The Henry Explications - Part F

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulting from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

KING HENRY IV
Thou has redeemed thy lost opinion
And showed thou mak'st some tender of my life
In this fair rescue thou has brought to me.

(1 Henry IV 5.4.48-50)

Redemption emerges as a prominent theme in 1 Henry IV. In these student explication passages alone we've seen it three times -- when Hal says "I'll so offend to make offense a skill,/ Redeeming time when men think least I will"; when he says "God forgive them that so much have swayed/ Your Majesty's good thoughts away from me./ I will redeem all this on Percy's head"; and in the passage above, where King Henry brings closure to the promise Hal makes in the first citation. In addition Hotspur uses the image twice, both times in reference to honor regained.

In fact, one could read all six of the play's redemption metaphors fairly secularly. People redeem, in the sense that they recover something or fulfill some obligation, time and honor and lost reputation, and we can leave it at that. But redemption is a big word, and we must ask: what religious implications are present?

So, because I'm pretty uninformed when it comes to religious imagery, I sent my friend Jim Bofenkamp (who teaches a Shakespeare and the Bible class) a note, asking for a quick run down on redemption in the Bible. His rejoinder was that it would take most of a lifetime to answer the question. The Bible, he wrote, from Genesis to Revelations "covers the story of our redemption by the second Adam (Jesus Christ) because of what the first Adam did at the very beginning." This is significant because some clear parallels suggest that we can read Richard, King Henry, and Hal allegorically.

In fact, a number of critics, including Steven Marx and Marjorie Garber, have already done so. Garber, in Shakespeare After All, spreads the net wide. "Much of the imagery in Richard II," she writes, "was concerned with England as a little Eden, a 'demi-paradise,' and with Richard as a kind of Adam and a kind of Christ, suffering what his queen called 'a second fall of cursed man.' By the beginning of 1 Henry IV the tide of public opinion has already reversed itself. Richard's loss is mourned, and Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, is the villain. Even Hotspur, who with his father Northumberland, swore allegiance to Bolingbroke's cause, now expresses fury at the fact that the usurpers chose to 'put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose, / And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke.' This is post-fall language ... Yet like most falls in English literature, this will turn out to be a fortunate fall, because after the fall of Adam, as Shakespeare's Christian audience would have believed, came the redemption through Christ, and after the fall of Richard will come the redemption of Prince Hal" (314-315).

Marx too, in his Shakespeare and the Bible, sees broader implications in the play's redemption imagery, citing "the perennial tendency of the British to identify themselves with the Israelites" and noting that "Shakespeare's sources, Holinshed and Halle, modelled English history on the Bible's providential pattern" (41).

In the passage above then, we can prepare to look beyond the mere redemption of Hal's reputation in King Henry's eyes and read it as the conclusion to Hal's own goal, stated in the first act, to redeem "time" (1.2.224). The Folger edition of the play indicates that this line alludes to Ephesians 5:15-16, Paul's admonition to "Take heed therefore that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, for the days are evil" (Geneva Bible). (A note: I almost missed this by checking first in my Revised Standard Version Bible, which does not have the "redeeming the time" phrase; let's hear it for contemporary sources!)

Hal, then, is promising to make amends for his bad behavior, later. King Henry's comment tells us he has. But, to my mind, nowhere do I find Hal portrayed as a Christ figure in this play. Yes, one may argue that the fall of man is reflected in the Richard/Bolingbroke story, and that the civil wars Henry laments at the beginning of the play reveal mankind in a state of sin, and that Henry himself uses language that suggests he will receive God's vengeance, personified by Hal:

He'll breed revengement and a scourge for me.
But thou dost in thy passages of life
Make me believe that thou art only marked
For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven
To punish my mistreadings. (3.2.8-12)

But Hal's redemption is particularly personal, reinforced by King Henry's use of the pronoun "thy." And if we take the Ephesians allusion at face value, then Hal parallels the object of Paul's letter, not Christ but the followers of Christ, those who would walk a more righteous path. In Garber's summary, the pronouns expose the distinction: it's "redemption through Christ," but "redemption of Hal" (emphasis mine).

The text is clearly available to scriptural interpretation -- one might look at the fact that Hal has "rescued," or saved, his sinning father -- and so the conversation is opened here for a discussion of the Biblical reading of Shakespeare's tetralogy (that's an invitation). A reading of these three lines, however, on their own or even extended to include the other redemption images, does not, I think, bring us all the way to Hal as Christ figure.

Randall

The Henry Explications - Part E

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

PRINCE HENRY
Do not think so. You shall not find it so.
And God forgive them that so much have sway'd
Your majesty's good thoughts away from me.
I will redeem all this on Percy's head,
And, in the closing of some glorious day,
Be bold to tell you that I am your son.

(1 Henry IV 3.2.134-139

This passage is an example of the changing relationship between Hal and his father. Hal is motivated by lies that have been told to the king in order to attempt to change his view of his son. He tries, in this passage, to adjust the king's opinion and express his anger about the lies that have been told. The language of Hal’s speech is generally forceful, the boldest parts being: “all this on Percy’s head” and “Be bold to tell you that I am your son.”

This language reveals an aspect of Hal’s character we have seen little of in the first few acts or the play (or in the latter act of Richard II). Up to this point, we've seen Hal in a bar with Falstaff slacking off and avoiding responsibilities; however here Shakespeare reveals Hal's inner strength that one would not necessarily guess was there. Hal seems on the verge of making his "I know you all" speech a reality. In addition, Hal's request that "God forgive" those who have lied about him suggests a certain piousness we haven't seen in the Boar's Head scenes, a devout aspect to his identity not unlike King Henry's.

Ben Palmer (SPA '12)

The Henry Explications - Part D

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HAL
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humor of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him ...
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

(1 Henry IV 1.2.202-210, 215-224)

I am surprised at my students' general animosity toward Hal in this speech. They find him dishonest and manipulative and vain, and ignore the irony of disregarding Hal's more lofty goals because he's not being straightforward with his loutish pub friends. They expect honor, as it were, among thieves. How dare he refer to the guys he hangs out with as "base contagious clouds"!

I wonder, how can they not recognize the favorite children's allegory of "the ugly duckling" in Hal's statement that those clouds "smother up his beauty from the world" and that he will break "through the foul and ugly mists/ Of vapors that did seem to strangle him"? Isn't that the dream of every adolescent? How do they not hear echoes of the Bush administration's frequent attempt to lower our expectations before major announcements? Isn't that a wise tactic for managing people's unrealistic expectations? Or if that seems too politically manipulative, how can they not recognize the standard rubric of successful businesses: "underpromise/overproduce"?

Hal is real world, pragmatic and clever. Even without the foreknowledge of what use he will make of his "wilder days," we must be impressed by his plan to capture people's imagination and turn it in his favor; it is masterful.

But no; they label him "Machiavellian." And I think the problem centers on his admitting that he will "falsify men's hopes." That just sounds ugly. Hope is a powerful force in our lives. (Questioning it, poet Kay Ryan refers to it as "the always tabled/ righting of the present.") And young people are full of optimistic hope. Having that challenged, along with their sense of loyalty to one's comrades, however unacceptable they may be to one's father, makes accepting Hal's careful character-building less palatable.

Posted by Randall

RE: Performance Log - All's Well That Ends Well (May 2011)

Stu writes:

For the most part, when performing indoors, in theater lighting, you can barely see the audience. Even when facing out towards the audience, you are generally looking over the heads of the people in the first few rows. I don't want to say that one is not aware of the audience, because you can also hear them and sense them in other ways, but it is much easier to focus on the actors on stage and, to some degree, disregard the audience. Indoor performance and lighting are the principal elements that create the "fourth wall" separating audience and actors.

Working outdoors, you are constantly aware of the audience right in front of you. When you look out, you are looking into people's faces! When I started working in outdoor theater, I found it intimidating that you could see people and their expressions. Initially I had to be careful not to focus on any individual. Now that I am more used to it, I don't hesitate to speak directly to the audience or even individual in it.

Personally, I enjoy doing outdoors because it allows you to connect with the audience. When I'm talking about children, or pretty girls, or bald men, I can take gesture or take the line to a child, a pretty girl, or a bald guy. There's a big difference when doing something like Shakespeare, which was written to be performed outdoors. Indoors, I see many actors doing soliloquies as thinking out loud to oneself. Outdoors, I encourage actors to take soliloquies or asides direct to members of the audience.

Doing something like Moliere allows you to break the fourth wall and involve members of the audience. One of my favorite memories was playing Harpagon in The Miser. As Jacques described what my neighbors thought of me, he pointed to a member of the audience as the source; it was hilarious: "One says that you have special almanacks printed, where you double the ember days and vigils, so that you may profit by the fasts to which you bind all your house; another, that you always have a ready-made quarrel for your servants at Christmas time or when they leave you, so that you may give them nothing. One tells a story how not long since you prosecuted a neighbour's cat because it had eaten up the remainder of a leg of mutton; another says that one night you were caught stealing your horses' oats..." Ultimately Jacques had to drag me back onstage to keep me from strangling one of the audience members.

-- Stu

The Henry Explications - Part C

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HAL
Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

(1 Henry IV 1.2.2-13)

During Hal's descriptive insult to Falstaff, the audience learns more about the prince than the pub-crawler. Hal scolds his friend Falstaff for his lethargic and irresponsible behavior, a speech he is motivated to deliver due to his irritation with his companion. Deeper within the relationship, though, one may see that his irritation might not just be with Falstaff, but also with himself. Hal has been ignoring his princely duties and spending time in the dirty parts of London with Falstaff, actions of drunkenness and lack of accountability he may not believe in.

Further, Hal's insults represent the strain on his friendship with Falstaff. He knows that if Falstaff does not adapt to the man Hal truly is, a prince with responsibility, he can no longer be Hal's companion. Hal's inner mental struggle foreshadows his upcoming declaration of maturity and reform to his father. By speaking out against Falstaff's immature and unruly behavior, he is criticizing his own indolence and implying that he does believe in his royal duties and does want to embrace them.

Malika Dale (SPA '12)

Performance Log - All's Well That Ends Well (May 2011)

All’s Well That Ends Well
Directed by Joseph Papke
Classical Actors Ensemble
Minneapolis, MN
May 6, 2011

Last summer I saw the American Shakespeare Center’s production of Othello at Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia. Prior to the play, Benjamin Curns (who played Iago) explained for audience members unfamiliar with the company’s approach that they would be performing in conditions similar to those of Shakespeare’s day, specifically with stage and house under the same lights, a relatively naked stage, and a lot of interplay between actors and audience members, some of whom would even be sitting on the stage. I’ll tell you; it really increases the suspense when you find yourself weighing the chances that a paying customer will end up skewered by rapier during a fight scene. Although there were no fatalities, except those planned by Shakespeare, I found it a very refreshing approach to indoor staging, and I especially enjoyed how the opportunity for audience/character interaction allowed Curns to play up Iago’s villainy.

Fast forward to May 2011. The Classical Actors Ensemble, a relatively young company in Minneapolis, is performing All’s Well That Ends Well at the Walker Community Church under similar conditions, “a simple platform stage with few scenic elements surrounded on three sides by the audience, universal lighting …, and music performed between acts” (by the actors, still in costume), director Joseph Papke writes in the program. Now, how much one enjoys a show (as I did this one) may be independent of whether they leave the lights on, but I’m intrigued: what’s the difference, for the performers, between a play performed in the dark and one performed with the audience in full view?

Obviously, to those of us who regularly attend Shakespeare performances in the park, an illuminated audience is nothing new. But I’d never considered that the different “feel” of Shakespeare in the park is due to more than just its being outdoors until I began to think about the similar feeling one gets indoors when the lights are on. “Actors are usually very aware of the audience,” Papke wrote me in an e-mail, “whether they can see them or not (dark theaters mean we usually pick up on them aurally). With being able to see them clearly, instead of becoming hyper-aware of the audience, I find that some of the performance-related pressure is alleviated—there is no 'fourth wall,' no pretence of verisimilitude; the white elephant of ‘we’re other human beings pretending in front of you’ is gone. The audience is no longer a potential critical void that the actor must pour himself into; instead, a beneficial and necessary communication is heightened between actors and audience, and a truer communal experience can be reached.”

I like what Papke says about the elephant. I often find myself during a performance waiting for the theatrical experience to take over and for my sense of the affectation of theater to dissipate. I think the dark enhances that sense of affectation. From the actor’s point of view it’s just a fourth wall, but from ours it makes us voyeurs, sitting in the dark, disconnected from the stage action, looking in on the characters’ lives. I think that works against the theatrical. Turn the lights on and we’re involved in the performance, easy co-conspirators, available for asides and spur-of-the-moment magic, and less likely to fall asleep. It’s this communal experience that accounts for a lot of the charm of Classical Actors Ensemble’s All’s Well That Ends Well. For one it really frees up the comic characters, in this case Levatch (played by Papke) and Parolles (Christopher Kehoe) who are able to use the audience more naturally for comic effect.

I remember a similar feeling a couple years ago, in Stu Naber’s production of Much Ado About Nothing for Shakespeare and Company, outdoors in White Bear Lake. Benedick, played by Tim Perfect, hid in the audience during the garden scene where Claudio and Don Pedro trick him into believing that Beatrice is in love with him. The great humor of it wasn’t that Benedick was among us, ridiculously crawling around on his hand and knees, audaciously dipping into patrons' picnic dinners (well, that was pretty funny), but that he was in plain sight of everyone. That’s what I mean by co-conspirators. It’s the difference between being told a joke and being in on it.

Papke’s tone in All’s Well That Ends Well is relatively and successfully light (I saw a darker, literally and figuratively, version last summer at American Players Theatre) even though key characters are not likeable people – Bertram (David Darrow) who heartlessly rejects the devoted love of a talented woman; Parolles the blowhard braggart, liar, coward, and traitor. I found myself both believing in Bertram’s final acceptance of Helena (Danielle Silver) and even, at one point, feeling sorry for Parolles. Perhaps this mitigation of their dislikability is because, with the lights on, we see them more clearly both as comic figures and as characters. Or perhaps it’s because we learn, between acts, that Bertram also blows a mean trumpet and Parolles is capable of a show-stopping deadpan spoken version of ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man.”

This whole universal lighting question is just that, a question. I’m not sure it would be effective to suggest that all theatrical productions turn on the house lights. And lights or no lights, what really matters is the talent on the stage. But theater involves live actors plying their trade in front of a live audience. Why remove one of those from the equation, especially when it can have a positive effect for the other party? Let film-goers, communing with two-dimensional celluloid versions of human beings, sit in the dark. For me, I’ll agree with King Claudius: “Give me some light!”

Logged by Randall

Photo credit: David Darrow and Danielle Silver in All's Well That Ends Well. Photo by Zach Curtis, courtesy Classical Actors Ensemble.

The Henry Explications - Part B

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

KING HENRY IV
Yea, there thou mak'st me sad and mak'st me sin
In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son,
A son who is the theme of honor's tongue,
Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant,
Who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride;
Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,
See riot and dishonor stain the brow
Of my young Harry. O, that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call'd mine "Percy," his "Plantagenet"!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.

(1 Henry IV 1.1.78-90)

King Henry, throughout 1 Henry IV, is revealed to be a very religious person, and it is no surprise that religious imagery turns up in this speech ("mak'st me sin in envy") where it provides a snapshot of the king's concerns. Here is a man who relies on religion and God as a pillar of strength in his reign, and who clearly feels that he is the "good guy" in this situation, but it is necessary to remember how he came to power.

I think it is possible that deep down the king recognizes his own guilty hand in the dethroning and indirect execution of Richard II, and therefore he may think that God could seek to punish him for his actions. So he acknowledges the possibility that he is committing a deadly sin (envy) for the otherwise forgivable frustration he feels about Hal. In this he overexerts himself in his religious efforts in order to mollify the God who could be angry with him, an early indication in the play that he is in constant search for forgiveness from the heavens for his actions.

Nathan Rice (SPA '11)

RE: The Henry Explications - Part A

I did not see the clear subtextual connections between "unrestrained loose companions" and "dissolute" (indifferent to moral restraints) and "wanton" (dissolute or unrestrained) in this speech. Now that King Henry's concern about restraint emerges more clearly, we can look also at that first line: "Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?" Signet (Kenneth Muir) defines "unthrifty" here as "prodigal," fitting with King Henry's growing spiritual observances. However, the more common definition of frugality suggest yet another form of restraint, extending Henry's expectation of it to social, moral, and economic.

What is the king's attitude about restraint? Is it a particularly Medieval concept? Is it particular to his character? Is it also couched in religious observance? Do we see it equally in 1 Henry IVand 2 Henry IV? Is it, as Paul suggests, wrapped up in Henry's attitudes about class, a euphemism for sticking with your own kind? Thoughts?

Randall

The Henry Explications - Part A

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?
'Tis full three months since I did see him last.
If any plague hang over us, 'tis he.
I would to God, my lords, he might be found.
Inquire at London, 'mongst the taverns there,
For there, they say, he daily doth frequent,
With unrestrained loose companions,
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes
And beat our watch and rob our passengers,
Which he, young wanton and effeminate boy,
Takes on the point of honor to support
So dissolute a crew.

(Richard II 5.3.1-12)

King Henry IV's speech to the court in Richard II, Act 5, scene 3, reveals his strong disappointment in his son, the prince. He criticizes Hal's carelessness, criminal behavior, femininity, and overall poor demeanor. Motivated by this overwhelming disappointment and embarrassment, the king angrily vilifies Hal's life, citing both his poor behavior and his decision to associate with socially inferior friends, a lifestyle not befitting royalty.

Stating that Hal "takes on the point of honor to support so dissolute a crew," the king's belief that his son wastes honor by associating with criminal, roguish commoners, such as Falstaff and Poins, reveals several character traits, including social classism and anger. Labeling such fellows as "unrestrained loose companions" and "a dissolute crew," Henry makes it clear that appropriate behavior involves restraint, both moral and social. Given Henry's own actions, including deposing a king, one might consider his complaints a bit ironic. Or it may be that Henry simply would rather his son associate with others of higher social stature.

The king's concern about restraint is also evident in his attack on Hal's masculinity. When criticizing Hal for his conduct and lifestyle, King Henry IV describes him as "wanton" and "effeminate." Yet Henry offers no support for this effeminacy. It seems enough that Hal is not involved in activities similar to Hotspur's, activities steeped in leadership and testosterone and honor, and instead involves himself in "wanton" activities, robbing and drinking and rebelling against his father's wishes. To Henry this is womanish because it fails to follow his concept of order, and that which defies order (unrestrained) is automatically unmanly.

Paul Micevych (SPA '12)

RE: Merry Wives of Windsor - Musings

Randall writes:

And so we learn that Derek Traversi (and Gil, too) was right, and Merry Wives of Windsor is not dealt with at much length at all, despite the best of intentions. But the William Shakespeare Experience does go on. Here's what's in store.

1) The Shakespeare-in-the-Park season is gearing up even in the midst of ongoing indoor productions. I just saw a wonderful All's Well That Ends Well performed by the Classical Actors Ensemble (a relatively new company). If you have a mind to post a performance log or review of something you see, please do.

2) My Shakespeare class has started its fifth and final play, Measure for Measure. A while back, we read 1 Henry IV and I asked the students to write brief explications of speeches from the entire second tetralogy. I'll be posting those at intervals over the next few weeks.

3) It's time to start a new play. Which will be All's Well That Ends Well. And then Hamlet. And perhaps we'll return to Merry Wives at a later date.

Randall