break the smallest parcel of this vow.”