How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (28 page)

You bowcase

You vile standing tuck
[rapier]

Whoreson caterpillars

Bacon-fed knaves

Hal’s Language

Falstaff is Hal’s spiritual father, and Hal is Falstaff’s masterpiece. He has created Hal in his own image, at least spiritually, and one of the ways we know this is through Hal’s use of language. He mimics Falstaff’s language the way a child mimics the father he loves. This is one of the subtlest and cleverest things that Shakespeare does in the play: He tricks us into identifying the men with each other through Hal’s imitation of Falstaff. We hear it in the insults listed above; and we hear it, even more vividly, in the very first words we hear out of Hal’s mouth—one of the most astonishing speeches in all of Shakespeare. Act I, Scene 2 of
Henry IV, Part 1
begins when Falstaff wakes up in the tavern and sees Prince Hal sitting beside him. You and your son or daughter should each take a part:
FALSTAFF

Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE HAL

Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know
[forgotten to ask what you really want to know].
What the devil hast thou to do with the time of day?

In other words, you are so old, fat, and slovenly, why on earth would you want to know the time?

Now listen carefully to Hal’s comparison of the elements of time (such as minutes, clocks, sundials, and the sun) to the things that Falstaff actually cares about, like drink, food, and women:
PRINCE HAL

Unless hours were cups of sack
[liquor],
and minutes capons
[fowl],
and clocks the tongues of bawds
[loose women],
and dials the signs of leaping-houses
[bawdy houses],
and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored taffeta
[silk fabric],
I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
[so ridiculous to ask]
the time of day
.

FALSTAFF

Indeed, you come near me now, Hal, for we that take purses, go by the moon
.

The fact that Falstaff takes no offense at Hal’s outburst and admits that
you come near me now, Hal
(meaning “you’re probably right, Hal”) endears us to Falstaff immediately. Falstaff knows that Hal is being boyishly juvenile, and he makes room for it. He indulges Hal, treating him as an equal, letting him spout off without reproach. For parents, there is a lesson here.

Note
: Listen especially to the line where Hal compares the sun (a symbol of royalty) to a desirable woman in a bright silk gown:
and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored taffeta
. Have your children say it aloud and repeat it. (The word
blessed
is pronounced “BLESSèd” with two syllables.)

and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in

flame-colored taffeta

It is a line that any writer in the world would give his right arm to have written.

Hotspur

A character we haven’t touched on yet is Hotspur, one of the rebels who tries to depose the king. He is a young man, also named Harry, and he
is everything that Hal isn’t: He is ambitious, brave, political, and a soldier to his bones. Hal is very aware that the world—including his own father—makes comparisons between Hal’s lackadaisical ways and Hotspur’s serious ones; and a significant part of the plot of
Henry IV, Part 1
is the rivalry between the two Harrys, a rivalry that leads to a final confrontation on the battlefield at the end of the play. Here is Hal’s father, the King, as he thinks about the comparison of his son with Hotspur:

O that it could be proved

That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged

In cradle-clothes our children where they lay.…

Then I would have his Harry, and he mine
.

What a terrible thing to say about your own son. Is it any wonder that Hal is neurotic and seeks a surrogate father in Falstaff?

Hotspur is notable not only for his competition with Hal but also for his incessant talking. While his words are remarkable, he is known to his fellow rebels as someone who can’t stop talking—a trait that jeopardizes their cause. Hotspur speaks romantically and heroically, rather like Romeo, and says things like

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon—

Yet he is reckless in a way that makes him a liability to his own cause. Have your children listen for the difference between Hal’s speeches (which, as we’ve seen, sound quite a bit like Falstaff’s witty talk) and Hotspur’s brave, boasting, romantic speeches. Have them repeat Hotspur’s lines that we just quoted:

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon—

and compare them to this wry, funny comment by Hal on what
he
thinks of Hotspur:

he that kills … some six or seven dozen … Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands and says to his wife “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work!”

Hotspur is also crucial to the plot of
Henry IV, Part 1
. In fact, while Falstaff gives the play its soul, Hal’s relationship to Hotspur drives the action. Interestingly, Hal and Hotspur do not meet face to face until Act V (at which point they fight each other at the Battle of Shrewsbury); but as the playwright William Gibson observes in his book on how Shakespeare shaped his plays, the crowning action of
Henry IV, Part 1
is the final encounter between the two young men. As Gibson puts it, “It is almost a lovers’ meeting [between] two diamonds, fated to collide.” In the end, in the final battle, Hal kills Hotspur in hand-to-hand combat and thus vindicates himself in his own eyes. Falstaff subsequently awakes from playing dead at the battle, wounds the body of Hotspur with his own sword, and then takes credit for killing
this gunpowder Percy
.

The End of the Story

By this time, your children will want to know the conclusion of the story between Falstaff and Hal. We know that in the end Hal chooses his responsibility to his country over that
vanity in years
Sir John Falstaff, but how does he do it? Is he kind or cruel? I am sorry to report that at the end of
Henry IV, Part 2
, just after Hal is crowned King of England, he rejects Falstaff publicly, in front of the world, and banishes him from his presence forever without a shred of kindness. Here is the scene after the coronation as Falstaff waits joyfully along the procession route, fully expecting Hal to embrace him:
(Enter the king and his train.)
FALSTAFF

God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal.… God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING HENRY V (WHO WAS PRINCE HAL)

I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers
.

How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester
.

I have long dreamt of such a kind of man
,

So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane;

But being awaked, I do despise my dream
.

The scene is painful, yet the outcome was inevitable. England’s warrior-king was a hero to Shakespeare’s audience because he turned away from his youthful indiscretions and then went on to save the kingdom from England’s traditional enemy, the French. And in fact, Shakespeare prepares us several times for this terrible reality.

One instance occurs at the end of the great Playacting Scene. After Falstaff makes his plea for himself
—Banish plump Jack and banish all the world—
Hal says,
I do. I will
. It is a chilling moment, and we know instantly what will happen in the end.

Another instance occurs at the end of Act I, Scene 2 of
Part 1—
the scene we’ve already looked at, where Hal and Falstaff first appear together and Falstaff asks what time it is. At the end of the scene, Hal delivers a soliloquy that tells us exactly how he’ll act when he becomes king. Of course, part of us doesn’t want to believe it, yet we know in our hearts that the rejection is inevitable. Children forge their own destinies. The wheel turns. The world can be cruel.

Here is Hal’s soliloquy from that scene. It is rightly famous for the beauty of its language and the conviction of the speaker. But when we know what it leads to—the rejection of Falstaff—it takes on a political reality that puts it in shade.

PRINCE HAL
(alone, after agreeing to go on one of Falstaff’s illegitimate escapades)

Passage 17
Rosalind

Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?

I see no more in you than in the ordinary

Of nature’s sale-work.—’Od’s my little life
,

I think she means to tangle my eyes, too. –

No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it
.