Transcript Henry IV, Part I second lecture

Henry IV, Part I
second lecture
Falstaff!
“What a devil hast thou to do with
the time of day?” (I,2, 5)
• Falstaff seems to exist outside of time.
• In tavern scenes the plot comes to a standstill.
• A kind of anarchic figure of opposition to
everything serious.
• Lord of misrule.
• Counterpoised to Hotspur and “honor,” military
purpose.
• To the King and political purpose.
• To truth, honesty, virtue, sobriety.
Why is Falstaff likeable?
• Should we like him?
• He’s a thief, a liar, a cheat, a coward,
totally irresponsible.
• He takes bribes from honest men (though
this was legal) and drafts only the dregs of
society.
• And only three of his 150-man company
are left alive.
• Reality seems absolutely malleable in his
hands.
The cause of wit
• “Men of all sorts take a pride to gird [or mock] at
me. The brain of this foolish compounded clay,
man, is not able to invent anything that intends
to laughter more than I invent or is invented on
me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause
that wit is in other men.” (Henry IV, Part 2, I, 2).
• Hal never funny except when with Falstaff: then
F’s “sweet wag.”
• A kind of eternal war of wits between them.
Protean Falstaff
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A master of improv.
Try to follow his logic: I, 2, 57ff.
His “youth”: II, 2, 81ff.
His act in response to the robbery: II, 4, 157ff.
The multiplying rogues in buckram suits.
Acts out the battle: ll. 207-09.
“Kendall green” but too dark to see your nose.
Not “on compulsion.”
Houdini! “By the Lord, I knew yet as well as he
that made ye. . . Was it for me to kill the true
prince?”
Clip of play within play scene
from BBC video
The play within the play, II, 4, 360
• “This chair shall be my state . . .”
• “I will do it in King Cambises’ vein.”
• The style comes from Euphues, a popular fiction
about the corruption of a youth.
• Except line 415.
• “Depose me?” !!!
• Hal too does the Euphuistic turn: 432ff.
• Banish plump Jack and banish all the world”
• “I do. I will.”
• And the larger play turns . . .
“Do I not dwindle?”
• The occult effect of Hal’s repentence?
• But of course he doesn’t dwindle.
• Pretence of repentence gives way to “sing
me a bawdy song.”
• More improv humor from Falstaff –
Bardolph’s face, the hostess, the pocket
picking.
• His “forgiveness” of the hostess.
• “Random”?
Behind Falstaff: the morality
tradition
• A tradition of a virtuous youth corrupted by bad
companions and a dissolute Vice figure.
• The Vice leads the youth into a sinful life – wine,
women, song.
• Titles like Youth, The World and the Child,
Hickscorner, Nice Wanton, The Longer Thou
Livest the More Fool Thou Art – plays from
earlier in the century.
• Vice character always the most fun.
• Whole tradition derives from story of Prodigal
Son.
• Except that here the prodigal youth sometimes
ends up lost and carted off to hell by the vices.
Falstaff as “Vice”
• “If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a
dagger of lath and drive all thy subjects afore
thee like a flock of wild geese . . .”
• The “dagger of lath” – of wood – was one of the
emblems of the Vice character.
• Falstaff invokes the tradition in play within play:
II, 4, 385ff.
• Only to reject, comically, that he is the vice.
• Rather he’s the figure of grace, virtue (l 405,
412ff)
Hal turns the tables
• “There is a devil that haunts thee in the likeness
of an old fat man.”
• “That villainous abominable misleader of youth,
Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan.”
• “that reverend vice, that gray iniquity, that father
ruffian, that vanity in years” – all terms for the
Vice.
• His plea: “Banish him not thy Harry’s company.”
• “I do. I will.”
Falstaff’s comic take on the
tradition
• He is the youth, Hal the Vice.
• “O, thou has a damnable iteration, and art
indeed able to corrupt a saint.” (I, 2, 90).
• III, 3: “Well, I’ll repent . . .”
• “Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam
fell, and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the
days of villainy?
• “If I do grow great, I’ll grow less; for I’ll purge,
and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman
should.” His last words in the play, but do we
believe him?
Hal’s reformation
• “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.”
• King’s characterization of the prodigal prince (III,
2): fathers and sons.
• “And I will die a hundred thousand deaths/ Ere I
break the smallest parcel of this vow.”
But the reality of Hal’s reformation?
• 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.”
• What does Hal gain from Falstaff?
Anything?