Despite the four hundred years of adaptation and performance separating modern audiences from Shakespeare’s own, the plays and characters he wrote remain vibrant. Playgoers at our production of Henry IV, Part 1 this Friday might not be able to empathize with the pressures that come with kingship or with leading armies into battle, but who among us has never felt like a disappointment to someone or acted differently around different people? The young Prince Harry, also called Hal and later King Henry V, is desperately trying to have his cake and eat it, too. He wants to enjoy the privilege that comes from being the prince, while also shirking his responsibilities in favor of painting the town with his friends. These two opposing desires and the identities behind them are expressed through the metrical form of Hal’s speech. When amongst friends—generally those who are lower in social rank—Hal speaks in prose like he’s “one of the boys”; when he’s at Court or around those of higher social status, he becomes “Prince Harry,” speaking in verse that signals his political status as the heir and Prince of Wales.
Many of us are familiar with this kind of shifting speech pattern because we do it without even thinking, like slipping into a regional accent when speaking with others from that region. For Prince Hal, however, the changes from prose to verse and back again are more than just situational slips. Instead, these changes are an entire performance specifically designed to give a particular impression of himself. In Henry IV, Part 1, playgoers are first introduced to him through the iambic pentameter employed by King Henry (Hal’s father) and the Earl of Westmorland. It seems Hal’s performance as the unruly and wayward prince has been more than convincing for his father, as we hear Henry lamenting in verse that his son is so dishonorable, and even wishing that Harry Percy (the son of his enemy) was his own son instead:
Whilst I, by looking on the praise of [Percy],
See riot and dishonor stain the brow
Of my young Harry. O, that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And called mine “Percy,” his “Plantagenet”!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.[1]
At this point, neither King Henry or the audience has reason to believe that Hal is not exactly as he has been described. In fact, when the audience meets Hal in the scene immediately following Henry’s speech, it seems as though this disappointment is not exactly unwarranted. After waking up from a night of hard drinking, Hal and Falstaff banter back and forth in prose, and are eventually joined by another friend—Ned Poins—who invites them to take part in a robbery he has planned for the next day. Hal initially declines, but is later convinced when Poins confides that he wants to prank Falstaff and the others by robbing them after they rob the initial target. Though Hal and Falstaff are ostensibly members of the aristocracy, this entire scene is spoken in the prose typically associated with those of a lower status.
All the more striking then, is Hal’s switch to poetry after Poins exits. For the first time, Hal is left alone on stage and audiences are given a chance to see the “real” Prince Harry, the heir to his father’s throne. In verse, Hal explains that he is only “pretending” to be so dissolute in order to make his transformation even more amazing: “like bright metal on a sullen ground,” he says, “My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault, / Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes / Than that which hath no foil to set it off.”[2] Harry seems to imply here that his shifting speech patterns are deliberate, that the prose-speaking Hal is just another “loose behavior” he intends to “throw off” when the time is right.[3] As R. R. Macdonald attests, “the changes of history demand changes of language, and to survive in the world of the two parts of Henry IV is to learn to speak in ways that are adequate to the occasion.”[4] Hal has evidently mastered this art of speaking to the occasion.
Indeed, throughout his scenes in Eastcheap, Hal speaks almost entirely in the speech patterns that befit the situation. When amongst his friends—committing robbery no less—Hal’s speech is all in prose. When the Sheriff comes looking for the thieves, however, Hal becomes Prince Harry once more. In verse, he assures the Sheriff that Falstaff—who the Sheriff knows by reputation if not name—is not present, though he is only hiding behind the arras, swearing that “the man, I do assure you, is not here / For I myself at this time have employed him. / And, Sheriff, I will engage my word to thee / That I will by tomorrow dinnertime / Send him to answer thee.”[5] Invoking the implied honor that accompanies nobility, Hal lies to the Sheriff about Falstaff’s whereabouts and promises that he will be held accountable for his crimes. Yet, as soon as the Sheriff exits, Hal immediately reverts to prose.
Playgoers familiar with Shakespeare’s Richard II might recognize Henry Bolingbroke’s cunning in his son’s behavior, even though the uneasily crowned King Henry cannot seem to recognize it himself. When Henry boasts that he was able to gain the crown by being “seldom seen” and thus more admired by the common people when he did appear, Prince Harry gives a fascinating response in verse. As he promises, “I shall hereafter, my thrice-gracious lord, / Be more myself.”[6] Yet audiences are left to wonder: who exactly is meant by “myself”? Up to this point, Hal has only been alone on stage once—where he delivered his poetic soliloquy detailing his intended “transformation” into Prince Harry. Much of his on-stage presence has been as the prose-speaking Hal, though the audience catches glimpses of Prince Harry in his interactions with the Sheriff and with King Henry. Is it this shrewd and calculating Prince Harry who is meant by “myself”? Or is it the Hal we see amongst his friends in Eastcheap? Is there even a “real” Harry or Hal at all? Shakespeare leaves us with no easy answer, but instead invites introspection in our own identities. Who are we when no one else is around? To see all these shifting speech patterns in action—and to see if you can catch them—head out to Smith Hall’s Grand Gallery tonight, November 3 at 6:00pm. for the Alabama Shakespeare Project’s production of Henry IV, Part 1!
[1] W. Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part 1, ed. David Scott Kastan, 3 Arden Shakespeare (Bloomsbury, 2002) 1.1.83–89.
[2] King Henry IV Part 1 1.2.202-205.
[3] King Henry IV Part 1 1.2.188.
[4] Ronald R. MacDonald, “Uneasy Lies: Language and History In Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetralogy,” Shakespeare Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1984): 22–39.
[5] King Henry IV Part 1 2.4.499-503.
[6] King Henry IV Part 1 3.2.46, 92-93.