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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.

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Henry IV, Part I second lecture

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  1. Henry IV, Part I second lecture Falstaff!

  2. “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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. Protean Falstaff • 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?”

  6. Clip of play within play scene from BBC video

  7. 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 . . .

  8. “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”?

  9. 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.

  10. 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)

  11. 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.”

  12. 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?

  13. 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.”

  14. 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?

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