[In the following essay, Mossman examines parallels between Henry in Shakespeare's Henry V and Alexander in Plutarch's Life of Alexander.]

When Alexander's sarcophagus was brought from its shrine, Augustus gazed at the body, then laid a crown of gold on its glass case and scattered some flowers to pay his respects. When they asked if he would like to see Ptolemy too, “I wished to see a king,” he replied, “I did not wish to see corpses.”

(Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 18.1)

Alexander is an evocative figure. as Suetonius's anecdote shows, he quickly became a potent symbol of kingship in the ancient world, and the passage of time only increased the fascination he held for the medieval world and for the Renaissance. Comparisons between Henry V and Alexander in Shakespeare's Henry V are a case in point. The Alexander alluded to in the play is usually thought of as a conglomerate mytho-historical figure, but it has occasionally been suggested that a more precise comparison is intended, namely one between Henry and the Alexander of Plutarch's Lives. I would like to argue that this more precise comparison is also a more subtle and telling one, and that an examination of the relationship between Plutarch's Life of Alexander and Shakespeare's Henry V has interesting implications for our understanding of the construction of Henry V as a whole, as well as for the characterization of Henry.¹

The passages I shall consider have long been discussed and have often been seen as a source of irony by those who think that Shakespeare undercuts Henry's moral stature in the play. This tendency to find irony in the parallels seems to go back to Gerald Gould's account of the piece,² and the ironic intent is argued regularly with a greater or lesser degree of subtlety. But the problems with a subversive, ironic reading have been pointed out by Stephen Greenblatt:

In the wake of full scale ironic readings and at a time when it no longer seems to matter very much, it is not at all clear that Henry V can be successfully performed as subversive.

The problem with any attempt to do so is that the play's central figure seems to feed on the doubts he provokes. … The very doubts that Shakespeare raises serve not to rob the king of his charisma but to heighten it, precisely as they heighten the theatrical interest of the play; the unequivocal, unambiguous celebrations of royal power with which the period abounds have no theatrical force and have long since fallen into oblivion.³

I find it hard to imagine an ironic reading of the play that would satisfactorily explain why Shakespeare would have wanted to subvert Henry; I am also uncertain about what sort of play one is left with if one assumes that Henry V sets out to denigrate its central character. I therefore share Greenblatt's skepticism and see my reading of the Plutarch-Henry V parallels as elaborating on, and perhaps constituting further support for, Greenblatt's statement.

The Alexander is one of Plutarch's longest and most elaborate lives. It begins with a famous programmatic statement of the biographer's task and method which will prove important to my argument:

For they must remember, that my intent is not to write histories, but only liues. For, the noblest deedes doe not alwayes shew mens vertues and vices, but ofte[n]times a light occasion, a word, or some sporte makes mens naturall dispositions and maners appeare more plaine, then the famous battells wonne, wherein are slaine tenne thowsande men, or the great armies, or cities wonne by siege or assault. For like as painters or drawers of pictures, which make no accompt of other partes of the bodie, do take the resemblaunces of the face and fauor of the countenance, in the which consisteth the iudgement of their maners & disposition: euen so they must geue vs leaue to seeke out the signes and tokens of the minde only, and thereby shewe the life of either of them, referring you vnto others to wryte the warres, battells, and other great thinges they did.

(722)

Plutarch's character of Alexander, the kind of moral and spiritual delineation promised in this passage, has been considered one of the biographer's most straightforwardly heroic portraits. This, in fact, is an oversimplification. Plutarch certainly hymns Alexander's heroical, epical qualities, but he also takes the opportunity to portray the king's darker side.⁴ Alexander's absolute power takes its toll on his moral stature: his responses to challenges to his authority become progressively more violent, more that of a tyrant. There is a definite sequence: he meets the supposed danger from his physician Philip of Acarnania with courage but counters the conspiracy of Philotas and Parmenio with guile. He kills Cleitus in a drunken fury, which he bitterly regrets, then wages a sustained and cynical campaign against the philosopher Callisthenes and inflicts a painful and lingering death on him. Alexander's original moderation and self-control are corrupted by oriental, tyrannical luxury and excessive drinking; his death is premature and his last days made miserable by superstition and fear very different from his earlier superb confidence in himself:

Nowe afte[r] that Alexander had left his trust and confidence in the goddes, his minde was so troubled and affraide, that no straunge thinge happened vnto him (how litle so euer it was) but he tooke it straight for a signe and prediction from the godds: so that his tent was alwayes full of Priestes and Soothsayers that did nothing but sacrifice and purifie, and tende vnto diuinements. So horrible a thing, is the mistrust and contempt of the godds, when it is begotten in the harts of men, and supersticion also so dreadfull, that it filleth the gilty consciences and fearefull hearts, like water distilling from above: as at that time it filled Alexander with all folly, after that fear had once possessed him.

(761-62)

It is important for the interpretation of the Alexander and for what follows that Plutarch's parallel Roman life is that of Caesar, who is also great but flawed and who is also corrupted by absolute power. Plutarch's influence on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has never been doubted.⁵Henry V was probably written immediately before Julius Caesar, early in 1599; it seems highly likely that Shakespeare not only read the Caesar but also read the Alexander at the time he was writing Henry V. There is internal evidence, as well as prima facie probability, for thinking so.⁶

There is much in Plutarch's Alexander that could have led Shakespeare to perceive a link between Plutarch's hero and Henry V. The link was already nascent in medieval writings. The medieval tradition, dependent on the Pseudo-Callisthenic Romance of Alexander, had created a remarkable conglomerate figure compounded of history, myth, pseudo-science, and fairy tale and had established Alexander as a type of the idealized medieval prince.⁷ As early as 1411-12, Thomas Hoccleve, in his Regiment of Princes, had associated Henry V with Alexander, dedicating the book to Henry when he was still Prince of Wales. The famous story of Henry V and the tennis balls (enacted in 1.2 of Shakespeare's play) contains further suggestive echoes of the medieval Alexander figure; as Oskar Emmerig has shown, the incident in which an arrogant foreign prince insults a much younger but more brilliant and heroic ruler by means of a humiliating gift has its origins in the story of Darius and Alexander in Pseudo-Callisthenes.⁸ But apart from this medieval background, a number of features of the North translation of Plutarch's Alexander might also have suggested more extended and elaborate comparisons between the two men; even the tennis-ball incident is reminiscent of a passage in North:

Furthermore, hauing intelligence that the Thebans were reuolted, and that the Athenians also were confederate with them: to make them know that he was a man, he marched with his armie towardes the streight of Thermopiles, saying that he would make Demosthenes the Orator see (who in his oratio[n]s, whilest he was in Illyria, & in the contry of the Triballians, called him child) that he was growen a stripling passing through Thessaly, & should finde him a man before the walles of Athens.

(727)

There are other, broader parallels between their careers: both men attain great eminence when very young through military conquest of a larger and richer country than their own. This country, with which there is a previous history of conflict, can be represented as more corrupt, as more effeminate and luxurious, than the apparently weaker aggressor. Both kings at one stage or another of their careers have a reputation for drinking and riotous living. Both attempt to secure their victories by means of marriage. Both die young and their conquests do not remain under the control of their rightful successor.

To object that these similarities are superficial would be to miss the point. They are precisely the sort of links Plutarch himself stresses in his comparisons and the sort that may well have governed his pairings of Greek and Roman lives.⁹ As a form of characterization, the comparisons are often disappointingly unsubtle, serving only to spotlight the bare bones; the subtlety is to be found in the individual lives. While Plutarch's comparison between Alexander and Caesar is lost (seventeenth-century editors supplied their own), those that survive are not very different in tone from that which I have suggested above between Alexander and Henry V, though much longer and more detailed and written specifically with an eagerness to establish which of the two subjects is morally more admirable. To write with such a goal may seem strange to us, but it probably seemed a good deal less strange to Shakespeare, who sets out his own extended comparison of Henry and Alexander in Henry V, 4.7.13-53. George Steevens suggested in 1766 that this passage was meant to ridicule Plutarch.¹⁰ It is hard to believe that this is so, or that the comparison is there only to undercut Henry through his dealings with Falstaff. I would argue rather that by encouraging us to consider Henry in parallel with Alexander, Shakespeare seeks to explain certain features of his play's construction as well as to characterize Henry not as a cold-blooded monster but as a prince. I argue further that there is something much more subtle in this method of characterizing Henry than straightforward praise by means of a historical or mythohistorical exemplar, or than the rather sneaky undercutting envisaged by some critics.

The passage that initiates the comparison between Henry and Alexander appears early in the play, where Canterbury eulogizes the new king: “Turn him to any cause of policy, / The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, / Familiar as his garter” (1.1.45-47). The episode of the Gordian knot is a famous one in the career of Alexander. (Interestingly, it belongs to the historical Alexander rather than to the mythic one: it is related by Arrian as well as Plutarch but is not found in Pseudo-Callisthenes.) Alexander is usually represented as cutting the Gordian knot rather than untying it.¹¹ Here the word “unloose” stresses the ease and smoothness of Henry's politics, implying perhaps that Henry is more politically accomplished than Alexander: Alexander has to cheat a bit; Henry can achieve the apparently impossible without taking short cuts.¹² This is the first of many passages where Henry emerges as similar to Alexander but morally superior to him. “We are no tyrant, but a Christian king,” says Henry (1.2.241), echoing the opinion of Erasmus and other writers that the Christian is almost inevitably superior even to the excellent and virtuous pagan.¹³ This contrast may underlie the important difference through which Alexander falls prey to superstition toward the end of his life while Henry remains extremely devout, stressing that God alone is responsible for the victory at Agincourt (4.8.108-28).

The most obvious virtue represented as common to both kings—but from which Alexander famously lapses in Plutarch—is self-control. Henry first claims this virtue in 1.2: “We are no tyrant, but a Christian king; / Unto whose grace [i.e., the grace of kingship] our passion is as subject / As is our wretches fetter'd in our prisons” (ll. 241-43). Henry's claim is borne out by the rest of the scene, especially in his response to the Dauphin's mocking gift of tennis balls. Here and throughout the play, even Henry's rage is controlled.¹⁴ In 2.2, for example, he holds himself in until the conspirators trap themselves; he does not denounce them until lines 79-144. His appalling threats against Harfleur, as Traversi has noted, show Henry as a controlling force swept aside by the furious flood of war; the threats are uttered not in anger but as a bargaining counter to secure the surrender of the city.¹⁵

Similarly Henry's order to cut the prisoners' throats at Agincourt is prompted by expediency, not by rage at the death either of the boys or even of his own brother. That Henry orders the prisoners killed not in a blind fury but with full presence of mind has been held against him;¹⁶ but it is perhaps easy to overestimate the effect of the deaths of some anonymous French prisoners on the sensibilities of an Elizabethan audience. That Shakespeare's play has none of the pathetic language Edward Hall uses when describing their deaths does not mean that Shakespeare is leaving the pathos to be created by our imaginations or by the players but rather that he is playing it down.¹⁷ He also blurs Henry's motivation: when Henry sees the carnage in the camp, he is angry (“I was not angry since I came to France / Until this instant” [4.7.57-58]) and repeats the order to kill the prisoners, this time speaking out of righteous indignation. This blurred motivation gives Henry the benefit of the doubt; we cannot fairly criticize him for being either too cold-blooded or too carried away with vengeful passion. In the event, his response to the death of the boys seems a measured one, mediated through a herald; and his treatment of Montjoy remains courteous as ever.

Alexander's response in parallel situations in the Life is much less self-controlled. Where his initial sophrosune falters and finally fails, Plutarch is most critical of him. Where, in 2.2, Henry is permitted to shine in contrast to the traitorous lords, Alexander's response to conspiracy, as I noted above, is progressively more tyrannical.¹⁸ Henry's “sack” of Harfleur before his main campaign against France is merely verbal; Alexander actually sacks Thebes before setting out for Asia and allows atrocities to take place: this is the beginning of Dionysus's evil influence over him.¹⁹ Alexander slaughters the inhabitants of Persia with far less excuse than is afforded Henry by the heat of battle and the immense disproportion of the English and French armies. Plutarch, moreover, makes Alexander responsible for the carnage: “There was then great slaughter made in Persia of the prisoners that were taken. For Alexander him selfe wryteth, that he commaunded the men shoulde be put to the sworde, thinking that the best waye to serue his turne” (743). If the comparison with Plutarch is valid, it so far tends to support the view that Henry is being set up as a more virtuous version of Alexander. It is important to emphasize, though, that this type of syncrisis is extremely flexible. Plutarch himself encourages us to compare his subjects with a wide variety of historical and mythological models, thereby giving himself scope to develop different aspects of the subject's character. The great advantage of such comparisons is their potential complexity. A comparison with Achilles, for example, can suggest heroic bravery, stubborn intransigence, tragic self-determination, even homoerotic attraction. A series of comparisons with Alexander has the potential for equal polyvalency.²⁰

The second direct comparison with Alexander occurs in Henry's great speech at Harfleur:

On, on, you noblest English!
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war.

(3.1.17-25)

In this important and revealing passage Henry transfers the Alexander paradigm from himself to his men's English ancestors, urging his men to live up to the multifaceted paradigm that is “Alexander” and in turn to impose it on the enemy.²¹ Here Henry accords the ultimate compliment of a comparison with the heroic Alexander to the men who fought at Crécy in 1346 under the Black Prince, and thus to his own troops; he demands, and receives, supreme heroism. This is part of a general tendency in the play to show Henry as offering fellowship to his followers as well as firm leadership. In the scene with Williams, this tendency is explored in a more sophisticated and ambivalent way, though in a minor key.²² It is one of Henry's most beguiling traits, as it continues to be in the later depictions of military heroes.

Not surprisingly, Alexander has the same capacity to inspire his men to superhuman effort. Chasing Darius with a troop of horse, Alexander is in dire need of water. He encounters some Macedonians with water in skins, which they offer him:

Alexander asked them, to whom they caried this water. They answered him againe, that they caried it to their children, but yet we would haue your grace to liue: for though we lose them, we may get more children. When they had sayd so, Alexander tooke the helmet with water, and perceiuing that the men of armes that were about him, and had followed him, did thrust out their neckes to looke vpon this water, he gaue the water backe againe vnto them that had geuen it him, and thanked them, but dranke none of it. For, sayd he, if I drinke alone, all these men here will faint. Then they seeing the noble corage and curtesie of Alexander, cried out that he should lead them: and therewithall beganne to spurre their horses, saying, that they were not wearie nor a thirst, nor did thinke themselues mortall, so long as they had such a king.

(746)

Henry V's stress on the men who fought at Crécy (see, for example, 1.2.102-14 and 146-65; 2.4.50-64 and 84-95; and 4.7.94-107) is an important part of the play's texture of historical sensibility. While the mythological and ancient historical examples loom in the background, Crécy provides a more direct model, all serving as reminders that posterity will one day regard the men who fought at Agincourt in the same way they view the heroes of antiquity or the army of the Black Prince. As Henry promises his men: “This story shall the good man teach his son; / And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, / From this day to the ending of the world, / But we in it shall be remembered …” (4.3.56-59). The Chorus adds a further historical dimension when anticipating Essex's return from Ireland, which it compares not only to Henry's return from Agincourt but also to the triumph of a Caesar (5.1.22-35). Such a feeling for the heroic past is important in the Alexander, too, with a parallel division between the remote mythical past and the more immediate historical background:²³ Alexander himself aspires to the heroism of his ancestor Achilles and deliberately models himself after him; Alexander undertakes the invasion of Persia with both Persian attempts to conquer Greece and the myth of Troy very much in mind.

Henry and Alexander also share a love of honor. Plutarch tells us:

But on thother side, the ambition & desire he had of honor, shewed a certaine greatnes of minde & noble corage, passing his yeares. … For when they brought him newes that his father had taken some famous city, or had won some great battell, he was nothing glad to heare it, but would say to his playfellowes: sirs, my father will haue all, I shall haue nothing left me to conquer with you, that shalbe ought worth. For he delighting neither in pleasure nor riches, but only in valliantnes & honor, thought, that the greater conquests & realmes his father should leaue him, the lesse he should haue to do for himselfe.

(724)

Henry, too, is presented as “delighting neither in pleasure nor riches, but only in valliantnes & honor”:

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It earns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.

(4.3.24-29)²⁴

A final characterizing parallel: Henry's determination to conquer is expressed in a trope that can be seen as distinctively classical and typically Plutarchan. Henry phrases his desire for glory in terms of the kind of tomb he will earn, saying that he will either conquer France

Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,
Tombless, with no remembrance over them:
Either our history shall with full mouth
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipp'd with a waxen epitaph.

(1.2.228-33)

The idea of the significance of one's tomb, especially the idea that tombs can speak, is a recurring theme in the Alexander and elsewhere in Plutarch. Shakespeare picks up the idea again at 4.3.95, when the combination of muteness and frailty presented in 1.2.232-33 is overturned: “A many of our bodies shall no doubt / Find native graves; upon the which, I trust, / Shall witness live in brass of this day's work” (4.3.95-97). The “witness [that lives] in brass” carries both the normal reference to church memorials and imperishability and a secondary sense of a voice that is loud and indefatigable, like the brazen voice of the Homeric herald Stentor.²⁵

In terms of structure, one can now discern how the shape of the first part of Henry V might have been suggested by Plutarch's narrative: both works begin with apologies that, while professing to excuse the shortcomings of their respective genres, in fact bring out their strengths. Biography, Plutarch argues in the passage quoted earlier, can in fact present a more accurate and intimate portrait of its subject than can unwieldy history; and drama, Shakespeare urges, when assisted by imagination, can distill reality, “Turning th' accomplishment of many years / Into an hour-glass” (1.Pro.30-31). In general, Shakespeare's play with genre here may help to signal that his approach to Henry's career will employ ideas and techniques more commonly associated with other kinds of writing.²⁶

After the initial apologies, both works open with the topic of the character of the two princes before they become king, Plutarch straightforwardly unfolding scenes of Alexander's childhood and his subsequent quarrels with Philip, Shakespeare by means of the brief conversation between Canterbury and Ely. One certainly cannot press structural parallels too far: Henry's expedition to France gains momentum far more quickly than Alexander's attack on Asia, and the conspiracies against Alexander do not take place until he has made himself virtual master of the Persian empire. This difference, however, is in itself significant. Plutarch positions the conspiracies at a point in the narrative where they will help to sketch the deleterious effect of absolute monarchy on even such a laudable character as Alexander's; Shakespeare, who does not want to show corruption in Henry but rather the emotional cost of power on him and on others, places the conspiracy of Scroop, Cambridge, and Ely before the clean and glorious enterprise of the conquest of France and uses it rather to establish Henry as a worthy leader of the expedition.²⁷

Harfleur enables us to see Henry in action and in relation to his men before the final test of Agincourt. In the greater scope of Plutarchan biography, this function is fulfilled by a far larger number of incidents that take place in Greece and in Persia. The contrast between the actual sack of Thebes and the verbal sack of Harfleur has already been noted. One may also observe that the stress on Henry's isolation and the magnitude of his personal contribution to the battle is matched in Plutarch by the account of Alexander's role in the battle of the Granicus, the first battle in Asia, where he leads his men across the river with splendid courage.

The Alexander might also have suggested the scenes where the French discuss Henry and, in doing so, reveal their own weakness as well as characterizing him and the English. The narrative benefit of showing the enemy's point of view is demonstrated in (for example) the passage where the death of the wife of Alexander's enemy Darius is announced to him (738). She, together with Darius's mother and his two daughters, had been living in captivity in Alexander's camp. Plutarch had already told us of the wonderful continence of Alexander in keeping the women unmolested and in comfort in secluded quarters (733). Darius laments that his dead wife will not have a proper burial; when the messenger reassures him, he assumes that she must have become Alexander's concubine. When he is again reassured, he prays that if the Persians must lose their empire, then it should go only to Alexander (738-39). Through this narrative, Plutarch is able both to magnify Alexander's nobility by showing it through Persian eyes and, at the same time, to give us a vignette of the generous, emotional, doomed Darius.

Shakespeare's major source for the narrative of the battle of Agincourt is Holinshed,²⁸ but the shaping of the play's account of the battle also has much in common with Plutarch's shaping of his narrative of the final battle against Darius, the battle of Gaugamela. The circumstances of the two battles are not dissimilar, and Plutarch offered some techniques of scene-shaping which could be adapted to Shakespeare's purposes. Plutarch might, for example, have influenced the famous speech of the Chorus at the beginning of Act 4, which presents an unforgettable picture of the two armies so close to each other that they can almost hear the conversations in each other's camp. The scene may well have more than one precursor,²⁹ but it is hard to resist the idea that Plutarch's account of Gaugamela is among them:

… both their armies being in sight of the other, Darius kept his men in battell ray, and went him selfe by torche light viewing his bandes and companies. Alexander on thother side whilest his Macedonian souldiers slept, was before his tent with Aristander the Soothsayer, and made certaine secret ceremonies and sacrifices vnto Apollo. The auncient Captaines of the Macedonians, specially Parmenio, seeing all the vallie betwext the riuer of Niphates, and the mountaines of the Gordieians, all on a bright light with the fires of the barbarous people, and hearing a dreadfull noise as of a confused multitude of people that filled their campe with the sound thereof: they were amazed, and consulted, that in one day³⁰ it was in maner vnpossible to fight a battell with such an incredible multitude of people.

(739)

There is no parallel here for the “little touch of Harry in the night,” but there are a number of elements in common with the night before Agincourt: the campfires and the noise carrying across the small gap between the two armies; the uneven odds, which have an effect on everyone but the leader of the outnumbered force; the isolation of the leader (Alexander in secret rites while his men sleep, Henry patrolling the camp in disguise). But what should be noticed above all is that Plutarch's biography demonstrates the narrative benefits of focusing on the night before a great battle, building suspense by stressing the physical proximity of the two armies and emphasizing the despair of experienced and brave soldiers in the face of such odds. Only the leader, portrayed in magnificent isolation, is confident—but he is supremely sure of himself and his men, and rightly so.

Shakespeare's transformation of this scene magnifies the suspense and deepens the characterization of the enemy (the overanxious Darius being less interesting than the superbly languid French) and above all of the hero-king, whose self-doubts and manifest imperfections³¹ dignify rather than undercut his subsequent heroics. Henry's isolation is not magnificent, but it does profoundly engage us and touch us in a way that Alexander's certainty does not. There is no place for eve-of-battle doubts in the makeup of an Alexander. But a Christian king could appropriately display humility, penitence, and a sense of responsibility. It would be wrong to pretend that Henry answers all of William's arguments to our satisfaction or to his own; but we should not assume that Henry is thereby meant to become less sympathetic.

A further similarity between the two historical situations is that owing to the disparity of their forces, the baggage and the camp of the smaller armies are in danger of being lost. In Plutarch this danger is highlighted so that Alexander can respond to the threat with the complete confidence he displays throughout the battle:

Parmenio … sent immediatly to aduertise Alexander, that all their campe and cariage would be lost, if he did not send presently to aide the rereward. When these newes came to Alexander from Parmenio, he had already geuen the signall of battell vnto his men for to geue charge. Whereupon he aunswered the messenger that brought him these newes, that he should tell Parmenio he was a mad man and out of his wits, not remembering that if they wanne the battell, they should not only saue their owne cariage, but also winne the cariage of their enemies: & if it were their chaunce to lose it, then that they should not neede to care for their cariage, nor for their slaues, but only to thinke to dye honorably, valliantly fighting for his life.

(740)

The French raiding of the English camp, following and improving on Holinshed, is arranged so as to characterize the king and his enemy but to different effect than in Plutarch. The raid is prepared for with dramatic irony by the Boy's speech at the end of 4.4, and two sympathetic characters, Fluellen and Gower, are given the task of stressing how cowardly and unchivalrous an action it is. Shakespeare places Henry's angry response just before it becomes clear that the day is won, an extraordinarily prominent position. The righteousness of the king's anger is thus clearly set up.

It is at the central moment, just after the massacre at the camp and before we see Henry's reaction to it and to the news of victory, that the most extended and important Alexander comparison is situated (4.7.23-52). Much has been written about this passage;³² its position and Shakespeare's choice of Fluellen as its speaker mark it out as being of essential importance. Shakespeare uses Fluellen, a character whose status is roughly comparable with that of Falstaff, to remind us of the old knight, rather than having one of the noble characters recall him. This implies that the king and his party have put him behind them. A reference to Falstaff from one of the royal party at this point, even if it could be motivated, would give the impression of vindictiveness, something that it seems as though Shakespeare wants to avoid. Earlier Fluellen had been played off against Falstaff's old friends Pistol and Bardolph, and now he can appropriately be used to recall the fat knight himself. The comparison between Henry and Alexander springs easily to Fluellen's lips; he is an admirer of antiquity.³³ That Fluellen forgets Falstaff's name makes him seem an objective observer: he has no personal grudge and is merely expressing his satisfaction at Henry's reformed conduct since he became king. But that Falstaff's very name is beginning to be forgotten is extremely pathetic and emphasizes the completeness of Henry's transformation. Fluellen's inimitable rhetoric is also a superb tool for the task and will ensure that Falstaff is recalled more vividly than Fluellen himself would perhaps approve.

It is clear that Dr. Johnson was right about this mention of Falstaff: “This is the last time that Falstaff can make sport. The poet was loath to part with him and has continued his memory as long as he could.” Of the “comick personages” as a group, he comments: “I believe every reader regrets their departure.”³⁴ We do greatly regret them. But what effect does that have on our view of the king and the play? To answer that, we should go back and look at the incident in Plutarch on which Fluellen bases the core of his comparison: the death of Cleitus.³⁵ The event is surrounded by many incidents that are given supernatural significance by Plutarch. Alexander has a sinister dream before the fatal day, and Cleitus abandons a sacrifice in order to attend his last banquet. At the banquet Cleitus accuses Alexander of favoring Persians and Persian customs and of behaving like a tyrant. Alexander calls Cleitus a coward; Cleitus reminds Alexander that he saved Alexander's life at the Granicus; and the quarrel escalates:

Clitus for all this would not geue ouer his impudency and mallapertnesse, but cried out, and bad Alexander speake openlie what he had to say, or else not to bidde free men come to suppe with him that were wont to speake franckely: if not, to keepe with the barbarous slaues that honored his Persian girdell, and long white garment. Then coulde Alexander no longer hold his choller, but tooke an apple that was vpon his table, and threw it at Clitus, and looked for his sworde, the which Aristophanes, one of his gard that waited on him, had of purpose taken from him. And when euerie man came straight about him to stay him, and to pray him to be contented: he immediatly rose from the borde, and called his gard vnto him in the Macedonian tongue, (which was a signe of great trouble to followe after it) and commaunded a trompetor to sound the allarme. But he drawing backe, would not sound: whereuppon Alexander strake him with his fist. Notwithstanding, the trompetor was greatly commended afterwards, for that he only kept the campe that they rose not. All this could not quiet Clitus, whereupon his frends with much a doe thrust him out of the halle: but he came in againe at an other dore, and arrogantly and vnreuerently rehearsed this verse of the Poet Euripides, out of Andromaches tragedie:

Alas for sorrow euill wayes
Are into Græce crept now a dayes.

Then Alexander taking a partisan from one of his gard, as Clitus was comming towardes him, and had lift vp the hanging before the dore, he ranne him through the body, so that Clitus fell to the ground, and fetching one grone, died presently. Alexanders choller had left him straight, and he became maruelous sorowfull: and when he saw his frendes round about him say neuer a word, he pluckt the partisan out of his body, & would haue thrust it into his owne throte. Howbeit his gard about him caught him by the hands, & caried him perforce into his chamber: & there he did nothing all that night but weepe bitterly, & the next day following, vntill such time as he was able to crie no more, but lying on the ground, onely lay sighing.

(750-51)

The most striking thing about this episode is just how unlike Henry's behavior it is. Of course Gower makes that point, and so have the critics.³⁶ Alexander is a man possessed, almost under supernatural influence, and Cleitus's intransigence is such that we wonder whether he, too, is not under an evil spell. But Alexander behaves with a quite extraordinary brutality that threatens to infect the whole camp: if it had not been for the resistance of the trumpeter, the disturbance would have become a battle. Fluellen's copious eloquence can convey some of this without detailed narrative: the piling up of synonyms is not merely comic Welsh windbaggery but gradually builds an impression of extremity which is important:

Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend, Cleitus.

(4.7.35-41)

I have quoted Plutarch's account of the killing at some length in order to challenge the idea, put forward by Gary Taylor,³⁷ that because Alexander kills Cleitus while drunk, he is somehow less to blame, or retains more of our sympathy, than Henry is or does because he dismisses Falstaff in cold sobriety. It is also inadequate, I would argue, to focus on the contrast between the drunken king and the sober one and conclude that the superiority of temperance over sottishness is the issue here. Fluellen, after all, mentions Alexander's consumption of alcohol only after enunciating seven synonyms for anger. Plutarch, too, elsewhere in the Life, claims that Alexander's drunkenness has been exaggerated (749-50), and his account of the banquet, while it acknowledges that it was a boozy evening, is far more concerned with the baleful atmosphere of inevitability we have already noticed. The influence of Dionysus manifests itself not primarily in heavy drinking but rather in the sinister tragic atmosphere, marked by the quotation from Euripides, which is found only in Plutarch. (Arrian's account of the incident is much more matter-of-fact.) Plutarch, Fluellen, and Shakespeare, I would argue, are much more concerned with Alexander's spiritual state than with his spiritous habits. The effects of kingship and lack of restraint on character are at issue here—the price Alexander pays, and forces others to pay, for his magnificence. For the first time, we are made to feel that Alexander's royal status seriously threatens his moral standing.

Fluellen, in contrast, in his comments about Henry, is not observing a new phenomenon in Henry's makeup so much as setting the seal on something that we know to have already taken place. The rejection of Falstaff, which lies in the past, has been confirmed by almost everything the king has said and done during this play. The fate of Bardolph, which acts as a double for and a reminder of Falstaff's rejection, is important here. For one thing, it should be noted that Shakespeare arranges matters so that the king himself does not directly order Bardolph's hanging but rather approves it when it is almost a fait accompli (3.6.110-17). In other words, it is a rejection and not a judicial killing. For another, Henry's approval of the execution is the preface to a kingly and humane (if pragmatically expressed) general order regulating and restraining the conduct of the entire army. The point of this arrangement is to make us feel pity for Bardolph (and Pistol) as well as for Henry, who must be a king rather than a friend. Obviously Henry's lines can be played in a number of different ways; but his civilized attitude toward the innocent French does not fit well with a reading that makes him a cold-blooded monster.

It seems possible that the rejection of Falstaff in Fluellen's comparison is meant to arouse similar twofold pity. In Plutarch a striking feature of the account of the killing of Cleitus is that Alexander is profoundly remorseful and almost kills himself out of grief: his remorse is necessary if the reader's good opinion of Alexander is to survive even in a modified form. Henry expresses no remorse for the rejection of Falstaff or of Bardolph. But there is a fundamental difference between the actions of Alexander and Henry. While the killing of Cleitus and the rejection of Falstaff are comparable in terms of their devastating effect on the victim (as Mistress Quickly says of Falstaff, “The king has killed his heart” [2.1.88]), they differ sharply otherwise. Alexander kills Cleitus because of the influence of Dionysus and the corruption that Plutarch sees as forever imperilling greatness; Henry “kills” Falstaff because he has to grow from a “vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth” (2.4.28) to realize his potential greatness and to become a true king. Thus Shakespeare cannot arouse our pity for Henry with a frantic scene of self-loathing. He has, however, already made us aware that Henry suffers under the heavy burden that his kingship lays upon him: “O hard condition! / Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath / Of every fool …” (4.1.239-41). So Harry Monmouth was indeed “in his right wits and his good judgements” when he rejected Falstaff: his kingship demanded it. This reminder is positioned where it is because the rejection of Falstaff was necessary for the triumph of Agincourt to take place. Of course we cannot feel anything but pity for “the fat knight with the great-belly doublet: he was full of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks”—especially when he is brought before us so vividly in Fluellen's copious description, and especially when we realize that his very name is fading and think back to the Hostess's poignant account of his death. But it does not follow that the appropriate response to Henry is therefore condemnation. The Alexander comparison is not straightforward: on the one hand, it might imply that kingship is so harsh that kings cannot retain their morality; on the other, that kingship requires acts that take their toll on the monarch as well as on others. In favor of the second view is Fluellen's presentation of the comparison and the fact that Henry's action is simply not as heinous as Alexander's. The original rejection was not meant to kill. As Prince John said of Henry:

He hath intent his wonted followers
Shall all be very well provided for,
But all are banish'd till their conversations
Appear more wise and modest to the world.

(2 Henry IV, 5.5.98-101)

Had Shakespeare wished to cast doubt on Henry's moral status, it would have been more damning—and a more symmetrical comparison—to have Fluellen mention Bardolph instead of Falstaff.

One final structural similarity between Plutarch's life and Shakespeare's play should be mentioned—the parallel effect of their epilogues.³⁸ Plutarch ends his account of Alexander's death on a gloomy note by recounting the murderous politicking of his wife, Roxane, and his general, Perdiccas; the latter makes a pawn out of Alexander's idiot half-brother, Arridaeus, in order to become king:

Perdiccas came to be king, immediatly after Alexanders death, by meanes of Aridaeus, whom he kept about him for his gard and safety. This Aridaeus, beeing borne of a common strumpet and common woman, called Philinna, was halfe lunaticke, not by nature nor by chaunce: but, as it is reported, put out of his wits when he was a young towardly boy, by drinkes, which Olympias caused to be geuen him, and thereby continued franticke.

(763)

The Chorus's last speech in Henry V similarly notes the transience of Henry's achievement and the disastrous aftermath of his reign. Not that either Plutarch or Shakespeare suggests that their hero's achievement was negligible because it was transient. As Shakespeare says of Henry:

Small time, but in that small most greatly liv'd
          This star of England: Fortune made his sword,
By which the world's best garden he achiev'd,
          And of it left his son imperial lord.

(5.Epi.5-8)

Achilles, Alexander's model in Plutarch, compounded for a short but glorious life rather than a long obscure one; Alexander may be said to have done the same. Perhaps in the Chorus's Epilogue there is an implied comparison between them and Henry. However that may be, it seems plausible that Shakespeare wished somehow to remind the audience of Henry's death and the breakup of his realm, not so much to subvert Henry and his life's work as to show that even kings are subject to Fortune, or to God (as Henry himself has stressed both before and after Agincourt). This is broadly the purpose of Plutarch's ending, too. The Life is full of incidents that prompt Alexander to reflect on the transience and uncertainty of greatness; the last chapter shows that Alexander, like Cyrus and Xerxes, was subject to this universal law. Shakespeare elsewhere, famously, follows a long tradition and uses Alexander as a symbol of the ephemerality of human greatness;³⁹ in the Epilogue, Henry, as he conformed to and improved on Alexander's example in other ways, is seen as following him in this as well.

In its almost exclusive focus on Henry, Henry V is much more like a life in the Plutarchan manner than a chronicle history play, as becomes apparent when we compare it to the parts of Henry IV or Henry VI or even to Julius Caesar. It is perhaps significant that Shakespeare conflated more than one Plutarch life to construct Julius Caesar, and that Antony and Cleopatra is based on a life that concentrates on more than one figure to an extent unique in Plutarch's work. Henry V, on the other hand, has the structure of a classic Plutarch life, revolving around one central figure, with scenes and set pieces contrived so as to reveal the complex features of that dominating character.⁴⁰ I would argue that Shakespeare found the figure of Alexander and his treatment by Plutarch extremely useful, not only for filling out the subtle texture of the Alexander comparisons but also for suggesting ways in which a portrait of a national hero could be made more memorable, more moving, more universal. As the Alexander makes clear, raising questions about the responsibilities, penalties, and hardships of kingship, and about the perils of association with it, is quintessentially Plutarchan. It is a technique that brings hero worship close to tragedy and exalts a Jingo hero into a truly great Shakespearean figure.

Notes

1. The most direct link between Plutarch's Alexander and Henry V is made in a fine study by Ronald S. Berman titled “Shakespeare's Alexander: Henry V” (College English 23 [1962]: 532-39): Berman suggests that “in certain ways Henry is a reconstruction of Plutarch's Alexander” (532). I am in sympathy with his view of Henry as a mixture of brilliance and darkness (see, e.g., 539). Berman stresses the philosophical ties between the two texts and the two figures (“Both Alexander and Henry are philosophical heroes” [534]); I have concentrated on a more literary relationship. In his essay “The Alexandrian Allusion in Shakespeare's Henry V” (English Literary Renaissance 2 [1972]: 321-33), Robert P. Merrix also identifies Plutarch as a major ingredient in Shakespeare's Henry (328ff.) but confines his attention to Fluellen's allusion to Alexander and does not discuss the other Alexander allusions in the play. Although his discussion of the ways in which such allusions may work is very interesting, he comes to conclusions with which I cannot agree, maintaining that “the allusion … exposes one of several flaws in Henry's character” (321).

   Quotations from Shakespeare follow the Arden edition prepared by J. H. Walter (London, 1954). Quotations from Plutarch follow the English translation made by Sir Thomas North from the French version of Jacques Amyot and titled The Liues of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that graue learned Philosopher and Historiographer, Plutarke of Chaeronea … (London, 1579), 722-63.

2. “Irony and Satire in Henry V,” first published in 1919 and reprinted in Shakespeare: Henry V. A Casebook, ed. M. Quinn (London, 1969), 81-94; see also Merrix, who says that the allusion to Alexander is used to “satirize the seemingly pious king” (332).

3. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford, 1988), 63.

4. I have argued this elsewhere; see J. M. Mossman, “Tragedy and Epic in Plutarch's Alexander,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 108 (1988): 83-93. My contention is that Plutarch uses epic references and reminiscences to praise Alexander and employs tragic quotations and coloring to delineate his darker side.

5. On Plutarch and Julius Caesar, see, for example, M. W. MacCallum, Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their Background (London, 1967).

6. See Berman, 532-33. The play can be dated with remarkable precision: see J. H. Walter's introduction to his Arden edition, esp. xi-xii; and Gary Taylor's introduction to the Oxford Shakespeare edition (Oxford, 1982), esp. 7-8.

7. See George Carey's remarkable book The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956). Alexander became the ideal courtly prince in the Roman d' Alexandre (c. 1177); in the English tradition, see also King Alisaunder (c. 1330), based on the Roman de Toute Chevalerie of Thomas of Kent.

8. Emmerig, “Dariusbrief und Tennisballgeschichte,” Englische Studien 39 (1908): 362-401. He traces the motif from Pseudo-Callisthenes through the medieval tradition and documents its transference from Alexander to other individuals, including Henry V.

9. The topic of Plutarch's syncrisis is a large and interesting one. See C. B. R. Pelling's illuminating study “Synkrisis in Plutarch's Lives,” Miscellanea Plutarchea, ed. Frederick E. Brenk and Italo Gallo (Ferrara, Italy, 1986), 83-96.

10. G. Steevens, Plays of William Shakespeare, 4 vols. (London, 1766).

11. In fact there is no other reference before Shakespeare, or indeed until the eighteenth century, given in the OED to his untying it rather than cutting it. Sir Thomas Browne is surely following Plutarch in giving cutting or untying as alternatives (Christian Morality, Bk. 2, sec. 13). On this allusion, see Berman, 535. See also Taylor's comment on these lines.

12. But it may also be that Shakespeare has in mind the variant tradition recorded by Plutarch:

    It is commonly reported, that Alexander prouing to vndoe that bande, and finding no endes to vndoe it by, they were so many folde wreathed one within the other: he drew out his sword, and cut the knot in middest, So that then many endes appeared. But Aristobulus writeth, that he had quickly vndone the knot by taking the bolt out of the axtree, which holdeth the beame and body of the charret and so seuered them a soonder.

    (731)

13. See Walter, ed., on 4.7.13-53 and see his introduction, xiv-xvii. He does not unpack this idea to the full and pursue it through the play, though, or explore fully the associations of Alexander as the ideal king. The idea of the automatic superiority of the Christian over the pagan was current in the Renaissance in terms of writing, too; thus John Christopherson, in the dedicatory letter to William Parr which prefaces his Greek play 'Ιεφθάε (modeled on Euripides's Iphigeneia in Aulis) says that although he is not such a good poet as Euripides, nevertheless he is confident that the truth of his biblical subject matter will more than compensate for his lack of poetic skill.

    The virtues that Renaissance moralists like Erasmus and Chelidonius urge on princes are derived from Plutarch's moral works (such as Ad principem ineruditum, Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum, and so on). Erasmus assisted in the preparation of the Aldine edition of Plutarch (1509), and it is difficult to overestimate Plutarch's influence on him. The subjects of Plutarch's Liues frequently illustrate the precepts of his moral works, either positively or negatively; thus Alexander is both a positive exemplar of the kingly virtues and an illustration of the corrupting influence of kingship. His virtues as sketched by Plutarch are the font and source of many a later description of the good prince; when we find that Henry has the same virtues as Alexander, it is not surprising, but it is tempting to assume that Shakespeare took them directly from Plutarch rather than from Erasmus or Chelidonius at two removes.

14. On this theme, see Derek A. Traversi, “The Conflict of Passion and Control in Henry V” in Quinn, ed., 151-62; and Berman, 536.

15. See Traversi, 154-55. Taylor has some interesting remarks on the siege of Harfleur. He stresses Henry's isolation and the weakness of his position (47-48).

16. On this episode and the critical reaction to it, see Taylor on 4.7.8-9 and see his introduction, 32-33; and Merrix, who sets it in the context of the allusion to Alexander but with very different conclusions from mine (321-23).

17. See The Vnion of the Two Noble & Illustre Famelies of Lancaster & York (London, 1548), 1^v, quoted in Taylor, ed., 32. See also Joel B. Altman, “‘Vile Participation’: The Amplification of Violence in the Theater of Henry V,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991): 1-32.

18. The device used in 2.2 to trap the conspirators is based on a story in Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus, as has often been pointed out; but according to Plutarch, Alexander, too, forgives insolent remarks, famously those made in sober earnest by Diogenes. Forbearance in such circumstances is another virtue of the ideal prince; hence Shakespeare makes Henry concentrate on his personal sense of emotional betrayal and the danger to his kingdom:

    Touching our person seek we no revenge;
    But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
    Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
    We do deliver you.

    (ll. 174-77)

    Merrix finds a parallel between Henry's treatment of the conspirators here and Alexander's in Samuel Daniel's Philotas (331).

19. See Mossman, “Tragedy,” 86-87. Berman sees a resemblance between the sieges of Harfleur and Thebes but obscures the fact that Henry does not actually sack Harfleur at all (537-38).

20. Merrix has an interesting but very one-sided discussion of the use of such comparisons in the Renaissance (325-32). I think he underestimates their potential subtlety.

21. Lines 24 and 25 of 3.1 relate to other passages in the play in which national characteristics, shaped by nature, culture, and ancestry, are important. I would suggest that these, too, may be prompted by the parallel theme in the Alexander. Both works share an interest in the self-definition of the invading nation with reference to the conquered people. It is interesting to consider 4.3.98-107 in the light of the ancient view, stressed by Plutarch in the Alexander and often elsewhere, that men's characters were shaped by the landscape in which they lived. This goes back to Hippocrates's medical treatise Airs, Waters, Places and is important also in Herodotus. Shakespeare has sharpened this kind of conception into the idea that the very substance of the English is chemically inimical to the alien land. This is a bolder and more adventurous use of the basic concept than is to be found in the Alexander (and it is not in Plutarch's plan to stress enmity between peoples but rather the uniting and civilizing influence of a king like Alexander), but it has something in common with Plutarch's technique where he sketches the difficulty the Macedonians will have in adapting to Persian culture by describing the limited success of Harpalus's efforts to transplant Greek flora to the fiery Babylonian soil. Compare this also to 3.7.141-42, where the valor of English mastiffs is made to stand for that of English men.

22. Henry does not answer Williams fully; but the inadequacy of his logic need not deprive him of our sympathy. The encounter prompts his great speech about the burdens of kingship: a speech that, I would argue, increases our goodwill toward him and serves an important function in the play as a whole. “Insincerity” and “hypocritical” are inappropriate descriptions of Henry's replies to Williams here (see Gould, 92): Henry would like very much to believe what he says; the very fluency of his rhetoric suggests the urgency of his desire to be right. His later speech suggests that he knows that he is only half right.

23. I have argued this more fully in my above-cited article, “Tragedy.”

24. Merrix also makes this connection but sees it as discreditable to Henry (328)—wrongly, I think. The terms of this passage are interesting: a large section of the Alexander is devoted to Alexander's generosity to his friends and the liberality of his table (745; see also 729).

25. See Homer, Iliad, ed. D. B. Monro and T. W. Allen (Oxford, 1919), Bk. 5, 785; cf. also Bk. 2, 488-92.

26. The “epic” invocation to the Muse is immediately assimilated into the distinctively dramatic metaphor of lines 3-5. See also the mention of “history” (l. 32) and a later passage (1.2.105-7), where Canterbury speaks of “Edward the Black Prince, / Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy, / Making defeat on the full power of France.” For some sensible remarks on this topic, see Taylor, ed., 52-58; Berman also has an interesting discussion of these opening passages (533-34). See also note 40 below.

27. Plutarch stresses the small size of Alexander's expedition and the meager nature of his preparations: contrast Shakespeare's “most dreadful preparation” (2.1.13). The eagerness of both heroes' soldiers to make the respective attempts is highlighted in Plutarch and in Shakespeare; see 748-49 and 2.1.1-7.

28. One divergence from Holinshed is particularly interesting in the context of this discussion: there is no suggestion here of Henry's isolation the night before the battle. It has also been argued that Tacitus's Annales, II.iii, was a model for Henry's eve-of-battle walk; see G. Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols. (London, 1957-75), 4:362-63. This may or may not be so: Plutarch and Tacitus are both writing in a well-established ancient tradition of historiography which relished eve-of-battle narratives, and Shakespeare may in fact be composing within a genre rather than aping a particular model.

29. In the introduction to his edition of the play, Taylor argues convincingly for Shakespeare's use of the published portion of Chapman's Seven Books of the Iliads of Homer. The most relevant passage is Book 8, 553-65. Holinshed describes the proximity of the armies but does not exploit its dramatic potential as do Shakespeare and Plutarch.

30. This is North's mistranslation of Amyot's “de plein jour,” correctly rendering Plutarch's, ἐκ προφανοç, “openly.”

31. Alexander elsewhere in the Life emerges as a more interesting character because of his faults and doubts, though never in quite the same way as Henry does before Agincourt. Perhaps at this juncture Plutarch wanted to show that a great general, who could be so certain about the outcome of an apparently very doubtful military situation, could nonetheless be completely at sea in some nonmilitary matters; Shakespeare, on the other hand, was more interested in showing that a king could be very certain and confident of himself, his rectitude, and his army on the surface but still internally be a mass of doubts. This pinpoints an important difference between characterization in Plutarch and in Shakespeare. On Henry's imperfections, see note 22 above.

32. See especially Bullough, 366-67; M. Van Doren, “The Fragmentation of the Heroic Idea in Henry V” in Quinn, ed., 116-24, esp. 123-24; Taylor, ed., on 4.7.12-45 and see his introduction, 32-34; Walters, ed., on 4.7.13-53 and see his introduction, xiv-xvii; and Greenblatt, 57.

33. See M. Van Doren, 123-24.

34. On 4.7.50-52 and 5.1.93, see Samuel Johnson, ed., The Works of Shakespeare (London, 1765).

35. For a full discussion of this incident, see my “Tragedy,” 88-89.

36. See, for example, Taylor, ed., 33.

37. Taylor, ed., 33.

38. Berman also comments on the similar effect of the epilogues (539).

39. Hamlet, 5.1.197-212 in The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 4th ed. (New York, 1992).

40. The play with genre in the Chorus's first speech perhaps alerts us to this more extensive infiltration of drama by biography.

This paper was greatly improved by the perceptive and helpful comments of Helen Cooper, Christopher Butler, and an anonymous referee; I greatly appreciate their help and that of Christopher Pelling and David Gribble. I wrote the essay while I was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. I am most grateful for the support and encouragement of my colleagues there and for three very happy years at the House.