Shakespeare's Kings (40 page)

the King emphasizes the point yet again. In fact they were separated by twenty-three years. Hotspur, born in
1364,
was already thirty-eight at the
Battle
of Homildon Hill. The young Prince of Wales was fifteen -a little young even for roistering.

his
calling
Hotspur
a
traitor
and
drawing
his
dagger.
'Not
here’
cried Hotspur,
'but
in
the
field!'
and
strode
out
of
the
assembly.
The
die
had been
cast.

Shakespeare,
in
I.iii,
is
once
again
obliged
to
conflate
several
scenes into
one,
in
which
he
is
guilty
of
a
number
of
minor
inaccuracies.
Apart from
those
already
mentioned,
he
confuses
the
Edmund
Mortimer
who was
Glendower's
prisoner
and
later
his
son-in-law
with
his
nephew and
namesake
who
was
technically
heir
to
the
throne;
he
identifies
the English
Earls
of
March
(who
were
Mortimers)
with
the
Scottish
ones (who
were
not);
and
he
suggests
that
Hotspur
had
tried
to
keep
back all
his
prisoners,
rather
than
Douglas
alone
—
even
though,
with
the extraordinary
'popinjay'
speech
(I.iii.28-68),
he
gives
him
an
admirable excuse
for
doing
so.
The
discussion
then
turns
from
the
prisoners
to Mortimer,
whom
the
King
accuses
of
having

wilfully betray'd

The lives of those that he did lead to fight

Against that great magician, damn'd Glendower

while
Hotspur
furiously
denies
the
charges.
After
Henry's
departure, the
action
continues
with
the
return
of
Northumberland's
brother Thomas,
Earl
of
Worcester,
and
the
decision
of
all
three
Percys
to
join Ri
chard
Scrope,
Archbishop
of
York,
in
his
intended
rebellion.
¹

The
entire
scene,
which
runs
to
nearly
three
hundred
lines,
is
dominated
by
Hotspur.
To
Holinshed
-
who
seems
first
to
have
given
him his
nickname
-
he
is
simply
the
'capteine
of
high
courage'
that
his
name suggests;
in
Samuel
Daniel's
Ciuile Warr
es
we
see
him
certainly
as youthful,
but
also
as
'rash'
and
'furious';
only
with
Shakespeare
does
he emerge
as
a
knight
sans peur et sans reproche,
a
young
man
of
dazzling brilliance,
unfailing
courage
and
volcanic
energy,
for
whom
war
is
not so
much
a
political
instrument
as
the
path
to
glory:

By
heaven, methinks
it
were
an easy leap

To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd moon,

1
.
Shakespeare suggests that the reason for the Archbishop's disaffection is Henry's execution of his 'brother' William, Earl of Wiltshire, with Bushey and Green at Bristol three years before. The two were in fact cousins.

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,

And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,

So he that doth redeem her thence might wear

Without
corrival all her dignities. . .’

Unstable
he
may
have
been,
impatient
and
intolerant
as
well;
but
for Shakespeare
he
was
a
star.
Far
more
than
Prince
Hal,
he
is
the
true
hero of
the
play
and
its
most
memorable
character
-
excepting
only
Sir
John Falstaff
himself.

And
what
of
Falstaff
?
He
certainly
gave
his
creator
a
great
deal
of trouble.
One
of
Shakespeare's
minor
sources
for
these
histories
was
an anonymous
play
of
little
if
any
merit,
entitl
ed
The Famous Victories of Henry V
and
published
some
three
years
before
Henry IV Part I.
In
it he
found
a
character
named
Sir
John
Oldcastl
e
who
figured
as
one
of the
young
prince's
drinking
companions,
and
innoce
ntly
introduced him
into
his
own
play.
On
its
first
production,
both
the
play
as
a whole
and
the
character
of
Oldcastle
in
particular
caught
the
public imagination;
but
after
the
staging
of
Henr
y IV Part II
there
was
a
furious protest
from
Oldcastl
e's
descendant,
Lord
Cobham,
and
his
family.
Far from
being
a
drunkard
and
a
coward,
they
pointed
out,
Oldcastle
had been
High
Sheriff
of
Herefordshire,
had
fought
with
courage
in
the Welsh
wars,
and
in
1411
had
distinguished
himself
in
Arundel's expedition
to
St
Cloud.
Two
years
later
he
had
been
accused
of
being a
Lollard
-
a
follower
of
John
Wycliffe
³
-
and
arrested;
subsequently he
had
escaped
from
prison,
but
in
1417
he
had
been
recaptured
and burnt
at
the
stake
as
a
heretic.
In
1563
he
had
gained
a
place
in John
Foxe's
celebrated
Book of Martyrs.
Not
surprisingly
therefore, the
Cobhams
were
outraged
at
this
defamation
of
their
ancestor
and demanded
changes.

1.
I.iii.
199-205.

2.
Obviously not before, since the abb
reviation 'Old', instead of 'Fal’
, occurs at
I.ii
.138
in the Quarto edition of
1600.
We do not know why the Cobham family
waited so long before complaining; perhaps they were prepared to overlook
Part
I
just
as they had overlooked
The Famous Victories,
but could not accept the grosser travesty
of
Part II.

3.
See pp.
57, 153.

The
family
was
too
powerful
to
be
ignored,
and
Shakespeare
saw that
something
must
be
done.
Rather
than
create
a
new
character altogether,
however,
he
turned
to
the
first
of
his
early
King Henry VI
plays
and
resurrected
another
historical
figure,
Sir
John
Fastolf,
whom he
transmuted
into
'Falstaff’
.
In
the
earlier
play
he
had
already
portrayed him
as
an
arrant
coward,
who
had
deserted
the
gallant
Lord
Talbot both
at
the
Battle
of
Patay
and
then
again
before
Rouen,
and
had
been stripped
of
his
Garter
and
banished
in
consequence;
but
this
too
seems in
retrospect
to
have
been
somewhat
unfair.
Fastolf
had
in
fact
fought bravely
at
Agincourt,
and
had
later
been
appointed
Governor
of
Maine and
Anjou
and
Regent
of
Normandy.
Only
in
1429
at
Patay
had
he failed:
his
men
put
to
flight
by
Joan
of
Arc,
had
deserted
him,
and Talbot
had
been
captured.
But
if
there
was
a
subsequent
inquiry
he
had been
exonerated,
and
he
kept
his
Garter
until
his
death.