Workable Fictions in the Henry IV Plays

HAROLD TOLIVER Workable Fictions in the Henry IV Plays Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports ... Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wav'ring multitude, Can play upon it. (Rumour, 2 Henry IV) I FROM BY-PLAY TO SWORDPLAY History plays are so taken up with public performance that they may seem to sacrifice complexities of character to mere speech-making, some of it propaganda's stuffing of ears with false reports. A noteworthy test of the dominance of public role-playing in them has often been Prince Hal's progress toward Henry v, which carries him from calculating tavern days to a kingship devoid of Falstaff. Whereas in the tavern scenes, play-acting is recognizable as such, with the king one never knows. Certainly historical pageantry is not always compatible with the development of character and plot, and the Henriad gives us proportionately more and more of the former. But not all performances even of kings and their counsellors are inspired solely by policy-making. Henry v's coronation is at once pageantry and drama. It harvests a number of ironies and puts the finishing touches on a remarkable series of exchanges between the prince's truancy and a growing acknowledgment of duty. His route to this declaration of majesty has taken him round about through a frequent doubling of scenes in rehearsals, revisions, and stagey demonstrations. Throughout the Henry IV plays one improvised performance reflects another by analogy and thereby compounds it and calls attention to the style of enactment itself. Even the announced new king does not entirely forget everything he has learned in those rehearsals and masquerades. Nor does he bury all that he might like to be. We are reminded not only that a public mask is part truth and part posturingbut that the relationship of the two can have its own dramatic interest. In rejecting his old UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLtJME 53, NUMBER I, FALL 19BJ 54 HAROLD TOLIVER acquaintances, for instance, the new king comes forward as though from behind the cloud of former deeds, as he has planned to do all along: I know thee not, old man. Pall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dreamt of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane; But being awak'd I do despise my dream. (2 Henry lV, v.5.47-5') He offers this for public consumption not in order to welcome Falstaff after dark, as Falstaff hopes, but in reproof of many tales devis'd, Which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear, By smiling pickthanks, and base newsmongers. (1 Henry IV, 111.2.23-5) Falstaff is understandably discomfited by such a revision of what he had thought his standing and suspects that this new posture is merely another game. They have played a good many such. But he is not as adept a reader as he needs to be in this living theatre the prince directs. He has had ample warning and even rehearsed a similar scene much earlier. Those who have taken the prince's conversion seriously are less confused by the figure now at centre stage, though they know very little about his previous improvisations. (They have not heard the soliloquy or seen the mockinterview , for instance.) Hence the prince seems simply to confirm what they had hoped would be the case once he assumed responsibility. The critical matter is not so much whether inventive depths of character still work their way to the surface in all this political manoeuvring as which of its inventions will prove to be usable. Until the prince comes forth as king, reports about him are frequently in error, as he himself assumes they will be in planning his dramatic emergence. Nearly everyone has opportunities to misrepresent and misconstrue not only his activities but most other matters that circulate through the public forum and small groups of the kingdom...