The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare by Ribner. Irving;

Author:Ribner., Irving; [Ribner, Irving]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 1965-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

It is this early training which enables King Henry V to conduct himself as he does on the eve of Agincourt.

The original suggestion for Falstaff must have come from the Sir John Oldcastle, or Jockey, of The Famous Victories of Henry V, and the evidence is indisputable that in the original version of Shakespeare’s play the fat knight was named Oldcastle.293 This character resembles only in name the historical Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, a Lollard martyr burned at the stake by Henry V.294 R. B. Sharpe has indicated that there is every reason to believe that Shakespeare and his company had cause to burlesque their contemporary Lord Cobham,295 and it is almost certain that the name was hastily changed to Falstaff when the powerful Cobham family took offence at the play. The Lollards were closely associated with Elizabethan Puritans who regarded the followers of Wycliffe as their ideological forebears, and it is thus to be expected that one of the elements in Shakespeare’s Falstaff should be a vein of religious hypocrisy by which Shakespeare satirized his contemporary Puritans.296 To this caricature of a Lollard, Shakespeare added other elements. There is something in Falstaff of the Miles Gloriosus or braggart soldier of Roman comedy, although there has been a tendency on the part of critics to over-emphasize this aspect of him. There is also something of the parasite of Roman comedy, and much of the licensed court jester.297 But most important in so far as his dramatic function is concerned, he carries on the tradition of the morality play Vice. Within the two Henry IV plays he performs the traditional function of the morality Vice, the seduction of the hero from virtue.

293 See J. Dover Wilson, “The Origins and Development of Shakespeare’s Henry IV,’ The Library, Fourth Series, XXVI (1945), 2–16. 294 See Chapter 7, pp. 201–3. 295 The Real War of the Theatres,pp. 69–73. 296 Wilson, Fortunes of Falstaff, pp. 32–35. 297 See Joseph Allen Bryant, Jr., ‘Shakespeare’s Falstaff and the Mantle of Dick Tarlton,’ SP, LI (1954), 149–62. Within 1 Henry IV the prince must learn two great lessons: he must come to accept the responsibilities of his royal birth, and he must learn valour and chivalry in battle. Falstaff is an embodiment of the antithesis of these two goals, a symbol of sloth and of cowardice. When the play opens Hal has long neglected his royal duties; he has been banished from court and has allowed Hotspur to usurp the place in battle which should be his; his companion has been Falstaff, the embodiment of vanity, misrule, and idleness. Opposed to Falstaff, in the role of morality virtues, are Henry IV himself, Prince John of Lancaster, and such heroic nobles as Westmoreland and Sir Walter Blount. By the end of the play, however, Hal has been won to the side of his father and brother. That he has accomplished the first stage of his regeneration, learned the military virtues, is made explicit by his behaviour at Shrewsbury,

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