Four Histories by Peter Davison

Author:Peter Davison
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141961415
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-12-27T16:00:00+00:00

III.118

The Second Part of Henry IV pays considerable attention to another legend, the story of the Prince having struck the Lord Chief Justice, even though that incident was not dramatized in the First Part. The earliest account of this occurrence was published in 1531, when it appeared in Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Book Named the Governor, and it is featured several times in The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (see the Introduction to 1 Henry IV, pages 243–4). The Page in 2 Henry IV refers to the incident at I.2.54, and Falstaff mentions it, with an undercutting comic aside, at I.2.195–9. It becomes a matter of some moment when in Act v the new king’s quality is immediately tested as he meets the Lord Chief Justice for the first time after his accession. His confirmation of the Lord Chief Justice in his office (V.2.103) bodes ill for Falstaff’s cry at the end of the next scene, ‘woe to my Lord Chief Justice!’

Shakespeare gives less weight than The Famous Victories to the discreditable aspects of Prince Henry’s life as they affect the King and the law. The earlier play, as well as dramatizing the striking of the Lord Chief Justice, shows Hal entering his father’s chamber with a dagger and being rebuked by Henry IV for intending his death. Shakespeare ignores the second of these incidents (except for a possible fleeting reference at IV.5.107; see the textual note), and in the story of the striking of the Lord Chief Justice he concentrates, so far as the Prince is concerned, on his submission. Indeed the contrast in 2 Henry IV between Falstaff ’s and Prince Henry’s attitudes to this incident is indicative of the gulf that separates them. That the incident of the striking of the Lord Chief Justice was performed in some play on the life of Henry V (though not necessarily The Famous Victories) seems very likely from a story in an anonymous book called Tarlton’s Jests. The earliest version of this book that has survived is dated 1608 and Tarlton died in 1588. We cannot be certain whether the story is apocryphal or not, but it is probably not untypical of conditions in the theatre a few years before 2 Henry IV was performed, when clowns took full advantage of opportunities to speak more than was set down for them, ‘though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered’, as Hamlet complains.

At the Bull at Bishopsgate was a play of Henry the Fifth, wherein the judge was to take a box on the ear; and because he was absent that should take the blow, Tarlton himself, ever forward to please, took upon him to play the same judge, besides his own part of the clown. And Knell, then playing Henry V, hit Tarlton a sound box indeed, which made the people laugh the more because it was he. But anon the judge goes in, and immediately Tarlton in his clown’s clothes comes

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