[In the following essay, Uhlmann analyzes the structure and style of Prince Hal's “I know you all” soliloquy in Henry IV, Part 1 (I.ii). He suggests that Shakespeare constructed this monologue in the form of an extended sonnet to convey to the audience its significance as a revelation of the prince's true nature.]

Prince Hal's famous “reformation soliloquy” in Act 1, scene 2 of I Henry IV is a self-characterizing speech which is something more than a monologue existing for the sake of exposition. Samuel Johnson, J. Dover Wilson, John Bailey, and Robert Ornstein are among those who have traditionally viewed the soliloquy as a means of assuring the audience of Hal's resolve to prove himself a true and worthy prince, despite appearances to the contrary.¹ However, Hal's speech is more than a soliloquy. The speech is in reality an expanded sonnet, or what one might well term a “macro-sonnet,” a deliberate imitation of the sonnet form as a means of signalling a momentous event in the play—Hal's revelation of character. For this soliloquy, Shakespeare uses a special poetic mode to demonstrate the importance of that event. As an extended sonnet, the soliloquy employs a number of conventions that are put to similar use in the sonnets themselves, and its structure is a clear expansion of the form which Shakespeare had helped to make so famous.

Structurally, Shakespeare's expanded sonnet is a complex analogy in which Hal is determined to use what others may feel to be his own “delinquencies” as a springboard for “future glorification.”² Rhetorically, its argument is presented in sonnet format, a four-part argument developed throughout the equivalence of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet:³

I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyok'd humor of your idleness,
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wond'red at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes,
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt'ring o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

(I. ii. 195-217)

One should briefly note the movement of the argument itself. The four-part analogy moves in a general-specific pattern of development, from moral behavior which, like the sun, is hidden by base companions, to a precise political action, a reformation, that glitters “like bright metal on a sullen ground.” Like the sonnet form that it is obviously patterned after, the soliloquy develops the terms of the argument throughout three quatrains, each quatrain separately specifying, in ever increasing concreteness, the nature of the plan, with the rhyming couplet bringing the analogy to its specific conclusion.

In the first “quatrain” (I. ii. 195-203), Shakespeare introduces a very appropriate image. Like the sun, Hal will allow himself to be hidden by “base contagious clouds,” through association with Falstaff and his gang, so that he will seldom be viewed in proper perspective or glory. However, at the proper time, the Prince will “break through the foul and ugly mists,” and, like the sun which attracts attention and admiration in England when it does shine with all its brilliance at infrequent intervals, be honored for his resulting change of character and splendor. The second “quatrain” (I. ii. 204-207) expands the argument by employing the “If … Then” type of development frequently found in the sonnets.⁴ Hal admits that if holidays were constant, merriment would become tiresome and mundane, but like holidays that are enjoyable because of their very infrequency—or “seldom come, they wish'd for come”—Hal's change of character or “rare accident” will prove highly effective in terms of gaining glorification. As in a sonnet, the successive sections of the soliloquy consider the precise consequences of such an action, as signified by the “so” in line 14. Thus, the third “quatrain” (I. ii. 208-215) stresses the importance of contrast in Hal's scheme; his political reformation will be all the more impressive because it will shine brightly against the background of previous faults. It is in the fourth part of the argument, the couplet, that Hal concludes his plan. In typical sonnet format, it is the couplet which completes the argument by stating the precise moral and political methods which Hal will use: he will “make offense a skill,” “redeeming time” when it is expedient to do so.

This expanded sonnet, then, is similar to a conventional sonnet in structure. Each expanded “quatrain” develops the idea in ever increasing detail. But the soliloquy also mirrors the sonnet structure in terms of punctuation, as well as structure. As in a quatrain-couplet format, each “quatrain” of the soliloquy is clearly marked by punctuation, a period signifying a new development of Hal's plan. The fact that these periods are present in the original Folio further suggests that Shakespeare may have deliberately used the punctuation as an imitation of the quatrain-couplet structure of the sonnet from the very beginning.⁵

As in the sonnets, the reformation soliloquy features a number of distinctive stylistic devices, a further indication of the relationship of sonnet to “macro-sonnet.” One such technique is “anaphora,” or word repetition within a work of poetry. As in the sonnets, the soliloquy abounds with examples of anaphora and its many sub-units, such as “epanaphora”—the use of a word repeated in the beginning of different clauses—and “epiphora”—the use of a word repeated at the end of clauses.⁶ In addition to anaphora and its sub-classifications, the soliloquy features a recurring use of alliteration. For instance, strong epanaphora is used in lines 202, 210, and 211 of the speech: “By breaking through the foul and ugly mists … By how much better than my word I am, / By so much shall I falsify men's hopes.” In addition, Shakespeare makes use of epiphora in line 206: “But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come.” Furthermore, alliteration is present throughout the monologue: in line 195—“I know you all, and will a while uphold”—in line 198—“Who doth permit the base contagious clouds”—in line 202—“By breaking through the foul and ugly mists”—in line 205—“To sport would be as tedious as to work”—and in line 215—“Than that which hath no foil to set it off.” Although alliteration is certainly present in other speeches and passages throughout the play, it is nowhere put to more frequent and skillful use than in the reformation soliloquy.

An even stronger similarity between sonnet and “macro-sonnet” is the presence of striking verbal parallels between Sonnet 33 and the reformation soliloquy. Lines 5 and 6 of Sonnet 33—“Anon permit the basest clouds to ride / With ugly rack on his celestial face”⁷—is, of course, almost identical to Hal's resolve to imitate the sun—“Who doth permit the base contagious clouds / To smother up his visage from the world.” Although the sun analogy does occur throughout Shakespeare's history plays, as well as in many of the sonnets, the verbal similarities between this sonnet and Hal's soliloquy are highly significant, since they suggest the playwright's imitation and embellishment of poetic structure.

Prince Hal's reformation soliloquy, then, is certainly a much more complex device than we may have thought. For this is more than a soliloquy; the argument itself is a truly unique and ingenious form—an extended sonnet. The soliloquy so mirrors the conventional sonnet format that it is most assuredly a “macro-sonnet,” a truly effective extension and embellishment of an accepted poetic convention. Its use demonstrates Shakespeare's penchant for expanding and embellishing literary structure for the purpose of dramatic exposition and characterization. Shakespeare's “macro-sonnet,” then, is an invention which exemplifies his ingenuity and versatility in the use of sources available to the literary craftsman.

Notes

1. See especially J. Dover Wilson, C. H., The Fortunes of Falstaff (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 41-43, and Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage: The Achievement of Shakespeare's History Plays (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 135-138. Wilson cites Johnson, Bailey, and others in supporting his argument that Hal has been misjudged and is determined to prove a worthy king, despite all appearances to the contrary; Bailey asks, “What is the harm in Hal's wishing to prove his true worth to others?,” and Johnson asserts that this speech is “very artfully introduced to keep the Prince from appearing vile in the opinion of the audience.” Ornstein feels that Hal “is not prodigal in temperament at all, and certainly not a happy-go-lucky youth indifferent to his royal future.” One might also consider Hugh Dickinson, “The Reformation of Prince Hal,” SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly], 19 (1961), 13-26; David Berkeley and Donald Eidson, “The Theme of Henry IV, Part 1,” SQ, 19 (1968), 25-31; Alan G. Gross, “The Text of Hal's First Soliloquy,” English Miscellany, 18 (1967), 49-54; U. C. Knoepflmacher, “The Humors as Symbolic Nucleus in Henry IV, Part 1, College English, 24 (April, 1963), 497-501; and Arthur C. Sprague, Shakespeare's Histories: Plays for the Stage (London, 1964), pp. 50-72.

2. Morris LeRoy Arnold, The Soliloquies of Shakespeare: A Study in Technic (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1965), p. 58.

3. All quotations from the play are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974).

4. See, for example, Sonnet 12, in which the development of the central problem stated in line 1—“When I do count the clock that tells the time”—undergoes a change, as marked by a slight turn or “volta” in line 9: “Then of thy beauty I do question make.”

5. Obviously one must be careful in basing any theory on textual punctuation, since printers often punctuated according to their own tastes or exigencies. However, in The Norton Facsimile, The First Folio of Shakespeare (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1968), Charlton Hinman notes that Folio proofreading, while often both “desultory” and “superficial,” became (for a time, at least) much more thorough following the discovery that a passage of two complete lines had been omitted from the final page of Richard II. As a result, “about a third of the pages in the next play, 1 Henry IV, were press corrected,” resulting in the production of “twenty-eight variants” (p. xxv). Such careful proofreading may well have accounted for the “re-lineation in both prose and verse passages” (p. lxxii) that A. R. Humphreys refers to in the Arden Edition of 1 Henry IV (New York: Vintage Books, 1960). This “re-lineation,” at least in part, may have been undertaken in an effort to preserve QO's precise detail and punctuation, punctuation which Humphreys admits “has dramatic points that look like Shakespeare's own” (p. lxviii). Such “dramatic points,” I contend, include the presence of periods at the end of each “quatrain” in the reformation soliloquy, a fact which, again, suggests deliberate imitation of the sonnet form.

6. Paul Ramsey, The Fickle Glass: A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets (New York: AMS Press, 1979), p. 104.

7. Evans et al., The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1755.