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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.
? OxfordUniversityPress2000
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.
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TOM MCALINDON
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'.
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).
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.
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TOM MCALINDON
215
216
TOM McALINDON
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.
218
TOM McALINDON
V
219
220
TOM MCALINDON
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).
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
222
TOM MCALINDON
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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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.
225
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TOM McALINDON
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.
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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TOM MCALINDON
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.
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.