Part 13 (2/2)

”My learned lord, we pray you to proceed And justly and religiously unfold Why the law Salique that they have in France Or should, or should not bar us in our claim; And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashi+on, wrest, or bow your reading ”

All this is plainly Shakespeare and Shakespeare at his very worst; and there are hundreds of lines like these, jewelled here and there by an unforgetable phrase, as when the Archbishop calls the bees: ”The singingwhen the Dauphin sends hireatly praised for lad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us; His present and your pains we thank you for: When we have match'd our rackets to these balls, We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard”

The first line is most excellent, but Shakespeare found it in the old play, and the bragging which follows is hardly bettered by the pious imprecation

Nor does the scene with the conspirators see would not have preached at the them Nor would he have sentenced theishness and pious pity:

”_K Hen_ God quit you in hisour person seek we no revenge; But we our kingdoht, that to her laws We do deliver you Get you therefore hence, Poor miserable wretches, to your death, The task whereof, God of His ive You patience to endure, and true repentance Of all your dear offences!”

This ”poor enerous pardon, and such forgiving would be hout this play the necessity of speaking through the soldier-king embarrasses the poet, and the infusion of the poet's sympathy and emotion makes the puppet ridiculous Henry's speech before Harfleur has been praised on all hands; not by the professors and critics merely, but by those who deserve attention Carlyle finds deathless valour in the saying: ”Ye, good yeoland,” and not deathless valour lish heart breathes, calh the whole businessthis ht stroke in him, had it come to that” I find no valour in it, deathless or otherwise; but the make-believe of valour, the completest proof that valour was absent Here are the words:

”_K Hen_ Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once lish dead

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then ier; Stiffen the sinews, sue; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect, Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhel and jutty his confounded base”

And so on for another twenty lines Now consider this stuff: first comes the reflection, more suitable to the philosopher than theso beco wishes his uise fair nature,” and ”lend the eye a terrible aspect” But the e tries to control the aspect of it: he does not put on the frown--that's Pistol's way The whole thing is ry man looks and not of how a brave man feels, and that it should have deceived Carlyle, surprises me The truth is that as soon as Shakespeare has to find, I will not say a e, but even an adequate and worthy expression, he fails absolutely And is the patriotisland” a ”noble patriotism”? or is it the simplest, the crudest, the least justifiable form of patriotisenerous things done by men of one's own blood, just as there is the vain and elish limbs were better than those made in Timbuctoo

In the third scene of the fourth act, just before the battle, Henry talks at his best, or rather Shakespeare's best: and we catch the true accent of courage Westmoreland wishes

”Thathad here But one ten thousand of those land That do no work to-day!”

but Henry lives on a higher plane:

”No, my fair cousin: If we are marked to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer ed sentiment is taken almost word for word from Holinshed The rest of the speech shows us Shakespeare, as a splendid rhetorician, glorifying glory; now and then the rhetoric is sublimated into poetry:

”We fee happy fee band of brothers, For he to-day that sheds his blood with entle his condition”

Shakespeare's chief aet a coat of arentle his condition In all the play not one word of praise for the coentle

Again and again in Henry V the dissonance of character between the poet and his soldier-puppet jars upon the ears, and this dissonance is generally characteristic For exa Henry, expressly charges his soldiers that ”there be nothing co taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdoamester is the soonest winner” Wise words, not yet learned even by statesentle Shakespeare But an act later, when the battle is over, on the mere news that the French have reinforced their scattered men, Henry V, with tears in his eyes for the Duke of York's death, gives orders to kill the prisoners:

”Then every soldier kill his prisoners; Give the word through”

The puppet is not even hu Henry takes on the voice and nature of buried Hotspur He woos Katherine exactly as Hotspur talked to his wife: he cannot ”mince” it in love, he tells her, in Hotspur's very words; but is forthright plain; like Hotspur he despises verses and dancing; like Hotspur he can brag, too; finds it as ”easy” to conquer kingdoms as to speak French; can ”vault into his saddle with his armour on his back”; he is no carpet-soldier; he never ”looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there,” and to make the likeness coue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favoursa speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad”

But if Shakespeare had had any vital syraded Henry V in this fashi+on, into a feeble replica of the traditional Hotspur In those narrow London streets by the river he reat adventurers; he knew Essex; had bowed to Raleigh at the Court; , not ht even have differentiated between Prince Henry and Hotspur without going outside his history-books; but a most curious point is that he preferred to smooth away their differences and accentuate the likeness As a mere matter of fact Hotspur was very ht at Otterbourne in 1388, the year of the prince's birth; but Shakespeare purposely and explicitlyof Percy to Prince Henry, says:

”And being no more in debt to years than thou”

It would have been wiser, I cannot but think, and more dramatic for Shakespeare to have left the hot-headed Percy as the older man who, in spite of years, is too i the youthful Prince the cal to a great winner of kingdoms The dra Percy greedy; he should not only have quarrelled with his associates over the division of the land, but insisted on obtaining the larger share, and even then have gruarded broad acres as his especial reward On the other hand, Prince Henry should have been open-handed and carelessly-generous, as the patron of Falstaff was likely to be Further, Hotspur ht have been depicted as inordinately proud of his name and birth; the provincial aristocrat usually is, whereas Henry, the Prince, would surely have been too certain of his own qualities to need adventitious aids to pride Percy hts; Worcester says he was ”governed by a spleen”; while the Prince should have been given that high sense of honour and insatiate love of fame which were the poles of chivalry Finally, the draht have painted Hotspur, the soldier, as disdainful of wo Prince Henry with a wider culture and sympathy

If I draw attention to such obvious points it is only to sho incredibly careless Shakespeare was inthe conqueror a poor copy of the conquered He was drawn to Hotspur a little by his quickness and ihter, and never took the trouble even to think of the qualities which a leader of men must possess