Time and Horsemanship in Shakespeare’s Histories

TIME AND HORSEMANSHIP IN SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES HUGH MACLEAN If Milton scholars are no longer much inclined to enquire whether the Satan of Paradise Lost is hero or fool, Shakespeareans continue to explore an equally challenging theme: "Prince Hal: Hero or Hypocrite?" To match the variously "ironic" readings of such critics as Bradley, Van Doren, and Goddard, Dover Wilson, Charles Williams, and J. H. 'Nalter have proposed interpretations essentially "heroic" in nature; while D. A. Traversi, noting the relevance of contemporary Elizabethan morality and "the austerity of a great religiOUS tradition" to the abandonment of Falstaff, recognizes also that "Henry's judgments ... suffer persistently from being too easily made," and observes that "there is no need ... to be sentimental on behalf of either the Prince or Falstaff.'" The purpose of this paper is, primarily, to draw attention to the particular use Prince Hal makes of his time, in the light espeCially of the various misuses of time made by others; and secondly, to show that Shakespeare's recurrent references to the horsemanship of various characters in the history plays throw light on their uses of time, or attitudes toward it. To speak generally, as each man rides, so he manages his span of time. The evidence to be brought forward lends support, I believe, to the "iew that Shakespeare's portrait of Henry V, as prince and king, was conceived not in an essentially ironic spirit (making every allowance for the force of Traversi's reservations), but to present a leader who "went to wOIke Hke a Conquerour"j even, in Walter's terms, "a leader of supreme genius bountifully assisted by Fortune.'" The importance of time in Shakespeare's history plays, of course, especially in l , 2 Henry lV, has been recognized by a number of critics, notably B. T. Spencer and Paul Jorgensen; while Peter Seng has recently observed, "In a sense it was not Hal who rejected Falstaff at all; it was Time.'" That is surely correct. Time, as Spencer says, "is the frame of reference in which [2 Henry IV] is set"; the recognition of its central function, he shows, enables a reader or onlooker to perceive "the motives and pressures by which characters are moved, and also the complex of issues involved in the rejection scene." Well enough. But when Spencer asserts, further, that "the subject of 2 Henry IV is man " olume xxxv, Number 3, Avril, 1966 against time," and that Hal is, "like the other public fig,,,es of the play ... impelled toward a life of action and public achievement as the most valid human effort to counteract the power of time" [italics mine], the case is put in terms that do not, it seems, quite accurately represent the situation. Paul Jorgensen sees this: "The primary emphasis given to time in Henry IV," he observes, "is the problem of its redemption"; and he convincingly rejects the usual editorial reading of "redeeming time'" in favour of one that reflects contemporary religious literature: "To redeem Cor 'rescue') time was to take full advantage of the time that one is given here on earth for salvation." Hal, by this view, does not oppose or attempt to counteract time; rather, he carefully adapts himself to it, he understands how it is to be used. It is in that sense that Exeter will remind the French sovereign, in Henry V: ... he weighs time Even to the utmost grain. (II, iv, 137-8)' Jorgensen, however Ca little surprisingly), says of 1,2 Henry IV, "One might accept as the motto for the two plays the observation made by Hastings: We are Time's subjects, and Time bids begone'." If "motto" is used here to mean an indication of the central idea or symbolic meaning of the two plays, Jorgensen would seem to be saying that the power of time over men, rather than the contest between men and time, is the theme of 1, 2 Henry IV. If, On the other hand, "motto" has the force merely of signification 3 in the O.E.D. C"A short quotation ... prefixed to a literary work or to One of its parts, and expressing some idea appropriate to its contents"), one...