Henry IV Essay: Honor In Henry IV, Part I

The purpose of this essay is to analyze several important words in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, to follow their use throughout the play, and to indicate their various meanings, the ways in which they define characters, and the ways in which they relate to the major themes of the play.

The central concept surrounding Falstaff as he moves through the first Henry to the second is that of honor. Is he the endearing, uproariously funny scoundrel we first believe him to be, or is he a cowardly liar? As we trace the use of "honor” we find that Shakespeare uses the word to illuminate not only the character of Falstaff, but to shed light upon the concept of honor as it is interpreted by Hal and others in the play. The most famous use of the word in this play occurs in Falstaff's speech:

Can honor set-to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? no. What is honor? a word. What
is that word, honor? air. A trim reckoning!--Who hath it? he that
died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth be hear it? no. Is it
insensible, then? yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the
living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none
of it: honor is a mere scutcheon:--and so ends my catechism. (V, I)

While we know quite well that Falstaff is not a brave man, yet he is clearly more honorable than anyone else in the play. Thus this speech indicates not the man's subjective estimate of honor, but rather the extent to which the word and the
concept have become meaningless to the majority of men. Falstaff is articulating in essence that in the fiercely competitive and bloody world of war, of the rapid crowning and dethroning of kings, the man who has "honor" will not live long. From this last act perspective, then, we should return to the beginning of the play and see the ways in which Shakespeare has used this word with the above concept as the underlying meaning. The King is the first in the play to employ the word, which has its own irony considering the methods he used to obtain the crown. He is heard to complain as he compares his son Hal with the son of Northumberland, Hotspur; whom he calls "A son who is the theme of Honor’s a tongue". (I,i) The next time the word appears it is on the lips of Hotspur himself, who is damning the King and urging his father and Worcester to "redeem/Your banish’d honors and restore yourselves..." (I,3) In the contrast between these two speeches one can easily see Shakespeare’s notion that the concept of honor and its embodiment seldom come together in the reality of a single person. Both Hotspur and the King believed in "the undegenerate chivalric conception of honor" which "was a lofty one. Under it trial by battle, and war, became religious affairs."1

Honor is thus, as Falstaff says, nothing more than a word, for it expresses a concept which can be conveniently twisted to support whatever side of the battle one is on. For Hotspur, who repeats the word almost immediately,"honor" is the quality he possesses which will "grapple" with the "Danger" which is King Henry. (I, iii) And again, the word is repeated by him as a synonym for victory: "...methinks it ware an easy leap,/ To pluck bright Honor from the pale-fac'd moon". (I, iii) Two lines later the word again appears as Hotspur boasts of his ability to "...pluck up drowned Honor by the locks", almost personifying the concept as a drowned woman, referred to in the following line as "her". (I,iii) To contrast Hotspur's use of the word, the next time it is spoken it is by Hal, in conversation with Poins, and in reference to his proficiency in drinking: "I tell thee, Ned, thou hast lost much honor, that thou wert not with me in this action." (II, iv) The word here may be equated with manhood, or pride in the cruder accomplishments in life. Thus Hal is linked here with the Falstaffian tendencies in his life, in a way which seems to confirm his father's original comparison. Indeed, the King is the next to use the word and he uses it again to compare his son to Hotspur, this time in a direct challenge to Hal: "What never-dying honor hath he got/Against renowned Douglas!" (III, ii) The word here is used in the sense of popularity, for the King is primarily concerned with Hotspur’s fine public image in contrast to Hal's. The Prince, however, takes up the word and throws it back at his father. He sarcastically calls Hotspur a "child of honor and renown" and says that "For every honor sitting on his helm,/Would they were multitudes, and on my head my shames redoubled!" (III, ii) Quite clearly Hal has seen through the standard intrpretation of honor, "the integrity of the soul before God."2 He is aware that his
own shame and Hotspurs honor are not so very different.

Hotspur is called "the king of honor" by Douglas (IV, i) and here the word is synonymous strength or potency, particularly in battle. It is used next as a pun by Falstaff to Hal: "I thought your honor had already been at Shrewsbury." (IV, ii) In Act IV, scene iii, Vernon speaks of "well-respected honor" as his impetus for being truthful, an irony indeed. Falstaff's speech on honor, previously cited, contains the next uses of the word.

When Douglas confronts Blunt on the plain, Blunt asks "What honor dost thou seek/Upon my head?" (V, iii) The honor spoken of here is ironic for Douglas believes that Blunt is the King; he kills him, thinking of the praise he will receive from Hotspur. Instead, the "honor" turns into embarassment at having killed the wrong man. As usual, Falstaff has the final word about this matter, for he happens upon Blunt's body and says "Sir Walter Blunt: there's honor for you!" (V, iii) The word here is an echo of his speech on the subject- honor is the province of the dead. He says "I like not such grinning honor as Sir Welter hath: give me life, which if I can save, so; if not, honor comes unlocked for, and there's an end." The connection of honor and death concludes the play, for as Hotspur and Hal finally meet in battle Hal declares "All the budding honors on thy crest/I’ll crop, to make a garland for my head." (V, iv) Hal kills Hotspur, yet grudgingly admits that his own concept of honor (or his own ambitions) and his rival's were not so different. Again, Falstaff has the final word, as he takes credit for killing Hotspur and says to Hal "if your father will do me any honor, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself." (V, iv) Indeed, here the word is honest in its meaning, if not sublime. Honor is whatever reward one feels one wants and deserves. Shakespeare's purpose in repeating this word throughout the play seems to this reader to indicate that when the finest men in the kingdom are so power-hungry that they no longer care to examine their actions and motives in terms of the honor which is the integrity of the soul before God, a disintegration of the concept itself must result. This is the milieu with which Shakespeare is working, and the dramatic difficulty of the situation is obvious: if honor is dead as an ideal, then we cannot find an honorable man. And if there is no answering to God, and not the slightest care about the future of the kingdom other than on the level of personal gain, then chaos reigns. The use of the word honor in the play as a whole illustrates the skepticism which Shakespeare felt towards the motives of those who constantly protest that they act out of unselfish desires to do the best for the most people, a claim which each of the major characters in this play makes.

The dishonorable man, and in particular the dishonorable man who has a measure of power, has the most to fear, for he has surrounded himself with equally dishonorable allies. The man who speaks of honor in the court and on the battlefield, and who nevertheless knows within his own conscience that he is not faithful, not honorable, will be like Hotspur, unable to sleep; he knows that eventually his lies and pretensions will catch up with him. In the final analysis one can easily agree that "whan the play is done, there is about as much left of ‘honor’ as there was of the divine right of kings at the and of Richard III.”3

We shall very briefly discuss the use in the play of the word "counterfeit", for it is connected with "honor" very intimately in the poet's mind. It is first used by Falstaff, to Hal: "Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit; thou art essentially mad, without seeming so." (II, iv) The line has meaning on two levels. First, of course, it refers to the coming rejection by Hal of Falstaff, who is indeed a 'true piece of gold'. And secondly it refers to the later action involving the counterfeiting of the king. The remaining uses of the word are clustered in Act V, scene iv, where it is used six times in rapid succession. The rhetorical effect of such use adds to the essential ambiguities of the word and the concept. Douglas meets the real King on the battlefield and says "I fear thou art another counterfeit", having just killed Blunt by mistake. Of course the meaniang here extends to the fact that King Henry is a counterfeit king, having deposed and murdered Richard, and Douglas feels that Hotspur is the rightful heir to the throne. Counterfeit has thus been taken to mean fake, something other than the real thing. Yet Falstaff uses the word again, this time as a verb, and then a noun, and then as a verb again:

'Sblood, 'twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit! I lie; I am no counterfeit: to die, is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the
life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth,
is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed.
The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I
have saved my life.--
Zwounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead: how, if he should counterfeit too, and rise? by my faith, I am afraid he
would prove the better counterfeit. (V, iv).

From this complex maze we can extract at least two meanings. Literally, of course, Falstaff is talking about his feigning of death on the battlefield. To counterfeit here means not quite to fake, but to seem other than one really is, and this is the meaning of the word which Shakespeare wishes to convey, for the final line in which Falstaff says that Percy would be a better counterfeit is really a dig at Hal. In essence, Falstaff sees through even his friend Hal and understands the many ways in which Hal wishes to seem something other than what he is. The word has almost become synonymous with the title of King. The fact that Falstaff makes the major comments on both "honor” and on "counterfeiting" points to their importance in the play, which is indeed about counterfeit kings, and honorable men.

Notes

1. Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago 1962), p.166.

2. Ibid., p.187.

3. Ibid., p.167.

Bibliography

Clemen, W.H. The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1951.

Dean, Loenard F. Shakespeare; Modern Essays in Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Goddard. Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Vol.1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Mahood, M.M.. Shakespeare's Wordplay. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957.

Muir, Kenneth and S. Schoenbaum, eds. Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge: University Press, 1971.