Filling the Cheap Seats Read online

otherwise would have forced her to agree with the Roman Catholic Church that she was illegitimate.

  Henry later had Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn beheaded on a pretext of adultery. It's not as if this sort of behavior wasn't expected after all. Henry then married again, several times in fact. Henry wasn't happy with daughters; he needed a son, and Anne had not given him one so Elizabeth had been a disappointment.

  Shakespeare wisely omits all this. He does have Henry save England from the intrigues of cardinals, those nefarious agents of Rome. In the play, he greets the birth of his daughter Elizabeth with fanfare, pomp, and circumstance. Shakespeare has processions and trumpets parade across the stage. Doing anything less might have cost a playwright his head. Henry's Star Chamber, a court of injustice with no appeal, was still around.

  The Life and Death of King John—Action through dialogue

  Shakespeare's King John contains its fair share of action. One man runs on stage holding a head he's just cut off, another character jumps to his death in front of a sympathetic audience, and two kings flamboyantly parade in and out of scenes.

  But Shakespeare often employs another technique to convey action; his dialogue often passes from one character to another in the middle of a line.

  The whole play is in verse (most of Shakespeare's plays contain prose passages) in lines of ten syllables, or more accurately in lines of five feet of two syllables each, following a “daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM” pattern. This structure is called iambic pentameter; to English speakers it’s a very natural meter.

  Reaching the end of the line creates a natural pause in a speech or an exchange. When one character completes his lines, the next character in the dialogue starts his. However, to convey action and urgency, the playwright can have one character in an exchange say only part of a line and then have another character interrupt the first in the middle of the line and continue it without pausing.

  The clearest use of the technique comes in Act III scene iii line 66 where King John asks Hubert de Burgh to kill the young prince Arthur, now a prisoner in Hubert’s care. In a single line of verse, the King speaks three times and de Burgh twice.

  KING: Death.

  DE BURGH: My Lord?

  KING: A grave.

  DE BURGH:He shall not live.

  KING:Enough.

  The typography in any good edition of Shakespeare conveys graphically by having the start of one line start under the end of the previous line. (This can’t be shown in an ebook.) This shows that this is really a single line of verse spoken by two people. The replies should be spoken quickly; they need to run into to each other with no pauses at all, giving us something like below.

  Death./My lord?/A grave./He shall not live./Enough.

  If Shakespeare had written an entire line for each reply, it would have looked and sounded like this.

  KING: We desire to see Arthur meet his death.

  DE BURGH: My Lord do you really wish this to pass?

  KING: I will be clear, have him enter his grave.

  DE BURGH: He shall die; by my hand his life is cut.

  KING: We have spoken enough. You understand.

  Well, if Shakespeare had written it this way he would have written something much better, but you get the point. The longer version loses the feeling of action conveyed by the device of having the single line cut into five replies.

  This is the clearest, boldest, most exciting use of the technique in this play. Shakespeare uses it to illustrate John's tragic flaw at the point that dramatically justifies his death at the conclusion.

  Trivia

  Hubert de Burgh is a distant ancestor of Irish popular singer Chris de Burgh. Chris de Burgh’s real name is Christopher John Davison but he took his mother’s surname as his stage name. Consequently Hubert de Burgh is also an ancestor of Chris de Burgh’s daughter Rosanna Davison who was crowned Miss Ireland and Miss World in 2003.

  The Henriad

  The Henriad is a cycle of four historical plays that take audiences from around 1397 under Richard II to the marriage of England’s great warrior king, Henry V, in 1420. Shakespeare dramatized real events but he followed the interpretations of his sources and often adapted them so as not to offend the political sensibilities of the current rulers. Still, it was a brave man who produced Richard II, reminding people that it is possible to successfully depose a monarch!

  Richard the Second—A patriotic tragedy

  The Henriad part 1

  While many of Shakespeare's works play on English pride, we can say patriotism sets two of his plays apart from the others. Obviously there's Henry V with its depiction of the king who delivered England's greatest military victory; it’s a winner-take-all heroic epic. The other play is this one, Richard II.

  Both plays belong to the same cycle of four histories that also includes Henry IV parts 1 and 2. In Richard II, Shakespeare launches the cycle with a tragedy.

  The play starts with Richard presiding over a trial by combat. Henry Bolingbroke (who later becomes King Henry IV) and Thomas Mowbray each accuse the other of treason and are going to fight it out. In a trial by combat, God himself decides the issue by lending strength to the righteous. However, Richard will find himself in a delicate position whoever wins, so he stops the combat and exiles both men- Bolingbroke to a few years of banishment, but Mowbray forever.

  This is wrong. King though he may be, Richard is not God and by stopping the duel, he usurps divine providence.

  Why does Richard do this? Because he needs money. Bolingbroke's father and Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt, is a rich man. In exiling his cousin and separating son and father, Richard hastens his uncle’s end. This gives Richard the opportunity to seize Bolingbroke's inheritance. Bolingbroke returns to reclaim his birthright and takes up against Richard, using as a pretext that Richard’s courtiers have given him evil counsel. Bolingbroke wins, seizes the crown and becomes Henry IV. Richard is deposed, imprisoned, and he dies at the hands of courtiers hoping to get on the good side of the newly crowned Bolingbroke.

  Shakespeare offers two remarkable soliloquies by dying characters. As he dies, John of Gaunt extols the virtues of England.

  This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,

  This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

  This other Eden, demi-paradise

  This fortress built by nature for herself

  Against infection and the hand of war.

  This happy breed of men, this little world.

  This precious stone set in the silver sea...

  (Act II scene I lines 40~46)

  Patriotic stuff! The whole play is about how a king for reasons of personal ambition, through negligence and incompetence, betrayed his duty towards his holy realm.

  By the end of the play, we witness Richard reaching this conclusion but thinking it through pains him.

  I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

  My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,

  My soul the father; and these two beget

  A generation of still-breeding thoughts...

  (Act V scene v lines 5~8)

  Where John of Gaunt dies full of worries over England's fate yet still conscious of her glory, Richard dies in despair. He is at a loss as to what he could have done to avoid his predicament, but he knows the error belongs to him.

  The First Part of Henry the Fourth—Honor is for losers

  The Henriad part 2

  Shakespeare hated war but he loved victory. There's no question that Shakespeare fully appreciates military valor. The last play in this four part cycle, Henry V, testifies to this. Just think of the famous "Once more into the breach" and "Band of brothers" speeches.

  But Shakespeare's greatest literary creation is perhaps the lovable rogue Falstaff. Falstaff is a Shakespearean fool, an anti-hero, a lovable villain. He voices opinions that no one would dare tell others. He
can do this because he is a fool and isn't taken seriously by the king and princes above him. Audiences however listen approvingly to his wisdom, and Falstaff thinks honor is for losers.

  "Thou owest God a death" says his friend Prince Hal as he leaves.

  "'Tis not due yet" says Falstaff left alone on stage with the audience. "I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Honor 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 on Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No."

  (Act V scene i lines 127~141)

  King Henry IV faces a revolution led by Henry Percy, known as Hotspur. There's no question that Hotspur is noble, valorous, courageous and of course honorable. Henry IV wishes that this Henry were his son, rather than the rakish Prince of Wales. Hotspur is full of fire and verve but as honorable as he is, he fights on the wrong side and dies. That’s the end to which honor has led Hotspur, vindicating Falstaff.

  Certainly Hotspur fights for a cause: he believes Henry IV to have usurped the crown. He also values martial honor above everything, even above the deep love he feels for his wife. If a war serves a greater purpose, then the men who fight deserve our esteem, gratitude and respect. Honor is honorable. But if a man fights only for honor as an end in itself, he is a fool and he deserves to lose.

  The Second