The Hollow Crown by Eliot A. Cohen;

Author:Eliot A. Cohen; [A., Eliot Cohen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2023-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops

Are every one a woe, a sore complaint

’Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords

That make such waste in brief mortality.3

Henry then mildly claims that he knows in his heart

That what you speak is in your conscience wash’d

As pure as sin with baptism.

Of course the audience knows, and Henry surely does as well, that the clerics have anything but clean hands and pure consciences. They are out to save the church’s possessions, and so they obligingly provide a long-winded, well-nigh incomprehensible explanation of his rights in France. This prompts Henry to ask a straightforward question: “May I with right and conscience make this claim?”

This scene is usually played for comic effect, as the baffled and impatient king tries to cut to the conclusion of a convoluted lecture on the Salic law. As conjurors know too, a good chuckle is the best way of distracting an audience, because it prevents them from seeing the magician’s manipulative skill. In this case, Henry has achieved one of his constant background goals—that blame for any action, no matter how cruel or unjust, will fall not on him but on those around him—so he charges Canterbury with a faithful and accurate reading of the Salic law, which would give him a claim to France. Knowing, as Henry almost surely does, that the church has every reason to wish to see him go off to conquer France rather than shake the institution down for more money, he is satisfied when Canterbury complies. The archbishop responds, “The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!” And with these words Henry is free, in the public eye, from any complicity in the deed. Better yet, he can respond to the French ambassador who has, foolishly, come to bait him with a gift of tennis balls.

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