Swearing and Forswearing in Shakespeare's Histories: The Playwright as Contra-Machiavel

Author(s): Tom McAlindon

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Source: The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 51, No. 202 (May, 2000), pp. 208-229
Published by: Oxford University Press
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SWEARING AND FORSWEARING IN

SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES
THE PLAYWRIGHT AS CONTRA-MACHIAVEL

BY TOM McALINDON
O, where is faith? 0, where is loyalty?
(2 Henry VI, V. i. 164)1
Shakespeare's obsession with swearing and forswearing is most conspicuous in
his English histories. It was prompted by his chronicle sources, where an
epidemic of Yorkist-Lancastrian perjury reflects a distintegrating social order.
But Shakespearegreatly emphasized this aspect of his sources, partly because it
crystallized much of the malaise and anguish of his own century; and partly too
because it focused attention on Machiavelli's notorious defence of expedient
perfidy. The Succession and Supremacy oaths, and the inquisitional ex officio
oath, with their ruthless penalties for non-compliance, sought to impose unity
on a divided nation, but had the effects of debasing the oath, generating
cynicism about all claims to truth, faith, and honour, and producing what one
Elizabethan called 'a Machiavellian State and Governance'. These effects are
dramatized with growing sophistication from Henry VI through to Richard II
and Henry IV, their connection with the religio-political history of Tudor
England being foregrounded in King John. Shakespeare shows that expedient
treachery never works to the benefit of prince or commonwealth, but only
makes a bad situation worse, producing bitterness, instability, and violence. And
in his contrasting delineation of Henry IV, who 'broke oath on oath', and of Hal,
the 'Prince . . . who never promithes but he means to pay', he endorses the
humanists' conception of truth as the basis of justice and social order and a
prerequisite for effective leadership.

Shakespeare'splays exhibit an interest in swearing and forswearing which at

times seems almost obsessive;2nothing comparable to it can be found in any
other dramatist of the period. Although it extends throughout the whole
canon, it is most conspicuous in his histories, where it also begins. It is
these plays that I want to consider here; and since I believe the issue of
1 References throughout are to The CompleteWorks,ed. S. Wells and G. Taylor (Oxford, 1988).
2 For previous discussions, see F. L. Kelly, 'Oaths in Shakespeare's Henry VI Plays', ShakespeareQuarterly, 24 (1973), 357-71; F. A. Shirley, Swearing and Perjury in Shakespeare'sPlays
(London, 1979); J. A. Barish, 'King John and Oath Breach', in B. Fabian and K. von Rosado
(edd.), in Shakespeare:Text, Language,and Criticism(Hildesheim, Zurich, and New York, 1987),
1-18; J. D. Canfield, Wordas Bond in English Literaturefrom the Middle Ages to the Restoration
(Philadelphia, Pa., 1989); E. Glazov-Corrigan, 'The New Function of Language in Shakespeare's
Pericles', ShakespeareSurvey, 43 (1991), 131-40.
TheReviewof EnglishStudies,New Series,Vol. 51, No. 202 (2000)

? OxfordUniversityPress2000

SWEARING AND FORSWEARING IN SHAKESPEARE'SHISTORIES

209

truth and promise to be a source of major misunderstanding in the interpretation of Henry IV, my primary emphasis will be on this, the greatest of
the histories.
One obvious reason for Shakespeare'sexceptional interest in swearing and
forswearing is his overriding concern with the power and the significance of
language itself: the oath or vow-the word as bond-is language in its most
urgent and solemn form, a symbol almost of human connectedness and
interdependence. A cognate reason is his preoccupation with constancy and
inconstancy, the fragile continuity and coherence of the self as exhibited in the
relationship between word and deed. But there are also a number of historical
reasons, relating to socio-political theory and practice. These reflect the extent
to which Shakespearespoke from his own culture and its shaping past, and in
the context of the history plays they deserve special attention.
From earliest times the oath had served to secure and sanctify the vertical
bonds uniting ruler and subject and the horizontal bonds uniting citizens
within a city or state.3 In Anglo-Saxon England, the law and the community
were founded on the conception of the oath-worthy man, the individual whose
sworn word constituted proof. Alfred the Great wrote at the head of his Laws,
'In the first place, we enjoin you, as a matter of supreme importance,that every
man shall abide carefully by his oath and pledge'. The swearing of fealty to the
king was central to English political practice in the Anglo-Saxon period and
was subsequently adopted by the Norman kings as their most effective counter
to the oath and act of homage binding vassals and sub-vassals.4Thus the whole
feudal system in England from the time of the Conquerorwas held together by
the personal bond, the solemnly sworn contractual relationship of mutual
defence and support binding vassal, lord, and king.5
The decay of the feudal system and the rise of the modern, centralized state
did not diminish the importance of the oath. It was sustained by chivalry, the
code of ethics and manners which feudalism begot and which enjoyed a notable
renaissance in the sixteenth century. Embodying the ideals of the aristocracy
and the gentry, the chivalric code identified honour and nobility with both
truth (fidelity and truthfulness) and valour.6 Indeed in the sixteenth century
the words 'truth' and 'honour' were so frequently conjoined as to seem almost
synonymous terms. The word of a gentleman or soldier was held to be sacred,
so that 'to give the lie' to any man of honour-to accuse him of untruth-was
regardedas the supreme insult, an attack on personal integrity and good name
3 See P. Prodi, II Sacramento del Potere: II giuramento politico nella storia costitutionale
dell'Occidente(Bologna, 1992).
4 The Laws of the EarliestEnglishKings, ed. and trans. F. L. A. Henborough (Cambridge, 1922),
63; A. J. Joliffe, The ConstitutionalHistoryofMedieval England,3rd edn. (London, 1954), 8-9, 106.
5 C. Petit-Dutaillis, The Feudal Monarchyin France and Englandfromthe Tenthto the Thirteenth
Centuries(London, 1936), 221.
6 Sir John Ferne, The Blazon of Gentrie(1586), 79, 116; Sir William Segar, Of Honour,Militarie
and Ciuil (1602), 60; S. Painter, French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideas and Practices in Mediaeval
France (Ithaca, NY, 1940), 28-30. See also 1 Henry VI, II. iv. 1-64.

210

TOM MCALINDON

so grievous as to warrant homicidal retaliation.7 Correspondingly (as the

moralists and satirists insisted), casual swearing became in the sixteenth
century a tiresomely familiar habit with all those who wished to assert their
knightly or gentlemanly status.8
II

But more important for the sixteenth century than the residual ideals and
sentiments of chivalry was the monopolization of the oath by the sovereign
state in the unsteady transition from feudalism to a centralized monarchical
authority,9 a process precipitated in England by Henry VIII's breach with
Rome. Because of the political instability which followed from the Reformation, the use of the oath as a means of testing and ensuring the loyalty of
subjects (especially those holding government office), and of weeding out
dissidence and nonconformity, became an outstanding feature of the TudorJacobean period; there was a corresponding proliferation of writings dealing
wholly or in part with the subject of oaths, perjury, and equivocation.10And
because it was an age of deeply divided loyalties, oaths were for many a
painfully problematic issue. The problem began quite specifically with
Henry's divorce and his concomitant objection to a pan-European feudal
order which made him a vassal of the Pope and allowed the Pope to relieve
subjects of their oath of fealty to the king. Henry's Succession Act of 1534
imposed an oath, to be taken by all subjects, accepting the legitimacy of his
divorce and implicitly rejecting the Pope's authority; refusal to take this oath
was deemed an act of high treason, punishableby death. In addition, the Act of
Supremacy (1534) declaring Henry to be 'the only head of the Church of
England' imposed an oath which specifically required renouncing the jurisdiction of Rome and all oaths sworn thereto. This oath had to be sworn by the
7 Philbert de Vienne, The Philosopherof the Court, trans. G. North (1575), 49. See also Ferne,
The Blazon of Gentrie,77k, and Vincent Saviolo, VincentSaviolo His Practice, sig. piv ff., where
duelling is justified against the lie. Said Addison in 1711: 'The great Violation of the Point of
Honour from Man to Man, is giving the Lye' (cited in OED, under Lie, 2 ('To give the lie').
8 Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke namedthe Governour,ed. S. E. Lehmberg (London, 1962), 180-1;
Stefano Guazzo, The Civile Conversation,trans. G. Pettie and B. Young, ed. E. Sullivan, 2 vols.
(London, 1925), i. 59-60; Thomas Becon, 'The Invective Against Swearing', in Early Works,ed.
J. Ayre (Cambridge, 1843), 357-62. See also J. Sharman, A Casual History of Swearing (1884;
New York, 1968), 105, 115, 124, and Shirley, Swearingand Perjuryin Shakespeare'sPlays, chs. 1
and 2.
9 See Prodi,II Sacramento del Potere, 227-82.
10 C. H. Robbins, 'Selden's Pills: State Oaths in England, 1558-1714', Huntington Library
Quarterly, 35 (1971-2), 303-5; J. Guy, 'The Elizabethan Establishment and the Ecclesiastical
Polity', in id. (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture (Cambridge, 1995), 138-9;
E. Rose, Cases of Conscience:Alternatives Open to Recusantsand Puritans underElizabeth I and
James I (Cambridge, 1975), 89-95; P. Holmes, Resistanceand Compromise:The Political Thought
of the. Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge, 1982), 109, 241 n. 3. On the enforcement of the
Succession and Supremacy oaths, see G. Elton, The Enforcementof the Reformationin the Age of
Thomas Cromwell(Cambridge, 1972), 223-30. He remarks that 'never before had a spiritual
instrument of commitment been used as a political test'.

SWEARING AND FORSWEARING IN SHAKESPEARE'SHISTORIES

211

whole adult population. At first the penalty for refusing the oath was life
imprisonment, but later statutes made refusal an act of high treason. Although
both acts were repealed by Mary Tudor, Elizabeth restored the Supremacy
Act (1559). After 1563 the penalty for first refusal of its oath was loss of all
property and life imprisonment, and for a second refusal death as a traitor.
With the exception of non-ecclesiastical persons above the rank of baron, the
oath had to be taken by everyone holding public office of any kind, by those
proceeding to a university degree, and by public and private teachers of
children."l
Moreover, in its growing determination to stamp out all forms of religious
dissent, on the assumption that political power could only be ensured by
religious unity, the government came to rely on the practice of interrogating
the religiously suspect under oath. In such circumstances,answeringquestions
such as 'Do you attend church?',or 'Is so-and-so a Catholic priest?'might lead
to penalties for oneself or others ranging from ruinous fines to the traitor's
death by disembowelling. Unless one accepted the argument that this mode of
questioning was so unjust as to warrant equivocation or mental reservation,
answering truthfully entailed perjury, a sin which both the Catholic and the
reformed Church held to be deserving of the most severe punishments in time
and eternity. The most famous type of interrogationunder oath was that which
involved the so-called ex officio oath. After 1583, Puritan dissenters were
compulsorily subjected to this oath by the ecclesiastical Court of High
Commission in an effort to ensure their full conformity to the religious
settlement. The ex officio oath was fiercely condemned by the Puritans and
their many allies among the secular lawyers, who claimed that it violated the
whole spirit of the common law by requiring people to incriminate themselves.12Historians of the period seldom fail to record this controversy or to
deal sympathetically with the indignation it inspired among Elizabeth's
Protestant subjects. But they tend not to observe that Catholics were
commonly interrogated by government officers in the same manner and
usually with far more serious consequences.13
The Catholic rebellion of 1569 and the papal bull of 1570 did much to keep
the oath at the centre of religious and political consciousness.4 The bull
excommunicated Elizabeth, condemning her as a usurper and a heretic. And in
accordance with feudal law as interpreted by the Church throughout the
11 The TudorConstitution:Documentsand Commentary,ed. G. Elton (Cambridge, 1960), 6-12,
61-2, 355-8, 363-8, 410 n. 4; P. Hughes, The Reformationin England, iii (London, 1954), 33-5.
12 M. H. Maguire, 'The Attack of the Common Lawyers on the Oath Ex Officio', in Essays in
History and Political Theoryin Honor of CharlesH. Mcllwain, ed. C. Wittke (Cambridge, Mass.,
1936), 199-229; Robbins, 'Selden's Pills', 310-11.
13 For the interrogationof Catholics under oath, see Samuel Harsnett, A Declarationof Egregious
Popish Impostures(1603), 258 (refers to an interrogation in 1588); Hughes, The Reformationin
England, 372; Holmes, Resistanceand Compromise,44, 120-1; J. Bellamy, The Tudor Law of
Treason(London, 1979), 109.
14 The bull is printed in The TudorConstitution,416-18.

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TOM MCALINDON

Middle Ages,15it thereby released her subjects from their oath of fealty. The
Pope's presumption that he could release subjects from this oath infuriated
Protestants. It was regularlyreviled from the pulpit throughout the remainder
of the century in the 'Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion'
(1570). But it might be said to have come most sharply into focus at a time and
in circumstances which would have made a deep impression on the young
Shakespeare.Edmund Campion and a group of fellow Catholics were arrested,
tried, and executed for treason in 1581. This event was regarded by the
government as a major success in its war against the missionary priests, whom
it regarded as fomenters of rebellion preparing the ground for an invasion of
England by a continental force. But the executions provoked much protest,
and were followed by a barrage of Catholic and Protestant pamphlets and
tracts on the rights and wrongs of the treason charge, writings in which the
papal bull and its attack on the oath of fealty figured prominently (two such
documents are reprinted in Holinshed's Chronicles'6).Among those arraigned
with Campion was a Father Thomas Cottam, executed in mid-1582. He was
known by the government to have planned a (probablymissionary)visit to the
Stratford area. His brother John had been the schoolmaster at Shakespeare's
school since 1579, where he succeeded Thomas Jenkins, another Catholic and
a former student of the brilliant Campion at Oxford. Suspect by association,
John left Stratford shortly before the end of January 1582, returning to
Lancashire,his stubbornlyCatholic native county. Given these facts and, more
importantly, the probability that John Shakespeare was a recusant, it seems
reasonable to assume that Shakespeare grew up with Catholic beliefs or
sympathies. He may well have known of Campion's remorse at having once
taken the Supremacy oath 'against his conscience' in order to proceed to the
MA. It may even be the case, as Ernst Honigmann has persuasively argued,
that at the beginning of his 'lost years' he went north to serve, on Cottam's
recommendation,as a tutor to the Hoghtons, a wealthy Catholic family whose
huge estate was close to the Cottam home. 1 These possibilities aside, however,
it remains obvious that Shakespearewould have been acutely conscious from
the outset of his adult life that the life-and-death problems of conscience which
afflicted those opposed to the new religio-political order were focused on the
making and breaking of oaths.
Involved in Catholic, feudalistic resistanceto the new order was the question
15 Guy Fourquin, Lordshipand Feudalism in the Middle Ages, trans. I. and A. Lytton Sells
(London, 1976), 231.
16 Raphael Holinshed, Chroniclesof England, Scotland and Ireland, 6 vols. (1587 edn., repr.
1808), iv. 457-60, 515-33.
17 On the Cottam brothers,Jenkins, and Campion, see T. W. Baldwin, Shakespere'sSmall Latine
and Lesse Greeke, 2 vols. (Urbana, Ill., 1944), ii. 483-6; on Campion's remorse, DNB, s.v.
'Campion, Edmund'; on Shakespeareand the Hoghton family, E. Honigmann, Shakespeare:'The
Lost Years' (Manchester, 1985), 5-6, 19-22, 40-9, 126-32. For a recent consideration of
Shakespeare's putatively Catholic connections and sympathies, see G. Taylor, 'Forms of
Opposition: Shakespeare and Middleton', English Literary Renaissance,27 (1997), 283-314 (cf.
n. 36 below).

SWEARING AND FORSWEARINGIN SHAKESPEARE'SHISTORIES

213

of loyalty and disloyalty not only to one's religious convictions and to Crown
and country, but also, for many, to the code of chivalry and to family and
friends. The difficulties occasioned by these conflicting loyalties are apparent
in the recorded sentiments and experiences of the leaders of the majorCatholic
rebellions. Using the argument of ministerial responsibility, they denied that
they were in breach of their oath of allegianceand proclaimed themselves loyal
subjects intent on removing evil counsellors who misled the ruler in religious
matters and on political issues such as the succession (Mary Tudor, then Mary
Stuart). The leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536)-by far the most
serious threat to the Tudor regime-devised an oath for their followers which
sought to reconcile conflicting loyalties. Like the name of the rising itself, its
title, 'The Oath of Honourable Men', constituted an obviously desperate claim
to moral and political rectitude. In this oath, the pilgrims swore loyalty to both
Church and king, promising to rid the one of heretics and the other of bad
councillors and upstart nobility.18 But there is evidence that the leaders
remained troubled in conscience, and that some of their followers were
induced to break the honourable oath and betray their relatives and friends
on the grounds that their oath of allegiancehad priority. One who resisted such
pressure was Lord Darcy. He had joined the rebellion after much heartsearching and was later urged by the King's deputy, the duke of Norfolk, to
capture his leader and hand him over, dead or alive. 'I cannot do it in no wise',
he protested, 'for I have made promise to the contrary, and my coat was never
stained with any such blot. And my Lord's Grace your master knoweth well
enough what a nobleman's promise is.' For, added Darcy, in a poignant remark
of great historical significance, 'what is a man but [h]is promysse'. Pressed
about his oath of allegiance, he replied that he would obey the King 'in all
laufull thinges whych is not agenst our feth'.'9 Like Darcy, the leaders of the
1569 rebellion, the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, were initially
troubled and irresolute, wondering 'whether we ought by Gods lawes to rise
against our Prince or no; being our anoynted Prince'; Westmorland feared that
by rebelling he would blot the unsullied honour of his house forever. They
believed, however, that rebellion would be lawful if Elizabeth were excommunicated; but the promised bull did not arrive in time, and they felt compelled
to proceed without it. In so far as they settled the matter with their conscience,
they did so on the ground that they were acting 'for the reformacion of
religion, and the preservationof... the Queen of Scotts, whom we accompted
by Gods lawe and mans lawe to be right heire' if Elizabeth died without issue.20
Such were the pressures and the uncertainties of the time that, among the
lowly and the great, brother betrayed brother, friend friend, neighbour
neighbour, servant master and mistress; from the Tudor archives one could
18 M. H. Dodds and R. Dodds, The Pilgrimageof Grace 1536-1537 and the Exeter Conspiracy,2
vols. (Cambridge, 1915), i. 175-6, 182, 342.
19 Ibid. ii. 291-3, 303-4.
20 Memorialsof the Rebellionof 1569, ed. C. Sharp (London, 1840), 196, 202-5.

214

TOM MCALINDON

compose a dismal encyclopaedia of willing and reluctant treacheries. Once

more the story begins-in truly archetypalfashion-with Henry VIII. Heavily
outnumbered by the northern rebels, and afraid to engage them in battle,
Norfolk wrote to Henry for advice. Henry replied by telling him to temporize
and promise anything: 'esteeme no promise you should make to the rebels nor
think your honour touched in the breach of it'.21 Promised redress of their
grievances, the leaders disbanded their forces, and in due time were
imprisoned and executed. With Norfolk's self-congratulation in this episode
compare the self-hatred of Robert Constable, a Catholic of distinguished
family who volunteered to spy on the leaders of the 1570 rebellion in the hope
of recovering the inheritance lost because of his grandfather'sinvolvement in
the Pilgrimage of Grace: 'A trayterouskind of service that I am wayded in, to
trap them that trust me, as Judas did Christ'.22Or compare the misery of
Francis Throckmorton, who in 1583 passed from the hands of the rackmaster
groaning: 'Now I haue disclosed the secrets of hir who was the deerest thing
unto me in the world ... sith I haue failed of my faith towards her, I care not if
I be hanged . . . Chi a perso la fede, a perso l'honore.'23
Perhaps the most immediate and obvious reason for the conspicuous
emphasis on swearing and forswearing in Shakespeare's English history
plays lies in the nature of his sources: the Chronicles'account of the
Yorkist-Lancastrian conflict contains an abundance of royal and aristocratic
perjuries, collective symptoms of a disintegrating social order. But Shakespeare seizes on this aspect of his sources and renders it far more prominent by
means of fictional additions and through structural, ironic, and stylistic
emphases. And a major reason for this emphasis, I suggest, was his perception
that the subject of swearing and forswearingcrystallized much of the malaise
and anguish of his own century. The government hoped that by means of
obligatory oaths and their attendant penalties 'the nation would form itself. . .
into a sworn commune to establish the new settlement'.24But towards the end
of the sixteenth century, anyone looking back could have seen that in this
process of coercive change the oath was devalued, the feudal ethic debased, all
protestations of truth, loyalty, and honour rendered suspect, and language
itself corrupted. These illnesses are dramatizedwith increasing invention and
subtlety in Shakespeare'shistories from Henry VI through to Henry IV; and
although it is only in KingJohn that the analogywith contemporaryexperience
is rendered wholly unmistakable,it must have been obvious nonetheless. Back
in 1569, Thomas Norton, whose tracts condemning the contemporaneous
21 Dodds and Dodds, Pilgrimageof Grace, ii. 15. On treachery and distrust during Elizabeth's
reign among members of the same family (accentuated by government rewards and promises of
protection for informers), see A. O. Meyer, England and the Catholic Church Under Queen
Elizabeth, trans. J. R. McKee (London, 1915), 170-1.
22 Memorialsof the Rebellionof 1569, 146.
23 Holinshed, Chronicles,iv. 43.
24 F. M. Powicke, The Reformationin England (London, 1941), 48.

SWEARING AND FORSWEARING IN SHAKESPEARE'SHISTORIES

215

rebellion in the north were influential in propagandist literature throughout

Elizabeth's reign, likened the divisions caused by that rebellion to those
produced by the conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster in the
previous century: 'so long and so great uncertaintieswhich side were true men
and which were traitors,and for how manie daies and houres they should be so
esteemed'.25
III

Almost as important perhaps as the religio-political conflicts of the sixteenth

century for an understanding of Shakespeare's obsession with truth and
treachery in the histories was the profound challenge which Machiavelli's
political philosophy constituted for all those in Tudor England who had an
educated interest in politics and history. More immediately disturbing than
Machiavelli's exclusion of God and divine will from politics was his bland
discussion of fidelity in ThePrince, chapter 18, that 'foundationaltext of early
modern political thought':26
Everyoneadmitshow praiseworthyit is in a princeto keep faith, and to live with
integrityand not with craft.Neverthelessour experiencehas been that those princes
who havedone greatthingshaveheld faithof little account,and haveknownhow to
circumventthe intellectof men, and in the end haveovercomethose who haverelied
on theirword.27
Well before Shakespeare launched into political drama, Englishmen were
familiar with Machiavelli and saw possible or actual connections between his
theories and English political practice. In 1537 Lord Morley wrote to
Cromwell: 'This book of Machiavelli, de Principe, is surely a good thing for
your Lordship and for our Sovereign Lord in Council'.28But wittingly or not,
their sovereign lord had a few months earlier put chapter 18 to the test in his
vulpine dealings with the pilgrim leaders. Another admirerof Machiavelli was
the learned traveller and student of political history William Thomas, who
25 A Warnyngagaynstthe dangerous
practisesof Papistes,and speciallythepartenersof the late
Norton(1569).
as hauebeenlatelypublished
Rebellion,
by Thomas
sig. D5v-Clr, in All Suchtreatises
a translatorof Calvin,andco-authorof
Nortonwas alsoa governmentinquisitor,a rackmaster,
Forhis influenceon laterpropagandist
writing,seeJ. K.
England'sfirstformaltragedy,Gorboduc.
Relatingto theNorthernRebellionof
Lowers,Mirrors
for Rebels:A Studyof PolemicalLiterature
1569(Berkeley,Calif., 1953),36, 55, 64.
del Potere,TheAmericanHistoricalReview,98
26 J. Kirschner,reviewof Prodi,II Sacramento
(1993), 1583.I shareKirschner'ssurprisethat Prodi'smagisterialstudy ignoresMachiavelli's
notoriousviewson politicalperfidy.
27 Everymanedition(London,1952),97. CompareMachiavelli'seulogyof CastruccioCastracani:'He wasdelightfulamongfriends,but terribleto his enemies;justto his subjects;readyto
playfalsewiththe unfaithful,andwillingto overcomeby fraudthosewhomhe desiredto subdue,
becausehe was wont to say that it was the victorythat broughtthe glory,not the methodof
achievingit' (ibid. 199).
28 LettersandPapers,ForeignandDomestic:
HenryVIII, 1539,vol. xiv, pt. 1 (1891),285, citedin
F. Raab,TheEnglishFaceof Machiavelli(London,1964),49; cf. W. G. Zeeveld,Foundations
of
TudorPolicy(London,1948),186.

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TOM McALINDON

vigorously defended Henry's handling of the rebels in The Pilgrim, a dialogue

on Henry's life and actions written shortly after his death. At first, Thomas
insists that the promises which seduced the rebels were sincere and were
broken only because the leaders themselves proved faithless; but later he
implicitly accepts that the promises were not made in good faith, and justifies
them by reference to Machiavelli's most fundamental principle: any action is
justifiablewhich successfully promotes the public welfare.29Clerk of the Privy
Council in Edward's reign, Thomas set himself up as unofficial tutor to the
young king in writings which both implicitly and explicitly commend
Machiavelli's political realism.30By contrast, the Catholic, John Leslie, in
his Treatiseof TreasonsagainstQueenElizabethand the CrownofEngland (1572)
takes a characteristically negative, Elizabethan view of Machiavelli in his
account of the way in which the changes of religion initiated by Henry affected
the nation. England, he says, has become a place
wherbothby wordandexampleof the Rulers,the ruledaretaughtwitheverychange
of Princeto changealso the face of their faithand religion:wher,in apparenceand
show only, a Religionis pretended,now one, now another,they force not greatly
which ... whereit is free to slaunder,to belie, to forswear,to accuse,to corrupt,to
oppresse,to robbe,to murther,andto commiteveryotheroutrage,neverso barbarous
(that promisethto advancethe presentPolicie in hand) . . . that I cal properlya
MachiavellianStateand Governance.31
Looking at England in the late Middle Ages, Shakespearesaw a comparable
spectacle of Machiavellian expediency and treachery; and the manifestly
topical King John suggests that he saw Tudor history in a similar light. The
question he had to ask in the histories was whether the Machiavellianattitude
to expedient treachery actually worked to the benefit of the prince and the
commonwealth, and this question he answered emphatically in the negative.
Expedient perfidy invariably makes a bad situation worse, infecting relationships with the poison of distrust, and producing bitterness, instability, and
violence. Shakespeare'sdelineation in the histories of a near-universalcorruption of truth and trust points repeatedly to the decay of chivalry and its
conception of nobility. But the chivalric ideal itself is not belittled; on the
contrary,honour and nobility are identified with truth, and nobility-as-truth is
shown to be essential to effective leadership and social harmony. Shakespeare
thus endorses not only the chivalric ideal but also the classical and humanist
doctrine, heavily emphasized in Sir Thomas Elyot's Boke namedthe Governour
(1531), that fidelity or promise-keepingis the foundationof justice and order.32
29 ThePilgrim:A Dialogue on the Life of King Henry the Eighth,ed. J. A. Froude (London, 1861),
50-5. On Machiavelli's guiding principle, see J. W. Allen, Political Thoughtin the Sixteenth
Century(London, 1969), 472.
30 John Strype, EcclesiasticalMemorials, vol. ii, pt. 2 (Oxford, 1822), 365-72. Thomas is
discoursing on one of Machiavelli's major themes (The Prince, ch. 25; Discourses,iii. 7-9).
31 Facsimile reprint (Ilkley and London, 1975), sig. A5-5'.
32 Cicero, The Offices,Everyman edn. (London, 1937), 8 ('to stand to one's words in all promises

SWEARING AND FORSWEARING IN SHAKESPEARES HISTORIES

217

IV

Perjury, treachery, and cynicism are omnipresent in the trilogy which marks
the beginning of Shakespeare'scareer as a dramatist. 'Trust nobody', declares
Buckingham in 2 Henry VI (IV. iv. 57). But more cynical altogether is the kind
of political advice offered by Alen9on in Part 1 and by Edward and Richard
(Gloucester) in Part 3. When the defeated French king is urged by York to
accept a truce with Henry and 'swear allegiance . . as thou art knight' (IHVI
V. vi. 169-70), Alencon-'that notorious Machiavel' (V. vi. 74)-counsels
Charles to take the oath but to 'breakit when your pleasure serves' (V. vi. 164).
Edward urges his father to ignore his sworn agreement that the crown should
remain with Henry while he lives, adding that 'for a kingdom any oath may be
broken';more effectively, Richard glibly assures their father that he would not
be guilty of perjury in this instance, since his oath was not taken 'before a true
and lawful magistrate' (3HVI I. ii. 2-27).
The chief victims of the prevailing spirit of treachery in Henry VI are
Duke Humphrey, Talbot, and Henry himself. Humphrey is the last
representative of England's political rectitude, Talbot, 'the noble chevalier'
(IHVI IV. iii. 14), of its martial honour. Apart from the revengers Clifford
and Warwick, they are the only men in the trilogy whose sworn word proves
true, and they are undone by the oath-breaking and malicious deceits of
others; their downfall spells the loss of France and a betrayal of the honour
won for England ('this warlike isle', 2HVI I. i. 122) by Henry V in regaining
'his true inheritance' (I. i. 79). Well-meaning and pious, but feeble, the
King-'perjured Henry' (3HVI II. ii. 81), 'False King' (2HVI V. i. 91)-is
corrupted by the prevailing spirit.33 He allows himself to be trapped in a
marriage founded on a broken betrothal pledge, and twice breaks his sworn
faith to his rival York. These betrayals diminish what little authority he has;
like all the other perjuries in the three plays, they produce violence and
confusion and inspire him with fear that God will exact punishment for his
perjuries (3HVI II. ii. 7). Henry is finally murdered by treachery's ultimate
embodiment, the future tyrant who claims he can teach 'the murderous
Machiavel' (3HVI III. ii. 193) a lesson. In Richard's concluding promise that
he will dispose of his brothers Edward (to whom he has just sworn
allegiance) and Clarence, the disease of political bond-breaking reaches the
heart of human relationships: 'I have no brother ... I am myself alone' (V.
vi. 81-4). This would seem to be Shakespeare's most pointed response to
Machiavelli's cynical wisdom.

and bargains; which we call justice'), 152-63 (i. 5, iii. 24-32); Elyot, The Boke named the
Governour,167-82 ('faith, which I by the authority of Tully do name the foundation of justice').
33 On Henry's forswearing, see also Kelly, 'Oaths in Shakespeare's Henry VI Plays', 364.

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TOM McALINDON
V

As in Henry VI and KingJohn, forswearingin RichardIII is built into theme

and structure. Perjury and murder are virtually synonymous here, while each
of the ironic retributions which constitute the plot is conceived as divine
punishment for 'Perjury,perjury, in the high'st degree!' (V. v. 150). Clarence,
Buckingham, and Richard explicitly recognize this pattern in their lives; and
although he dies at the start of the play, King Edward too is subject to it. His
futile imposition of an oath of reconciliation on his divided followers is
ironically counterpointed by his unwitting allusion to the broken matrimonial
pledge that lost him the support of his ambassadorWarwickin 3 Henry VI and
produced the divisions he is now trying to heal. Piously anticipating divine
grace, Edward tells his quarrelsomefamily and friends: 'I every day expect an
embassage | From my redeemer to redeem me hence' (RIII II. i. 3-4): but
these words recall the shame and outrage of Warwick:'you disgracedme in my
embassade' (3HVI IV. iv. 5).
Edward's brother-in-law, Lord Rich, who remains loyal to Edward's son
and heir, is later executed by Richard, as he correctly says, 'For truth, for duty,
and for loyalty' (RIII III. iii. 3). The phrase pinpoints the feudal ethic, and the
situation stresses the literal impossibility of living up to that code in a time of
tyranny. The supreme test of the code arises when a despotic or desperate
ruler asks one of his vassals to secretly dispose of another. This test occurs in
RichardIII, King John, and RichardII; as the politically well informed must
have known, it also occurred in Elizabeth's reign. Terrified by what the
execution of her troublesome Catholic cousin would do to her own international standing, Elizabeth suggested to her ministers, and then to her
secretary of state William Davison, that some loyal subject should privately
deal the death blow. Against Davison's advice, she wrote to Mary's gaoler, Sir
Amyas Paulet, asking him to do just that. But although he disliked Mary,
Paulet had assured her he was 'a man of honour and a gentleman' and would
do no such cruelty upon her; so he wrote indignantly to Elizabeth:'God forbid
that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a
blot on my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant'.34In
Richard III, however, Clarence's murderers justify themselves by telling
him they are obeying the King; to no avail, their victim reminds them that
the feudal ethic does not make kings the final judges of what is right and true:
'Erroneous vassals, the great King of Kings I Hath . . . commanded I That
thou shalt do no murder. Wil you then I Spurn at his edict, and fulfil a man's?'
(I. iv. 190-3). To his credit, the Second Murderer is troubled in conscience
before and after the killing and discards his share of the fee, saying, 'How fain,
like Pilate, would I wash my hands [ Of this most grievous, guilty murder' (I.
iv. 267-8). His words point to the more interesting case of Sir Robert
Brakenbury,the civilized lieutenant of the Tower, Clarence's keeper. Reading
34 A. Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (London, 1969), 62-3.

SWEARING AND FORSWEARING IN SHAKESPEARES HISTORIES

219

the commission carried by the murderers, presumably with King Edward's

seal (courtesy of Richard), he says: 'I will not reason what is meant hereby, I
Because I will be guiltless of the meaning' (I. iv. 90-1); he then gives the
bearersthe keys and tells them where Clarence lies sleeping (lines 92-8). Much
later, when he has the young prince in his care, he refuses to admit the boy's
mother, Queen Elizabeth, saying that he is 'bound by oath' to the King not to
do so; but although such a command must have made him suspicious, and
although Elizabeth points out that the Protector is not the King, he merely
mumbles an apology while remaining faithful to the defacto king (IV. i. 27).
Here certainly is the compromised conscience of a prudent survivor, a type
more common no doubt than an Amyas Paulet in the sixteenth century.
The problem of truth, duty, and loyalty recurs in magnified form a few
scenes later in the intriguing case of Thomas Stanley. Before Bosworth,
Richardrightly suspects Stanley of colluding with Richmond, interrogateshim
sharply, and warns that his son is being kept as hostage to ensure his loyalty. In
response to Richard's questions, Stanley says he will 'prove true', adding:
'mistrust me not ... Most mighty sovereign, | You have no cause to hold my
friendship doubtful. I never was, nor never will be, false' (IV. iv. 409-24).
Although his untruth is clearly emphasized, (some) Catholics in Shakespeare's
audience might have defended him, arguing that his answers could have been
intentionally equivocal or accompanied by a mental reservation, and as such
were justifiable on the grounds that his motive was to save an innocent life.
Clearly, however, Stanley's 'untruth' is not meant to tell against him, since
Shakespeare exaggerates his historical role as founding father of the Tudor
dynasty and leaves him with an untroubled conscience.35Prudently evasive
double-dealing of Stanley's kind might have saved the Duke of Buckingham:
his careeras Richard's most trusted aide comes to an end when he recoils from
the suggestion that he should murder the young princes, and compounds his
error by asking Richard to honour a promise of reward for services already
rendered.
It is a commonplace of political history that in totalitarianand divided states
language and symbolism lose all stability and become a focus for confusion and
topsy-turvydom. During the suppression of the 1956 uprising in Hungary, for
example, Russian soldiers who found their tanks daubed with swastikas read
these signs as confirming the official version of current events-they were
resisting fascist counter-revolutionaries.Semiotic disorder of this kind occurs
conspicuously in the histories for the first time in RichardIII, most obviously
in the tyrant's negotiations with Queen Elizabeth on his hoped-for marriageto
35 Father-in-law of Henry VII, Stanley, the first earl of Derby, was forefather of Lord Strange,
the fourth earl, with whose acting company Shakespearewas associated in the early 1590s. On the
care with which Shakespeare magnifies the first earl's contribution to founding the Tudor
dynasty, see Honigmann, Shakespeare:'TheLost Years',63-4. For the notion of morally justified
disobedience in Shakespeare, see R. Strier, 'Faithful Servants: Shakespeare's Praise of Disobedience', in H. Dubrow and R. Strier (edd.), The HistoricalRenaissance:New Essayson Tudor
Literatureand Culture(Chicago and London, 1988), 104-33.

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her daughter. His desperate attempt to secure his position by this marriageis
marked by the collapse of language as a means of persuasion and communication. Urging Elizabeth to do his wooing for him ('Be eloquent on my behalf
to her'), he is told that his past invalidates every word he would send,
reinforced though it is by his most solemn vows and symbols. To swear by
his George, his garter, or his crown, says Elizabeth, is to swear 'By nothing',
since his 'broken faith' has profaned and disgraced these tokens of knightly
honour and royal glory (IV. iv. 288-302).
VI

The problem of what is 'true' and 'right' (this play's two key words) dominates
King John. That Shakespeare should turn aside from his examination of the
Yorkist-Lancastrian wars to write on John's reign, either shortly before or
after Richard III, seems oddly digressive. The impression, however, is
misleading, for this is where Shakespeare gives free rein to his mounting
interest in the way the past can be made to mirrorthe present; this is where the
religious element in his contemporary subtext clearly emerges. The extreme
relevance of the play to the religio-political history of Tudor England is, of
course, common knowledge; we owe much in particularto the Victorian critic
Richard Simpson, who carefully listed its topical parallels.36Its contemporary
relevance is virtuallyspelt out in Falconbridge'sfamous concluding lines to the
effect that England's immunity to invasion depends on its being 'true' to itself.
This epitomizes an idea that had been foremost in the national consciousness
ever since the 1569 rebellion, when the state began to be threatened by an
alliance of native Catholics and an invading Catholic force. The phrase also
occurs in 3 Henry VI, where Hastings declares that England needs no alliance
with France to withstand 'foreign storms' but 'is safe, if true within itself' (IV.
i. 37-9). The idea itself is commonplace ('Every kingdom divided against itself
shall be brought to naught', says the Bible); but it is worth noting that its first
known formulation in terms of truth occurs in a versified Answer to the
Proclamationof the rebelsin the North (1569)-and in a KingJohn-like context
which combines charges of religious hypocrisy with denunciations of an
unpatriotic willingness to expose England to invasion by foreign powers.37
The action of King John involves a series of sworn commitments, each a
violation of its predecessor. Almost from the start, 'faith' is understood in the
sense both of religion and of truth or fidelity; and because of the religious
subject-matter,the violated code of chivalry becomes specifically Christian, an
36 'The Politics of Shakespere'sHistorical Plays', New ShakespereSociety Publications,ser. 1 no. 1
(1874), 396-441: 397-400. In this lengthy and important essay, Simpson presents Shakespeareas
a dramatist with Catholic and feudal sympathies who 'took the opposition side' (p. 441) in the
sense that he regretted the decline of the English nobility and the rise of Tudor authoritarianism.
37 'A Prouerbe olde, no lande there is I that can this lande subdue, I If we agree within our
selves I and to our Realme be true' (sig. A8V).Cited by L. A. Beaurline in his edition of King John
(Cambridge, 1990), 183 (he does not note the revealing context).

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221

exalted idealism in which (as in the Grail romances and the ideology of the
Crusades) secular and spiritual values are conjoined. Condemning King John
as a usurper, King Philip and the Duke of Austria present themselves as
'religiously provoke[d]' (II. i. 246) and 'divinely vowed upon the right' (II. i.
237) of the child Arthur and his widowed mother; they conceive of themselves
as devout 'chevaliers' (II. i. 287) following in the steps of Richard Coeur de
Lion, who 'fought the holy wars in Palestine' (II. i. 4) and whose lionskin
Austria now wears. But 'commodity' in the shape of a profitable marriage
between the Dauphin and John's niece rapidly undoes their chivalrous
commitments. Although she has 'a king's oath to the contrary' (II. ii. 10),
the astonished widow finds that her champions have 'Gone to be married ...
Gone to swear a peace' (II. ii. 1). Bitterly, she dismisses Philip as 'a
counterfeit I Resembling majesty, which being touched and tried | Proves
valueless', and Austria as a prototypal Falstaff, 'A ramping fool, to brag and
stamp, and swear I Upon my party!' (III. i. 25-7, 48-9).
But the intervention of the papal legate undoes the sworn peace. Because he
claims to be 'supreme head' under God in ecclesiastical as well as political
affairs, John is excommunicated, his subjects are urged to revolt from
allegiance, and Philip is commanded, as the Pope's vassal, to make war on
him. Philip is 'perplexed, and know[s] not what to say'; he 'hang[s] ... in
doubt' (III. i. 145-7). Can he 'unswearfaith sworn'?Can he 'play fast and loose
with faith'? According to Pandulph, he must, or he will 'make [political] faith
an enemy to [religious] faith' and incur excommunication and a papal curse
(III. i. 168-89). Cowed as well as perplexed, he submits, and the invasion of
England takes place, led by the enthusiastic Dauphin. To ensure its success, a
sworn alliance is made with two disaffected English lords; but this is followed
by a French vow, 'sworn ... Upon the altarat Saint Edmundsbury' (V. iv. 1618), that these unreliable allies will be subsequently beheaded. Although
commodity is his motive, the Dauphin chooses to gloss this invasion as an
honourable endeavour-a kind of crusade-on which the legate has 'set the
name of right | With holy breath' (V. ii. 67-8). However, since John now
submits to the Pope, Pandulph halts the invasion, and so the grotesque
sequence of violated commitments comes to an end. Beginning with the
abandonment of a widow and her child by their avowed champions, and
ending with the collapse of a pseudo-crusade, the wordy 'action' of this play
constitutes a grim travesty of what in RichardII is called 'Christianservice and
true chivalry' (II. i. 54).
Pandulph's announcement that anyone who secretly kills John will be
'Canonized and worshipped as a saint' (KingJohn, III. i. 103), and his cynical
recognition that the invasion will probably provoke John to murder the
imprisoned Arthur, places him on an even lower moral plane than John.
There is no mistaking the play's anti-papalism.In general, too, the ironic light
thrown on the attempt of the Pope ('Innocent'!), his 'holy legate', and his
subject princes to endow the quest for power and possession with an entirely

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religious character is consistent with the demystifying strategies used by

Protestant polemicists against the self-justifying arguments of Catholic
rebels and missionary priests.38 Yet Shakespeare is bipartisan. John is not
the redeemed sinner and noble precursorof the Reformationimagined by Bale,
Foxe, and the author of The TroublesomeReign of King John, for he dies in
raging despair. The moral dilemma of the disillusioned English earls and their
temporary defection to the papal force (reminiscent of the troubled consciences of the northern earls in 1569) is treated with remarkablesympathy.39
Hubert's violation of his 'voluntaryoath' (III. iii. 23, IV. i. 58) to kill Arthur is
a reminder that there are limits to the loyalty any ruler can expect. And John's
craven attempt to blame Hubert for his nephew's death, together with
Hubert's protest (not in any chronicle), 'Here is your hand and seal for
what I did' (IV. ii. 216), comes dangerously close to Elizabeth. Although she
made secretary Davison a scapegoat for her cousin's death, he had made sure
he was in possession of her signature and seal for the execution.40
VII

Throughout RichardII chivalric honour is identified with truth in the twin

sense of loyalty and honest speech. This twin conception informs three scenes
of resounding defiance and challenge where rivals all speak under oath ('which
God forbid a knight should violate!', I. iii. 18) while accusing one another of
being traitors and liars. In the scene of trial by combat, too, the ritual
exchanges between the Knight Marshal and the combatants are used in such
a way as to identify knightly honour with sworn 'truth' (I. iii. 10, 14, 18, 34, 41,
87, 96). The debasement of the oath is central to an impression that 'true
chivalry' is dead and even that language itself has been rendered valueless,
'hollow' (I. ii. 59, iv. 9). Once Bolingbroke is crowned, the strident ironies of
what might be called antonymic nominalism invade the dialogue, words like
'true', 'loyal', 'traitor', 'gentle', and 'kind' being used where contrary terms
would seem more appropriate.
From the start, attention is drawn to the binding oath by Richard himself.
Gaunt, he insists, must not act in his son's appeal as a father but according to
his 'oath and bond' (I. i. 2) as a loyal subject. Bolingbroke and Mowbray must
swear never to conspire against Richard in exile. Everyone in the abdication
scene stands condemned for breaking the oath of allegiance;Northumberland
later for undoing the King's marriage vow. But the characterization of
Bolingbroke is no less effective in directing attention to the importance of
38 See T. McAlindon, 'Pilgrims of Grace: Henry IV Historicized', ShakespeareSurvey, 48
(1995), 72-3.
39 Cf. Barish, 'King John and Oath Breach', 15; King John, ed. Beaurline, pp. 54-5. As Barish
notes, however, several critics advance a hostile interpretation of the English earls.
40 Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots, 621, 636-7. See also King John, ed. E. A. J. Honigmann
(London, 1954), pp. xxviii-xxix.

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223

the oath and the question of truth; for his many solemn claims to truth are
consistently ironized. Calling on heaven to be the record of his speech, he
claims to be cherishing his prince's safety when in fact he is bringing his crimes
to light. He swears that he returned from exile simply to reclaim his title, and
on the assuranceof that oath the Percies swear to aid him (II. iii. 147-50); but
Shakespeare has altered Holinshed to show that he left France with an army
before he was disinherited (II. i. 271-88). He twice swears 'allegiance and true
faith of heart' to Richard while threateninghim with his army (III. iii. 36, 104).
Five times he makes an unsolicited and suspiciously fulsome promise of
reward to the Percies for supporting his just cause: 'My heart this covenant
makes;my hand thus seals it' (II. iii. 50). At the end he denies Exton his 'good
word' (V. vi. 42), and we wonder: Does he have one? Is there such a thing?
The dilemma of the subject bound by 'oath I And duty' (II. ii. 112-13) to
support injustice is vividly realized in the situation of York when Bolingbroke
returns. We respect his feelings of perplexity and distress; but the confidence
and wholeheartedness with which he subsequently swears allegiance to
Bolingbroke, and in particularhis determination to have his son (still faithful
to Richard) condemned as a traitor, seem grotesque and morally repellent.
Satirized here, perhaps, is the combination of pragmatism, 'commodity', and
holy zeal with which so many in the 'Machiavellian State and governance' of
Tudor England switched allegiance from one faith to another, and especially
those who betrayed their own kin in the effort to confirm and profit by their
new-minted loyalty. But perhaps the play comes nearest to disclosing its link
with the religio-political history of the sixteenth century when the imprisoned
Richard juxtaposes 'thoughts tending to ambition' and 'thoughts of things
divine'. He adds that the latter are 'intermixed I With scruples, and do set the
faith itself I Against the faith' (V. v. 12-14): which is an echo of King John,
where the link is indisputable, and where Pandulph tells Philip: 'So mak'st
thou [political] faith an enemy to [religious] faith, I And like a civil war, sett'st
oath to oath, I Thy tongue against thy tongue' (III. i. 189-91).

VIII

Henry V being, among other things, a celebration of national unity, Shakespeare's extended dramatizationof civil strife in England effectively concludes
with the second part of Henry IV. Arguably, therefore, it is with great
deliberation that in the first scene of 2 Henry IV he introduces to the serious
political narrativea charactercalled Morton who never appears again and for
whom there is no precedent in any of the sources. Morton has ridden north to
bring Northumberland news of Hotspur's death. His primary purpose,
however, is to ensure that this news does not weaken the Earl's already halfhearted will to rebel, and to encourage him with the news that the Archbishop
of York has now turned insurrection to religion, deriving from heaven his

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TOM MCALINDON

quarrel and his cause (I. i. 200-7). Since Morton was the name of an English
priest well known for having come from Rome in 1569 on 'an ambassage of
rebellion from the popes holinesse . . . [to] the two earles of Northumberland
and Westmerland, heads of the rebellion',41and since Northumberland was
known to be a reluctant leader of that rebellion,42it can hardly be doubted that
Shakespearewas giving his audience a final reminder that the religio-political
turmoils of the sixteenth century and the political disorders of the previous
centuries had much in common-as well as a connecting link in the Percy
family, kings of the north.
No religious justification for rebellion is hinted at in the first part of
Henry IV; and although in Part 2 much royal rhetoric, of a kind very familiar
in Tudor propaganda, is devoted to condemning the Archbishop's use of
religion as an honourable garb for 'base and bloody insurrection', religious
conflict is not an issue there. More important too than the Archbishop's
religious 'garb' is Henry's elusive dream of Christian chivalry, the great
crusade to the Holy Land which symbolizes unity and redemption. This
dream is something which Henry is pledged to realize (IHIVI. i. 21), and it
preoccupies him from the beginning of his reign until the end; but it is a
pledge which he is unable to honour, in large measure because of his other
broken vows and promises and consequent inability to command the trust and
loyalty of his followers.
If there is a single, definable and encompassing theme in Henry IV it is
surely that of truth, signifying truthfulness, fidelity, loyalty, authenticity, and
also justice (the word itself and its derivatives occur fifty-one times in Part 1
and fifty-five in Part 2, as against twenty-nine and twenty-two for the related
word 'honour' and its derivatives). A lesser and virtually synonymous theme is
that of payment: settling a debt is keeping one's word, an idea explicitly
articulated in Edward III (c.1590), another play much concerned with the
identity of truth and chivalrichonour: 'false men ... never pay the duty of their
words'.43The payment theme in Henry IV elicits the notion of truth as justice
and links up with the motif of redemption and the metaphor of counterfeiting.
Mutual accusations of untruth mark the beginning and the end of Henry's
conflict with his former friends in Part 1. Henry accuses Hotspur (whom he
has earlier called 'the theme of honour's tongue') of lying about Mortimer's
loyalty, while Hotspur, angered by Henry's alleged slander on his relative, and
41 Holinshed, Chronicles,iv. 521. See also George Whetstone, The English Myrrour (1586),
141-2; Memorialsof the Rebellionof 1569, 204-5. Shakespeare'sallusion to the priest Morton was
first suggested by A.-L. Scoufos, Shakespeare's Typological Satire: A Study of the FalstaffOldcastleProblem(Athens, Oh., 1979), 122-5.
42 Holinshed reports that the seventh earl of Northumberland was seen by his co-conspiratorsas
'wavering and unconstant of promise made to them' (Chronicles, iv. 235). Lord Hunsdon,
subsequently Shakespeare'spatron, interrogatedNorthumberland, and told the queen that 'if his
confession be trew, he was gretly procured to ytt by othars' (Memorialsof the Rebellionof 1569,
207).
43 The Raigne of King Edward the Third, ed. F. Lapides (New York and London, 1980),
11.649-50.

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225

even more by his threatening demand for Hotspur's prisoners (effectively,

their ransom money), begins to see himself and his family as the deluded
victims of a 'subtle' and 'vile politician' who made them pledge themselves 'in
an unjust behalf', but who now studies to 'answer all the debt he owes ... with
the bloody payment' of their deaths (I. iii. 167, 107-11, 239). However, it is not
until Henry tries to avoid conflict at Shrewsbury with offers of redress and
pardon that Hotspur instances as proof of Henry's untrustworthinessthe vows
he made on returning from exile (IV. iii. 55-103). His reminder that Henry
'broke oath on oath' is lengthy and fierce; it is repeated with equal force by
Worcester just before the battle when Henry unctuously accuses him of having
'deceived our trust' (V. i. 11). The point, of course, is that Henry, as Worcester
himself perceives, does not and could not trust him (for Worcester has now
broken two oaths of fealty), any more than Worcester could trust Henry. And
it is because of this mutual distrust, grounded on past infidelities, that
Worcester lies to Hotspur about the peace offer-with fatal consequences.
The situation exemplifies perfectly the grim moral voiced in 3 Henry VI: 'trust
not him that once hath broken faith' (IV. v. 30).
Since the Percies enthusiastically supported the deposition of Richard,
they are not entitled to condemn Henry for reneging on his oath that he
returned from France to claim only his own title, nor to blame him (as
Hotspur does) for involving them in the disgrace of usurpation and regicide.
The fact remains, however, that Henry is seen as having contaminated
others with his own untruth. He himself boasts to Hal (with a characteristic
display of moral blindness) that he plucked from men's hearts the allegiance
due to the crowned King (IHIV III. ii. 46-54). At Shrewsbury, too, the
upright Sir Walter Blunt is one of many 'stained nobility' (V. iv 12) who
agree to protect him by wearing his colours; confronted by Douglas, Blunt
declares at the cost of his life that he is indeed the King: 'They tell thee
true' (V. iii. 6). The significance of this episode is intensified by the
analogical structure of the play, which prompts us to compare it with
Hal's characteristic attempts to expose Henry's comic counterpart 'in his
true colours' (2HIV II. ii. 162).
The royal victory at Shrewsbury is won only in part by Henry's deceit and
mainly (as we shall note) by Hal's truth; its parallel in Part 2, however, the
affairat Gaultree, is a victory won entirely by means of deception: the spirit of
counterfeit royalty is in the ascendant here, and suggests that Worcester was
probablycorrect in viewing the King's 'gracious offers' of peace and pardon at
Shrewsbury as unreliable. Moral justification could be found for practising
deceit on rebels and with the intention of saving many lives; but the trick
played on the rebel leaders by Prince John and his deputy Westmorland-so
reminiscent of the notorious manner in which Henry VIII and Norfolk put an
end to the Pilgrimage of Grace and its leaders-is rendered morally repellent
by the elaborateritual of sworn assuranceswhich the Prince proposes: a ritual
of oaths and pledges underwrittenby all the sanctions of religion, chivalry, and

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princely honour. The calm gravity with which the sanctimonious young
Machiavel participates in this ritual is breathtaking:
ARCHBISHOP.
I take your princely word for these redresses.
JOHN.

I give it you and will maintain my word;

And thereuponI drinkunto your grace.

(2HIV IV. i. 292-4)
It is to be noted that John has 'a full commission, I In very ample virtue of his
father' (IV. i. 160-1) to deal with the rebels as he sees fit; and that in the
following scene Falstaff soliloquizes on his temperamentallikeness to Henry.
John's extreme smugness in victory echoes his father's perfectly Machiavellian
remarkat Shrewsbury:'nothing can seem foul to those that win' (IHIV V. i. 8).
Falstaff's sardonic comments on John do not make him the perceptive critic
of establishment falsity; they are prompted by pique at John's sceptical
reaction to his own claim to a 'pure and immaculate valour' in the capture
of Sir John Coleville. He himself confides that he would 'swear truth out of
England' to bolster his knightly reputation (IHIV II. v. 309). He is in reality
the tell-tale comic symbol of a political world in which chivalry's twin virtues
of truth and valour are ostensibly revered and persistently betrayed. He may
mock that world, but he identifies with it greedily, aspiring to be an earl or
duke, swearing repeatedly by his honour and his knighthood, and assuming
that in the new regime he will be able to cajole Hal into making him the
dispenser of noble titles: 'it is much that a lie with a slight oath . . . will do'
(2HIV V. i. 76-7). His satirical function derives almost entirely from the fact
that here produces in gross and palpable form the unpaid debts, slanders, lies,
and perjuriesthat emanate from Henry. Coleville says to John, 'I am, my lord,
but as my betters are' (IV. ii. 63), and so too might Falstaff, his capture of that
doomed and credulous rebel being a depressingly funny replica of the Prince's
antecedent victory.
If it is wrong to see Falstaff as the percipient debunkerof royal sham, it is an
even more serious but nonetheless common mistake to treat Hal as another
deceitful Lancastrian.Shakespeare'swhole strategy is to establish an opposite
impression: subtle and astute Hal undoubtedly is, but he lives up to his own
challenging self-definition as 'the Prince of Wales . . . Who never promiseth

but he means to pay' (IHIV V. iv. 41). There is only one occasion in the two
plays where Hal is guilty of an untruth, and it is so obvious that it asks us to
think hard about his characterfrom this perspective. It occurs in the second act
of Part 1 when at the Boar's Head he lies openly to the Sheriff about Falstaff's
whereabouts(II. v. 518-24). This might be taken as indicating that he is just as
dishonest as anyone else. But the circumstances and the mood of the scene do
not justify such an interpretation.In the first place, Hal has told everyone that
he will lie to the Sheriff about the great fool who has given them all such
amusement, and possibly the Sheriff knows he is lying. More important, Hal
does not profit in any way from this deceit. Furthermore, he allowed the theft

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227

for which Falstaff is being sought to go ahead as a practical joke; and he

personally sees to it that the victims of the trick are paid back 'with advantage'
(II. v. 550; III. iii. 179). Fittingly, too, he joco-seriously 'degrades' and
punishes the fat, thieving knight by giving him a charge of foot in the
coming campaign (chivalry means horsemanship).
The key to Hal's charactercan be found in his opening scene: he begins by
mocking and unmasking Falstaff's pretended gravity, urges him to 'demand
that truly which thou wouldst truly know', and later agrees to join Poins in
the Gads Hill escapade with the express intention of exposing Falstaff's
propensity for 'incomprehensible lies' and on condition that the money is
paid back (IHIV I. ii. 5, 183). He enjoys the fantastic lies, of course, and no
doubt for that reason is always willing to pay Falstaff's debts ('I'll give thee
thy due, thou hast paid all there', concedes the debtor, IHIVI. ii. 52). But he
enjoys even more the role of teasing and relentless debunker:'there's no room
for faith, truth, nor honesty in this bosom of thine' (III. iii. 155). Of course
the famous soliloquy at the end of their first scene together is often cited as
evidence of duplicity and an exploitative willingness to feed his companions
on false hopes while he enjoys their company. But there is no hint anywhere
that he lies to or misleads either Poins or Falstaff. It is clear, too, that Poins
harbours no false hopes about the future, and that whenever Falstaff voices
such hopes he is instantly-albeit to no avail-given the truth. In his own
interests, Falstaff nurtures a false conception of Hal, as do the smiling
pickthanks at court who exaggerate and (in Vernon's word) 'misconstrue'
(IHIV V. ii. 68) his holiday habits. The opening soliloquy shows Hal's
willingness to exploit for a justifiable political purpose the failure of others to
perceive his truth; but that soliloquy can be read as a declaration of truth to
the audience, as well as a promise that will be kept (like 'I do; I will', II.
v. 486).
The nature and importance (both political and spiritual) of Hal's relationship to truth is powerfully dramatized in two parallel scenes in Parts 1 and
2. In each of these scenes he succeeds in dispelling his father's entirely false
understanding of his character and conduct by the manifest sincerity of his
sworn declarations of loyalty. In each, Henry exemplifies the spirit of doubt,
suspicion, and distrust which is apparent in Part 1 and dominates Part 2. In
the first of the two scenes, he not only accuses Hal of generally disgraceful
conduct but even claims that he is likely to join the rebels against him. Hal's
shocked and impassioned reply wins his father's 'sovereign trust'; it also
culminates in a solemn vow whose fulfilment, as Henry correctly predicts,
will entail the collapse of the rebellion: 'A hundred thousand rebels die in
this [vow]' (III. ii. 160). Given his father's forlorn hope of realizing in his
own life the ideal of Christian chivalry, it is important to recognize the note
of religious humility in Hal's vow (and to contrast it with Hotspur's
egoism): this is the Prince destined to become 'the mirror of all Christian
kings':

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TOM MCALINDON

This, in the nameof God, I promisehere,

The whichif he be pleasedI shallperform,
I do beseechyourmajestymay salve
The long-grownwoundsof my intemperature;
If not, the end of life cancelsall bonds
And I will die a hundredthousanddeaths
Ere breakthe smallestparcelof this vow.
(III. ii. 153-9)
In the parallel scene in Part 2, Hal's intensely felt response to Henry's
charge that he never loved him and was impatient for his death is structuredin
such a way ('If I affect...
If I do feign ... if it did infect my blood ... If any
rebel or vain spirit . . .') as to reinforce his expressed desire that God witness

the truth of his protestations and punish him if they do not correspond with
his 'most inward, true and duteous spirit' (IV. iii. 273-300). Hal's piety here,
both filial and religious, affects his father's attitude not only to his son but also
to himself. He begins by declaring that what Hal has said is divinely inspired
('O my son, I God put it in thy mind to take it [the crown] hence, I That
though mightst win the more thy father's love, I Pleading so wisely in excuse
of it', IV. iii. 306-9); he ends by speaking the truth about himself and his
crown for the first time, and by asking God's pardon for his 'indirect crook'd
ways' (IV. iii. 313). Hal's association with truth, and the value of his truth,
could not be more forcibly implied.
This identification of Hal with truth persists until the end of the play,
where the underlying conception of truth as the foundation of justice and
social order is explicitly dramatized. Pistol's declaration when questioned by
Justice Shallow, 'I speak the truth . . . the things I speak are just' (2HIV
V. iii. 118-21), parodies the crucial relationship established in the adjacent
scenes between Hal and the Lord Chief Justice. Interrogated accusingly by
the new King, the Chief Justice responds courageously and without evasion,
relying only on 'truth and upright innocency' (V. ii. 39) to save him: which it
does, and more. Addressing him simply as 'Justice', Hal formally adopts him
as his mentor and conscience: 'There is my hand . . . My voice shall sound as
you do prompt my ear' (V. ii. 116-18). Significantly, too, the first task he
gives the Justice is to ensure that his promise of a pension for Falstaff (mercy
moderating justice) is kept: 'be it your charge, my lord, I To see perform'd
the tenor of our word' (V. iv. 70-1).44 These are the last words spoken in this
play by the prince who never promises but he means to pay; and Shakespeare
remembers them at the end of Henry V, where Henry exits saying: 'may our
oaths well kept and prosp'rous be!' (V. ii. 369; cf. lines 146-7). It would
almost seem as if, in shaping the character of England's most popular king,
Shakespeare had in mind the words of the great English king praised by
Holinshed (and others) for his rare combination of military, civil, and
44 The play'sthemesof promiseand performance,debt, payment,and redemption,dominate
the Epilogueto Part2.

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229

religious virtues:45'In the first place . . . every man shall abide carefully by his
oath and his pledge.'
IX

To investigate in historical context the making and breakingof oaths and vows
in the histories is to focus attention on some of their most important concerns,
and at the same time to reinforce and refine one's awareness of the extent to
which these plays have absorbed the socio-political conflicts, tensions,
dilemmas, and anxieties of the Tudor period. The most useful effect of
such an investigation, however, may be that the meaning of Henry IV, and in
particularof its hero-prince, stands out more clearly when seen in relation to
Shakespeare's continuing preoccupation with the conflict between truth and
perfidy, chivalry and Machiavellianism. Shakespeare'srecognition in this play
that a ruler must have a capacity for cool detachment, an awareness of his
public image, and an ability to curtail some of the more attractiveand humane
aspects of his characterin the interests of justice and law has been exaggerated
out of all proportion by very many critics and read in exclusion from almost
everything else in Hal's character.What emerges is an essentially pessimistic
play which ends with the crowning of a heartless Machiavellian who differs
only from his father and his brother John in being more skilful than they in
theatricality, manipulation, and deceit. This interpretation (a new-historicist
orthodoxy, although of antecedent origin) is, I believe, profoundly misconceived. Like Talbot, Duke Humphrey, and Falconbridgebefore him, but more
conspicuously so, Hal is distinguished from everyone else in the political world
to which he belongs by his hostility to untruth and his fidelity to his sworn
word. He is Shakespeare's most imaginative and considered response to
Machiavelli's claim that 'those princes who have done great things have
held good faith of little account'.46
Universityof Hull
45 Holinshed, Chronicles,i. 674-6.
46 In view of the title of my article, it might seem strange that I have not referred to Innocent
Gentillet's Contre-Machiavel(1571). As Raab points out, however, there is no evidence to suggest
that knowledge of Machiavelli in the late 16th cent. was dependent on this work, or on Simon
Patericke's translation (written 1577, published 1602). See The English Face of Machiavelli, 56.