Shakespeare's Kings (51 page)

To
meet
Northumberland
and
the
prelate
Scroop,

Who,
as
we
hear,
are
busily
in
arms.

Then,
in
Part II
(IV.i
and
ii),
we
see
their
arrival
at
'the
Forest
of Gaultree'
(the
ancient
royal
forest
of
Galtres,
just
to
the
north
of
York) where
John
and
Westmorland
trick
them
—
by
a
piece
of
double-dealing so
shameless
that
one
cannot
read
the
passage
today
without
a
shock
of repugnance
-
into
sending
home
their
forces
and
then
immediately place
them
under
arrest.
When
the
report
is
brought
to
the
King
-
who is
already
in
the
Jerusalem
Chamber
at
Westminster
—
it
is
followed within
a
few
lines
by
the
news
of
the
victory
at
Bramham
Moor;

1.
I.iii
.83.

whereupon Henry suffers that sudden seizure which in fact occurred five years later, but which in the play leads dire
ctly
to his death.

Holinshed, it should be noted, ignores the early stages of the King's illness, mentioning it only in
1412
and suggesting that until that time Henry
was still leading a vigorous m
ilitary life: the clear inference is that he did not personally put down the rebellions of
1405
and
1408
only because they were already crushed before he could get to them. In the play, on the other hand - in which the King does not appear at all until the third act - Falstaff refers as early as I.ii to an 'apoplexy . . . a kind of lethargy'; and in II.ii we have further testimony of the sickness from Prince Hal himself. When finally the King makes his appearance -just before the Archbishop's rebellion of
1405
- he is not only sleepless but 'hath been this fortnight ill';
¹
and the next time we see him, in IV.iv, he is already in the room where he is to die. It may well be that this is another example of the influence of Samuel Daniel, whose whole account of the period is coloured by the King's sickness; but Henry's decline certainly began soon after the execution of Scrope — with which, as we have seen, it was connected in the public mind — so there can be no doubt that in this respect it is Shakespeare and Daniel, rather than Holinshed, who have history on their side.

In II.ii we return to the curious affair of the Lord Chief Justice, who on his very first appearance is referred to by Falstaff's page as 'the nobleman that committed the Prince for striking him about Bardolph'. Later in the same scene Falstaff reminds him of the incident: 'For the box of the ear that the Prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord.' The story of Hal's being sent to prison in consequence of threatening the Justice, Sir William Gascoigne, goes back to a book known as
The Gouernour,
written in
1531
by Sir Thomas Elyot for the instruction of Henry VIII and other princes.
²
Historically, it is almost certainly without foundation. Had the heir apparent to the throne been committed as Elyot maintains, the event would surely have been recorded at the time and noted by the lawyers

1.
III.i
.104.

2.
Neither Elyot nor John Stow (who in his
Chronicles
and
Annales of England
reproduces the earlier work almost verbatim) report th
at the Prince actually landed a
blow on Gascoigne, though Robert Redmayne
(Vita Henrici Quinti, c.
1540)
and the
anonymous play
The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth
both suggest that he did.

as
a
significant
precedent.
But
Shakespeare
has
an
excellent
reason, none
the
less,
for
introducing
it
here.
He
does
so
not
to
show
the
Prince in
an
unfavourable
light,
but
to
illustrate
his
generosity
of
spirit when,
after
his
succession,
he
confirms
the
Lord
Chief
Justice
in
his office:

Therefore
still
bear
the
balance
and
the
sword;

And
I
do
wish
your
honours
may
increase

Till
you
do
live
to
see
a
son
of
mine

Offend
and
obey
you,
as
I
did.
¹

The
only
awkward
point
that
must
be
recorded
here
is
that
Gascoigne did
not
in
fact
continue
in
office
after
the
old
King's
death.
Although he
seems
to
have
been
summoned
to
the
new
Parliament
on
15
May 1413,
the
patent
of
his
successor,
Sir
William
Hankford,
is
clearly
dated 29
March
of
the
same
year.
Whether
or
not
young
Henry
removed him
we
cannot
tell,
but
he
was
by
this
time
well
into
his
sixties
and was
certainly
not
disgraced:
in
1414
a
royal
grant
allowed
him
four bucks
and
four
does
annually
from
the
forest
of
Pontefract.

For
the
rest,
the
play's
inaccuracies
—
if
inaccuracies
they
are
—
stem more
from
personal
prejudice
than
from
historical
misconception. Shakespeare's
instinctive
dislike
of
Northumberland,
for
example, results
in
a
blackening
of
his
character
to
a
quite
unjustified
degree. Not
one
of
our
sources
accuses
the
Earl
of
being
'crafty-sick'
²
at
the time
of
his
son's
last
rebellion
—
in
other
words
that
he
feigned
illness to
account
for
his
non-appearance
at
Shrewsbury.
Nor
is
there
any suggestion
elsewhere
of
his
deliberately
abandoning
Archbishop
Scrope in
1405,
'to
ripe
his
growing
fortunes'
in
Scotland;
according
to
Holinshed,
he
took
flight
only
when
the
rising
had
failed
and
all
hope
was lost.
All
the
evidence
suggests
that
Northumberland
showed
outstanding courage
at
Bramham
Moor
where,
Holinshed
tells
us,
he
'incountred his
aduersaries
with
great
manhood
...
for
whose
misfortune
the
people were
not
a
little
sorrie,
making
report
of
the
gendemans
valiantnesse, renowme
[sic],
and
honour';
but
there
is
no
mention
of
this
in
the
play,

which emphasizes instead only the size of the rebel force and the relative inconsequence of the victor:

The Earl Northumberland, and the Lord Bardolph,

With a great power of English and of Scots,

Are by the shrieve
¹
of Yorkshire overthrown.

John of Lancaster also, whom we saw in
Part
I
having distinguished himself at Shrewsbury, appears at Gaultree in a distinctly unpleasant light, being principally responsible for the shameless betrayal of trust by which the Archbishop and his fellow rebels were apprehended. This is the more surprising in that, although he may have formally accepted the surrender of the rebels as his father's representative, in Holinshed the negotiations are handled throughout by Westmorland. What prompts this gratuitous slur on young Lancaster is not entirely clear; the suggestion sometimes made that Shakespeare is trying to emphasize the cold-bloodedness of the Bolingbroke line is surely untenable: John was after all the full brother of the Prince of Wales, and the foremo
st scion of that line was Hal h
imself. Nor is it easy to accept the theory that the trick would have appeared perfectly legitimate to Elizabethan audiences, in whose eyes - it has been suggested - the end would have justified the means.
²