SOURCE: Fujita, Minoru. “Royal Procession in Henry IV.” In Pageantry and Spectacle in Shakespeare, pp. 71-93. Tokyo: The Renaissance Institute, 1982.

[In the following essay, Fujita contrasts Hal's arrival in regal costume and procession in Act V, scene v of Henry IV, Part 2 with Falstaff's appearance in dirty and disheveled clothes, and contends that the fat knight's disregard of ceremony and his mockery of royalty, though amusing in Part 1, can no longer be tolerated by the new king.]

1 THE CONCEPT OF “ROYAL”

In his tribute to Hamlet, Fortinbras says that he was likely “to have proved most royal.” The ideals and values invested in the word royal make it a richly complex term, one no doubt owing something to politics and society in Shakespeare's day, but one more important to us for its symbolism and its representation on the Elizabethan stage. We may hypothesize that the idea had much to do with the civic tradition of pageantry and that Shakespeare shared with his audience theatrical as well as aesthetic associations in their conception of “royal.” The evidence to support this can be discovered most readily in the history plays, through an examination of the connotations the word possessed. Other evidence and associations can be found in the tradition of pageantry.

In his history plays Shakespeare sometimes employs the word royal in a manner apparently redundant and meaningless. It serves as an epithet, with little positive significance. For in the third part of Henry VI, we find the following:

And now to London with triumphant march,
There to be crowned England's royal king.

(II. vi. 87-8)

Or in the first part of the play, the adjective is attached to “queen”:

Therefore, my Lord Protector, give consent
That Margaret may be England's royal queen.

(V. v. 23-4)

A king or queen, of course, belongs to the royal family and is royal by definition. Therefore, the wording “royal king” or “royal queen” may seem tautological. In the above examples, however, the speakers are talking of the future enthronement of the persons concerned, and the epithet royal describes the speakers' own expectation or hope that those persons will prove to be truly equal to the office and dignity of majesty, or that, upon their accession to the throne, they may be richly invested with the bliss and glory befitting a king or a queen. The apparent redundancy of this epithet is by no means meaningless.¹

When, therefore, Shakespeare says “royal king” we may understand that the words connote the idealization of a king and are not necessarily meant to give a real description of him. In Richard II we find England idealized by Gaunt, and the word royal harmonizes well with his praise:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars. …
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings. …

(II. i. 40-1, 50-1)

Royal is a word that can heighten a happy and congratulatory feeling; there is felicitation involved in the pomp and majesty of royalty, and other such words, like kingly and regal, cannot vie with royal in its rich connotations or its joyful, auspicious mood. In a tragedy, the effect of this adjective may enhance the tragic feeling. As we have seen, young Hamlet's death is felt the more painful and pathetic, “For he was likely, had he been put on, / To have proved most royal.”²

The sense of rejoicing conveyed by the word royal has to do with a public, ceremonial world transcending ordinary experience. It conveys feelings aroused by royalty on public view. Although it represents something above the workaday lives of the time, it retains its universal, irresistible appeal. On Shakespeare's stage we often find that the auspicious joy suggested by the adjective royal takes a concrete, visible form and appeals directly to the senses of the spectators. In Henry VIII, Act IV, Scene i, we see a stage version of Queen Anne's coronation procession “pass over the stage in order and state.” The nature of the visual appeal obtained from this spectacle can well be understood from its detailed stage direction.³ Attention to appropriate detail is evident. Costly items such as “sceptre of gold,” “robe of estate,” “coronal of gold,” etc. embellish the parade in this scene, and under the canopy borne by four of the Cinqueports goes “the Queen in her robe, in her hair, richly adorned with pearl, crowned.” Seeing the sumptuous sight, one of the stage spectators speaks admiringly: “A royal train, believe me” (IV. i. 37). “Royal” here is meant to describe the impression of the spectacular beauty which the costumes, properties, and procession as a whole present to the audience. The OED cites this line as an example of the definition “finely arrayed; resplendent; grand and imposing.”⁴ What is interesting here is that, although the beauty portrayed in the stage procession is directly borrowed from the world of royalty, the word royal does more to qualify the nature of the beauty itself than to suggest the initial relationship of that beauty to kingship. In other words, the kind of beauty termed “royal” is, despite its origin in kingship, now felt to form an independent aesthetic category which is complete in itself and distinguished for its gorgeous, stately splendour.

Another interesting example of the use of the adjective royal is found in Henry VIII. In Act I, Scene i, Norfolk reports upon “the earthly glory” displayed by the British and French kings meeting in the Field of the Cloth of Gold:

                                                                                                                        … men might say,
Till this time pomp was single, but now married
To one above itself. Each following day
Became the next day's master, till the last
Made former wonders its. To-day the French,
All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,
Shone down the English; and to-morrow they
Made Britain India: every man that stood
Showed like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were
As cherubins, all gilt; the madams too,
Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear
The pride upon them, that their very labour
Was to them as a painting. Now this masque
Was cried incomparable; and th' ensuing night
Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings,
Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,
As presence did present them: him in eye
Still him in praise; and being present both,
'Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner
Durst wag his tongue in censure.

(I. i. 14-33)

This may well sound extravagant, and Buckingham quite naturally responds by saying, “O, you go far.” But in Norfolk's opinion even this is not sufficient to express what he has witnessed in the spectacular encounter of the two kings, and, full of admiration, he says, “All was royal.”

Norfolk's story is remarkable for its reference to gold and for its intimations of the contemporary fashion of pageantry. The first matter bears very much upon the second. The magnificent appearance of the two kings and their parties is likened to the visual effect of gold. In order to make his audience experience the utmost splendour of the kingly meeting, Shakespeare felt no hesitation in appealing outright to that sense of beauty and visual imagination which had been universally cultivated among people through their years of contact with pageantry. And doubtless the brilliance of gold was a source of pleasure to people's sense of sight. In a pageant it always took the lead in affording the feeling of luxury and splendour to the spectacle. Chroniclers tried to strengthen the impression of magnificence by giving all the sumptuous details of a spectacle. In his chronicles, Hall records the Christmas kept by the king in 1512:

… within the Castle wer six Ladies clothed in russet satin laide all over with leves of golde, and every owde knit with laces of blewe silk and golde: on their heddes, coyfes and cappes all of gold. After this Castle had been carried about the hal, and the Quene had behelde it, in came the Kyng, with five other appareled in coates, the one halfe of russet satyne, spangled with spangels of fine gold, the other halfe rich clothe of gold; on ther heddes cappes of russet satin embroudered with works of fine gold bullion.⁵

Neither historians nor theatre audiences were bored by the artless repetition of “gold.” And it is interesting to note that, in British pageantry and historical writing at this time, the idea of conspicuous costliness, sheer sumptuousness, was an important index of the concept of the beautiful. Apart from political or sociological implications, then, the adjective royal implied the costly beauty that had traditionally been associated with kingship. People were conscious of royalty as the office, dignity, and power of a prince, and at the same time they felt it was a basis for their cult of beauty.

In the descriptions of public pageants, the word royal was often used to deepen the sense of luxury and magnificence. On his return from Agincourt in 1415, Henry V was welcomed by a pageant show. According to a contemporary account, the king was “riolly receyvet with procession and song,” and when he entered London,

the stretes were riolly hanget with rich clothes, & in Cornhylle was made a riol toure full of patriarches syngyng. … And the cros in the Chepe was riolly arrayet like a castell with toures pight full of baners.⁶

When Queen Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster on January 15, 1559, Westminster Hall where she dined “was richlie hoong, and everie thing ordered in such roiall maner as to such a regall and most solemne feast apperteined,” and this feast was “celebrated with all Roial Ceremonies and high solemnities.”⁷

In the same vein, James I, Queen Anne, and Prince Frederick were received with several pageants when, in March 1604, they visited the City of London. The entertainment was designed by Thomas Dekker. According to his own explanation, a “Device” was “made up, as the first service to a more Royall and serious ensuing Entertainment,” and in the structure of the Italians' pageant “King Henry the Seventh was royally seated in his imperiall robes; to whome King James … approches, and receyves a scepter.” There followed the pageant of the Dutchmen; and “it was a Royall and magnificent labour.”⁸ In 1610, on the day when King James' son was created Prince of Wales and granted other titles, “after a most Royall and sumptuous tilting, the water-fight was worthilie performed.”⁹

2 THE STAGE PROCESSION

Fresh, brilliant beams of light have never ceased to be experienced as a source of exquisite aesthetic pleasure. Poets and painters often work on the visual effects of sunrise and sunset, starlight and candle light, in order to fix the impression of the pleasing moment in an artistic form. It would be too much to say that Shakespeare was particularly given to the charm of a bright light, but from the passages describing the fascination of objects of beauty with the aid of light-imagery, we may infer that his imagination worked most actively when he tried to elaborate an image dealing with light. A typical example is found in Romeo's remark when he first catches sight of the beauty of Juliet:

O she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear—

(I. V. 44-6)

The “torches” and the “rich jewel” contribute their attractive luminosity to Juliet's beauty. As to the rendering of the light effect, painting naturally possesses an advantage over literature in its direct appeal to the visual sense. Light, however, often reveals deep significance to a poet. Through his contemplation of the rich brilliancy caused by light, he is introduced to a visionary or introspective world beyond the ordinary, phenomenal one. As a theme of literature, light was most particularly favoured by the poets of Romanticism.

Not only the sun, the moon, the stars and rainbow, but nature itself, when it appeared illuminated by light, was a source of creative imagination. A visionary light was as frequently seen in romantic poetry: a mariner saw, upon the slimy sea, the death fires dance about and the water, like a witch's oils, burn green and blue and white; he further watched the water-snakes whose tracks on the water emitted flashes of golden fire: a fearful symmetry was framed by the tyger's eyes burning bright in the dark forest night. These lights were perceived more by the poets' internal eye of the mind. Romantic poets desired to create an unprecedented image of light through concentrated observation of the visible phenomenal world around them or of their inward, visionary universe. In Shakespeare, however, light does not appear as a vision immediately springing from his individualized perception. His presentation of light is often accompanied by darkness as a necessary background. The contrast thus brought out between light and darkness tends to assume an allegorical character, and this character combines with the specific power of the dramatist's figurative language. One of his sonnets (XXVII) reveals an apparent variation of the idea concerning the light of a jewel in Romeo and Juliet, but no personal, individualized concern with jewelry need necessarily be taken into account when we estimate the poet's particular mental experience expressed in the sonnet.

The “light” referred to in the prologue of the Fourth Gospel is the eternal idea of light, and all empirical lights are transient copies of it.¹⁰ The sight of a bright light creates within the seer an aspiration for the infinity in value, spiritual as well as material, implied in the light. These senses of the sumptuous and the sublime are seldom enjoyed separately. They are usually mingled in light, but when they are combined into one light and work together, a sense of utmost richness results. Thus, in the literary or artistic presentation of light, if it is of a supreme kind, aesthetic beauty can be immediately interpreted as spiritual truth. The light, then, demonstrates at once what is true and what is beautiful. The poetry of Romanticism particularly preferred imagery concerning light, because the imagery could most effectively suggest what is high and remote, exotic and uncontrolled, and after all what defies conceptual knowledge. The literary cult of light characteristic of romantic literature is never a temporary fashion limited to one age. On the contrary, it arises from the built-in, native aptitude of Europeans to apprehend beauty and truth in one luminous brightness.

Before romantic poets acquired the technique of giving superb expression to their individual experience and insight concerning light, it was the task of the painters to present the visual effect of light in an artistic form. But dramatic art also utilized the remarkable ability of people to perceive the sense of luxury and sublimity caused by a bright light. This was not merely through poetic, dramatic diction, but through visual representation furnished on the stage. It should be noted that visual appeal was as significant and effective as dramatic speech on Shakespeare's stage. This is most remarkably evidenced in the scenes of his history plays where a mediaeval king appears in sumptuous apparel of state, followed by his train similarly attired. They are all richly adorned. The elaborate display of royal splendour was an integral part of the scenes produced upon the Elizabethan stage, especially when devoted to the theme of royalty. We may infer from this that the Elizabethan audience took unfailing delight in the rich, luxurious light which emanated from the regalia and sumptuous costume as well as in the realistic unfolding of a play. This theatre aestheticism has, of course, much to do with the Elizabethan aesthetic concept of the “royal.” The gorgeous, stately spectacle may justly be classed under this category of beauty. As for the importance of the visual effect that a royal figure should produce on the eyes of the general public, this is shown by the king in the first part of Henry IV:

Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,
My presence like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen but wond'red at, and so my state
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast,
And wan by rareness such solemnity. …

(III. ii. 55-9)

He goes on to talk about people's “extraordinary gaze, / Such as is bent on sun-like majesty, / When it shines seldom in admiring eyes.” From this we may glean important information about the popular, visual conception of royalty. In people's eyes a king was the essence of sumptuousness, the likes of which they seldom had the opportunity to see directly with their own eyes. When they were fortunate enough to see it on such an occasion as a Royal Entry, it was a rare visual feast, a solemn, majestic spectacle or show which people invariably “wond'red at” with “extraordinary gaze.” The popular, conventional pattern of viewing kingship developed, not from abstract speculation about it, but from real experience gained from rare opportunities to witness the processional pageantry of royalty. In this connection it is interesting to note that Dekker did not omit to record in his account of King James' entertainment the fact that “his Majestie … did most graciouslie feede the eyes of the beholders with his presence.”¹¹

A king's presence in the setting of a royal procession remained an unfailing source of sumptuous spectacular beauty, which was comparable only to the fully arrayed magnificence of the Pope in his ceremonial dress. People attached spiritual and aesthetic values to royalty, just as to papacy, and the two kinds of values were so closely amalgamated that it was difficult to appreciate one separately from the other.¹² When people admired the costly beauty embodied in kingship, it necessarily meant that they appreciated the divine quality of an anointed king. The abstract concept of beauty had not developed yet. Beauty was discussed without much discrimination between the moral or spiritual value of the thing and the beauty it incorporated. Popular experience concerning royalty was, therefore, markedly characterized by the appreciation of the royal beauty that was the visible equivalent to the essentially transcendental idea of kingship. This bears a parallel to the experience of religious piety which, in Catholicism, took place in terms of the symbolically and aesthetically organized forms of ritual. “Admired” or “wondered at” is the description of the way people generally responded to the sight of the “sun-like majesty” portrayed in a public ceremony of royalty or on an occasion of pageantry. In an earlier scene of the first part of Henry IV, there is another example of the conventional pattern of popular response to visualized royalty. After Falstaff and his crew have made their exit towards the end of Act I, Scene ii, Prince Hal, remaining on stage, reveals his secret intention of pretending to be a prodigal in order later to show his royal quality the more effectively.

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness,
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contageous 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 vapours that did seem to strangle him.

(I. ii. 187-95)

The pattern is repeated with a slight variation in the king's speech in Act III:

By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wond'red at.

(III. ii. 46-7)

“Wonder at,” it should be noted, describes, not the individual's incipient surprise at the solemn, sumptuous sight of royalty, but rather the common mould of action in which popular emotion was excited by spectacle. The generalization, however, proves that there was a long course of time in the history of man's experience when access to a royal show invariably meant awe and admiration at the sight of “sun-like majesty.” As a dramatist, Shakespeare was well aware of this reaction to such spectacles. He also knew that he could best treat royalty in his plays by dealing with it in the visual, aesthetic terms understood by his audience.

In the first part of Henry IV, we repeatedly hear the king talk of his concern about kingship and refer to his consciousness of the optical effect of kingly appearance:

Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap to vulgar company,
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,
Had still kept loyal to possession,
And left me in reputeless banishment,
A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.

(III. ii. 39-45)

The king has met the crown by “by-paths and indirect crookt ways,” and therefore the prudence and tactics he reveals here may be regarded as reasonable in this scheming usurper. But such a strong concern for the appeal of outward show may as reasonably be expected from the artificer of a Renaissance pageant, whose business it was to feed people's eyes with splendid spectacles. In imagining an upstart king, therefore, Shakespeare seems to have formed his idea of the king more or less in accordance with the popular or vulgar way of understanding royalty. For the Elizabethans, royalty more immediately signified what they saw with their aesthetic and emblematic eyes on occasions of royal pageantry than what they speculated about in abstract, political terms. If they speculated about royalty, it was presumably in terms of the image of the rich spectacle that they had derived from the magnificent sight of royal ceremony and pageantry.

When we consider the nature of the so-called rejection scene of the second part of Henry IV (V. v), wherein Falstaff is disowned and banished by his old companion Prince Hal, now Henry V, the prince's conversion translated in visual, aesthetic terms plays a very important role in the scene. In Act V, Scene ii, we hear the prince declare that he has been reformed:

                                                                                                    The tide of blood in me
Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now:
Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea,
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods,
And flow henceforth in formal majesty.

(V, ii. 129-33)

The “state” and “majesty” he is now to assimilate have their visual correspondence in his superb kingly array, namely, “this new and gorgeous garment, majesty.” The audience readily interpret Prince Hal's conversion in terms of this “new and gorgeous” appearance of royalty which he has assumed upon himself. In the traditional pageantry, costume constituted an important element of spectacle presented on the stage, and afforded its spectators an attractive, entertaining sight full of rich colour. Consideration, then, should be given to the visual appeal which the splendid costume must have produced on the stage at the time the stage version of Anne Bullen's coronation procession was presented in Act IV, Scene i of Henry VIII.

From the extended, detailed stage direction showing “The Order of The Coronation” (IV. i. 36. s.d.), we gain the general idea of a coronation procession actually produced on the Elizabethan stage. Under the canopy borne by four of the Cinqueports goes the queen, Anne Bullen, in her robe, with her hair richly adorned with pearls. Several lords are seen to attend her. The Marquis of Dorset bears a sceptre of gold, with a demicoronal of gold; the Earl of Surrey proceeds bearing the rod of silver with the dove, and crowned with an earl's coronet. The Duke of Suffolk in his robe of state, and with his coronet on his head, holds a long white wand, as high steward. These peers are preceded by high officials, such as Lord Chancellor, with a purse and a mace before him; the Mayor of London, bearing a mace; the Garter King of Arms, in his coat of arms, and on his head a gilt copper crown.

When this procession passes over the stage “in order and state,” the two gentlemen as stage spectators of the procession say,

SECOND Gent.
A royal train, believe me. These I know.
Who's that that bears the sceptre?
FIRST Gent.
                                                                                          Marquess Dorset;
And that the Earl of Surrey, with the rod.

(IV. i. 37-9)

Other characters joining the troop are likewise identified by what they carry as their attributes. An important fact about the stage procession is that these ornamental objects were carried by the characters in order to make up the necessary visual appeal. Comparison of Holinshed's text with Shakespeare's version shows how carefully and minutely Shakespeare desired to revive upon his stage the original image of the coronation procession given in the chronicle.

3 BREAKING THROUGH THE CLOUDS

Already in Act V of Richard II the fair prospect of Prince Hal's future reform has been alluded to by his father, Henry IV (“I see some sparks of better hope, which elder years / May bring forth”). In Act I of the first part of Henry IV, we hear Prince Hal reveal his secret intention to be converted and become a true prince. He utters a soliloquy after Falstaff and his crew have made their exit from the scene:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyok'd humour 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 vapours that did seem to strangle him.

(I. ii. 187-95)

The idea of the sun signifying royalty was one of the most persistent of all Elizabethan commonplaces. More than logical correspondence or verbal allegory was, however, implied in the sun-king relationship especially when the relation was given a theatrical and pageant interpretation. Prince Hal is likened to the sun permitting “the base contagious clouds / To smother up his beauty.” He assumes that, once he is determined to be himself again, he will be wondered at by displaying his most admirable figure as a genuine prince to the public just as the sun reveals its brightest beam through a break in the clouds. This is spoken through the prince's mouth and conveyed as his true will, since the Elizabethan audience conventionally accepted what was expressed in a monologue as true. Until the time of his conversion in the last act of the second part of Henry IV, Prince Hal firmly keeps up this secret intention. The monologue is, therefore, sometimes understood to be an indication of the prince's very detached and self-controlling nature. In the author's idea, the soliloquy does not essentially serve to describe the inmost desire or private feeling the prince may have entertained. The idea suggested in this soliloquy does not basically originate in himself. There is nothing particularly individualized in the quality of the wisdom revealed here, nor do his words serve to clarify the natural tendency of the prince or his character as a whole.

The monologue is remarkable in that it expresses the prince's exclusive concern for the spectacular visual effect that will be produced on the eyes of the public when he succeeds in achieving his true royal character. He discloses his will to “imitate the sun,” which logically signifies his future spiritual rebirth as a genuine prince or king. From this divulging of his secret will, the Elizabethan audience deduced more than a conceptual knowledge of his future conversion. The monologue created in the audience the expectation that the prince would achieve a “sun-like majesty” once he was converted. According to their experience, the “sun-like majesty” was what they saw with their own eyes, or rather what they wondered at on the rare occasions when they had access to the royal show. Elizabethan spectators were gifted with an excellent eye for spectacular beauty. Therefore, they naturally expected to see the theatrical interpretation of the prince's spiritual reform which, in the dramatist's own words, would involve the spectacular effect of the sun “Breaking through the foul and ugly mists / Of vapours.” From this it follows that Shakespeare's intention in the rejection scene does not lie in a realistic portrayal of the internal change in the personal character of the prince. If we look for reasonable psychology in what the scene presents to us, we are looking for an unobtainable goal and analysis of character will yield no adequate results.

In Act IV, Scene v of the second part of Henry IV, Prince Hal removes his father's crown from the pillow, since he believes his father has died. But the king awakes to find the crown gone, and seeing the crown in the prince's hands, he severely accuses his son of desiring his death. On his son's apology, the king gives important counsels to the future king. In Act V, Scene ii, the Lord Chief Justice strongly defends his former conduct in jailing the prodigal prince in his madcap days and, as upholder of “the majesty and power of law and justice,” he remonstrates with the prince very severely for his habitual unscrupulous conduct. The sincere force of this remonstrance strikes Prince Hal remarkably. He says, “The tide of blood in me / Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now; / Now doth it turn and ebb back … And flow henceforth in formal majesty.” The audience is thus informed that the prince is now converted. But sometimes the audience's moral sympathy with the prince ends on witnessing the harshness of mind unveiled in his rejection of Falstaff. A negative view of the prince which is often heard is that he is not a hero, not a thinker, not even a friend; or that he is a common man whose incapacity for feeling enables him to change his habits whenever interest bids him. A. C. Bradley, as is well known, indignantly asserts that the prince ought in honour long ago to have given Sir John clearly to understand that they must say good-bye on the day of his accession.¹³

When, however, we take into consideration the actual production of the second part of Henry IV on the Elizabethan stage, we become doubtful whether Shakespeare's audience could have entertained such an objection against the hero. Prince Hal's splendid reformation is fully portrayed in the final scene. The dramatist presents the coronation procession of the new young king, in order to augment the auspicious, spectacular beauty of the finale where the rejection of Falstaff takes place. The rejection of the “foul” figure is, in the author's view, subordinated to the triumphant display of the rich, joyful spectacle of royalty, which, as the main issue has been predicted to take place as the sun suddenly breaks “through the foul and ugly mists.” Shakespeare's audience would have justly expected to “wonder at” the prince's reformation portrayed in such a stage spectacle.

The audience sees, in Act V, Scene ii, Prince Hal enter arrayed in his new kingly costume. He says to the Lord Chief Justice, “This new and gorgeous garment, majesty, / Sits not so easy on me as you think.” From this remark we learn that the garment is of “gorgeous” make. Adorned in his costume and followed by his train, the new king reappears in Scene v. As to the entrance of the king and his train in the scene, there is a remarkable difference in the stage direction between the Quarto and the Folio texts. According to the Folio, “the king and his train” enter the stage only once, and the stage direction indicating their entrance comes after the 37th line. Other modern editions usually follow this arrangement. In the Quarto text, on the other hand, “the King and his train” make their entry twice, their first entrance coming after the 4th line, when the grooms, strewing rushes in the street for the passage of the royal procession, have finished their work. Trumpets sound, and the king and his train pass over the stage, and they make their exit. Dover Wilson, who revives the Quarto's stage direction in his edition, insists that Shakespeare's intention was to have two processions, one to and the other from Westminster Abbey. He adds that the whole coronation ceremony should be imagined as taking place during the thirty-five lines of dialogue between the king's first entry and his second. In all probability Shakespeare's initial arrangement of the scene was preserved in the Quarto text, which was presumably printed from Shakespeare's original manuscript, whereas the Folio text was probably printed from a transcript. This transcript is thought to have been prepared for reading, not for acting.¹⁴ We may conjecture that the omission from the Folio text of the first entrance of the procession was more or less due to disrespect for or ignorance of the Elizabethan idea of a royal procession included in Shakespeare's original plan of the scene.

The first procession of the king and his train going around the stage must have taken a certain space of time. This stage procession, though mute and unwitnessed by stage spectators, must have produced a remarkable spectacular effect, and entertained or captivated the eyes of the audience with the “gorgeous” splendour characteristic of processional pageantry. In the original production, Shakespeare must have presented it in the manner more decidedly employed when he later displayed the sumptuous procession in Henry VIII. As suggested in the prince's own remark in V. ii, his garment was a gorgeous one, and he joined the coronation procession in this “best attire” of a king. We may assume that other members constituting “his train” were as splendidly arrayed as the peers and officials participating in Anne Bullen's coronation procession. Shakespeare merely gave a simple stage direction saying, “the King and his train pass over the stage,” and there is no extended stage direction showing “The Order of The Coronation” such as is found in Henry VIII. The simple stage direction suggests that Shakespeare had no particular intention of producing such a gigantic, pompous spectacle as Anne Bullen's coronation procession displayed. Henry V's royal parade was undoubtedly far smaller in scale. We may, however, conjecture that the king's procession was similar in visual quality. It was simpler and less decorated as a procession, but nonetheless it was “a royal train.”

In the printed text composed merely for reading, the repeated entrance of Henry and his train seems redundant, and modern editions of this play following the Folio's arrangement are justifiable in their own way. On the modern stage the mute, ceremonial procession simply passing over the stage may give little help to the rational and realistic presentation of the drama. But, according to the Quarto text, there was a certain period of time when the spectators thoroughly feasted their eyes on the sight of a royal procession which was colourful, splendid, and full of majesty. In this respect it is necessary and proper to remember the fact that the same spectators could see a real royal procession in the London street when a Royal Entry was held there. As in the case of the Royal Entries of Queen Elizabeth in 1559 and of King James in 1604, a coronation was regarded as a typical occasion of pageantry. In this spectacular stage version of a coronation procession, the Elizabethan audience saw Prince Hal imitating the sun and assuming sun-like majesty. It is with these circumstances taken into account that we should consider the essential nature of the rejection scene.

The audience see Falstaff and his crew enter the stage immediately after Henry's procession has made its first exit. The remarkable thing about their entrance is that the sordid appearance of these people, especially of Falstaff, affords a shocking contrast with the solemn, sumptuous beauty that King Henry and the royal procession as a whole has presented to the eyes of the audience. It should be noted that Shakespeare intentionally makes Falstaff refer to his own shabby appearance in which he is going to meet the new king:

O, if I had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. But 'tis no matter, this poor show doth better, this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

(V. v. 11-4)

It is necessary here to remember Shakespeare's particular concern about the “best attire” that is associated with pageant occasions. It is in their “best attire” that in Julius Caesar Roman citizens go to meet Caesar's triumphal procession, or in their own words, to “make holiday, to see Caesar and to rejoice in his triumph.”¹⁵ In Richard II the Duchess of York insists, defending her son from suspicion, that he has run into debt to order his “gay apparel 'gainst the triumph day.”¹⁶ Not only common citizens but also nobles were, in Shakespeare's idea, supposed to wear their holiday clothes to celebrate a festal day of pageantry. From these examples we may conjecture some of the popular, customary attitudes of the Elizabethan mind toward pageantry. In Elizabethan England a pageant occasion such as a “Triumph,” a Royal Entry, or a Lord Mayor's Show existed as a holiday event which was superior to, or different from, any workaday event. It was an occasion requiring people participating in it to wear holiday dresses or “gay apparel.” Needless to say, this is a habitual bent of mind connected with pageantry in general and almost universal among all nations of all times, and the mentality forms a subject of anthropological interest. Therefore, it is highly significant that Falstaff speaks of his own holiday clothes, or “new liveries,” on this particular pageant occasion of Prince Hal's coronation procession.¹⁷

It seemed, therefore, somewhat outrageous to the Elizabethan audience that Falstaff did not take his dirty, miserable attire very seriously. He believed, what is worse, that he could make the best of his shabby appearance to win the favour of the new king:

But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.

(V. v. 24-7)

The filthiness of the clothes of Falstaff and his men has already featured in an earlier scene, where Davy says: “… they have marvellous foul linens” (V. i. 32). The repeated reference to their filthiness is by no means casually made. The gorgeous spectacle of the coronation procession and the “foul” show of Falstaff must have presented a shocking contrast and discrepancy in outward appearance. In discussing the finale of the second part of Henry IV in which the rejection of Falstaff takes place, we cannot overlook the visual scene thus presented on Shakespeare's original stage.

The total dramatic effect of this closing scene is less one of realism than one of pageantry, and this is due largely to the traditional aesthetic cult of kingship in the pageants. Shakespeare's dramatic task in the finale was to exhibit “the sun-like majesty” of the new king, or more especially to present the newly-crowned king who, in rejecting Falstaff, shines forth in the way the sun suddenly breaks “through the foul and ugly mists.” Special attention should be paid to the fact that the visual impression of “a sun breaking through the clouds after a thunderstorm” was a subject favoured in painting in the fifteenth century, and painters were “occupied with the problem of fixing the light effect of a moment.”¹⁸ In pageantry, too, this theme seems to have found great favour. Upon the battlements at Fenchurch in London was set a miniature City of London when King James was received on his way to his coronation in 1604. The whole frame of the city “was couered with a curtaine of silke, painted like a thicke cloud, and at the approach of the K[ing] was instantly to be drawne.” The allegory of this device is that “at the rising of the Sunne,” which means the king, “all mists were dispersed and fled,” and people in London enjoy the idea of the sun breaking through the clouds.¹⁹ In the Lord Mayor's Show of 1613, Middleton produced the idea of a “Mount Triumphant.” The beauty and glory of the Mount is “overspredde with a thicke sulphurous darknesse,” which is “a fog or mist raised from Error, enviously to blemish” the Mount, or London. Truth's chariot then approaches, and says, “with this fanne of starres I'll chase away” “that foule cloude to darken this bright day.” The mists vanish, the cloud suddenly rises, and it “changes into a bright spredding canopy, stucke thicke with starres and beames of gold, shooting forth round about it, the mount appearing then most rich in beauty and glory.”²⁰ In all these pageant devices the foul, darkening clouds are banished in order to disclose the bright sunbeams. The visual impression of the moment when the sun breaks through the thick, dark clouds is remarkably emphasized. The creation of this kind of marvellous, spectacular impression must have been one of the most attractive features of Renaissance pageantry in England. It is evident that Shakespeare introduced this aestheticism of Renaissance pageantry and painting into his rejection scene. When Falstaff as the foul cloud covering the sun is banished and dispersed, the new king who imitates the sun shines forth brightly. In this aesthetic scheme is found the theatrical presentation of royal felicity and well-being.

In his soliloquy given in the first part of Henry IV, Prince Hal says that he will associate with Falstaff and his crew in order that, “when he pleases again to be himself, / Being wanted he may be more wond'red at.” In the second part, we see Falstaff wholly given up to dishonest behaviour and, in spite of the pleasure gained from Falstaff's company, it seems necessary and fair for the prince to reject this jovial but corrupted rogue. Prince Hal, it is true, ought to have intimated his intention to Falstaff before he publicly rejects the fat knight. Some readers of the rejection scene naturally feel a certain regret or discomfort, remembering the infinite enjoyment the prince obtained from his communion with Falstaff's world. But the feelings of the spectator of the Elizabethan stage on witnessing the rejection scene must be considered and analyzed from an entirely different, historical angle. The rejection scene delivered a message to the Elizabethan audience on a different plane of human experience.

The stage royal procession must have served as a kind of framework for the rejection scene. The censure upon the prince's ruthless conduct, a censure essentially arising out of sympathy for Falstaff, becomes unreasonable when viewed within this framework of Elizabethan aesthetic symbolism. When we examine the rejection scene as a typical case of the resolution scene of a Shakespearean historical play, we may perceive that the sight of the prince's reformation plays a crucial role in it. When this royal procession first appeared, the audience must have watched the spectacular display of royal magnificence with full admiration, or wondered at the rare royal spectacle. This brilliant sight appeared to the eyes of the Elizabethan audience as an indication of the prince's newly acquired personality, spiritual height and moral integrity. Placing himself in the centre of the coronation procession, he now appeared a more impersonal, public figure. This appearance corresponded with his inner consciousness that the tide of blood was flowing “in formal majesty” within him.

Moreover, when Shakespeare made Falstaff and his crew wear dirty clothes, the foulness of their costumes must have been interpreted by the Shakespearean audience as a sign of their moral foulness or degradation, which, in the ethical scheme of the play, may be set as opposite to the moral integrity the new king has achieved. More directly, the unclean appearance means, in the visual arrangement of this scene, that which is to defile the fair beauty the newly crowned king has now assumed. It was a serious offence against the Elizabethan sense of righteousness to befoul the “royal” beauty which was regarded as the supreme aesthetic category. It is worth while to remember York's remark when Bolingbroke is going to depose Richard II: “… alack, alack, for woe, / That any harm should stain so fair a show!” This explains the spectator's fear of Falstaff committing this offence against the new, blessed king when the beautiful royal procession next enters and this foul figure meets it. The spectator would have naturally anticipated the king's rejection of the corrupted, “foul” rogue when the scene was first produced on Shakespeare's stage. It was not Prince Hal's personal will that necessitated the rejection. It was, politically, the order of the realm that required this rigour. But within the framework of Shakespeare's dramaturgy, the rejection served above all to excite the blissful, congratulatory mode of feeling with which the play could favourably end.

When the king in his royal procession next enters, Falstaff approaches him, addressing him as “King Hal, my royal Hal.” But the king replies, saying, “I know thee not, old man.” In the king's speech the fact of his reformation is pointedly emphasized:

Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self:
So will I those that kept me company.

(V. v. 57-60)

Theatrically, his internal change is made clear and apparent to the audience's eyes by means of the “gorgeous garment” he now wears. The sight of the young king speaks, more eloquently than the speech itself, of the dramatic fact that he has thrown away his “former self” and has acquired his true self. Falstaff alone is not convinced of the prince's conversion, however palpable and apparent it may be to the audience through the visual device. It is here that Falstaff shows his true character; he says, “… look you, he [i.e. the prince] must seem thus to the world.” The realist refuses to be persuaded by the prince's new outward show. He has first appeared in dirty clothes in spite of this holiday occasion, thereby constituting a strong, dangerous antithesis to the fair, ceremonial show of the new king. He now openly discloses his utter disbelief in the validity of the conventional outward show. Consequently the danger of the fat, unrestrainable character seems redoubled. Falstaff's evil doings have now become too manifest and must have made the audience far less sympathetic. When he is rejected, the congratulatory feeling largely due to the pageantlike spectacle of the splendid royal procession unfolds itself more openly in the purging of this now undesirable foul figure.

Notes

1. See also Richard III, III. vii. 20-22. The OED says of the word royal: “In a number of Shakespearean passages … the adj. has a purely contextual meaning, the precise force of which is not always clear” (“Royal,” A. adj.).

2. Hamlet, V. ii. 395-96.

3. Henry VIII, IV. i. 36 s.d.; cf. Alice V. Griffin, Pageantry on the Shakespearean Stage (New Haven, 1951), pp. 23-24.

4. OED, “Royal,” adj. II. 8. B.

5. John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (London, 1823), I: 70.

6. Cited from Robert Withington, English Pageantry, 2 vols. (New York, 1963), I: 132-34.

7. Nichols, The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, I: 60-61.

8. John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, 4 vols. (London, 1828), I: 338, 346 and 349.

9. Ibid., II: 322

10. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, 1954), p. 203.

11. Nichols, The Progresses of King James, I: 358.

12. John Huizinga, in this connection, says, “The very notion of artistic beauty is still wanting. The aesthetic sensation caused by the contemplation of art is lost always and at once either in pious emotion or a vague sense of well-being” (The Waning of the Middle Ages [London, 1955], p. 268).

13. A. C. Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London, 1955), p. 254.

14. J. Dover Wilson, ed., Henry IV, Pt. II, note to V. v, and pp. 115-116.

15. Julius Caesar, I. i. 33-34, and 52.

16. Richard II, V. ii. 66.

17. Cf. Griffin, pp. 29 and 151.

18. Huizinga, p. 290.

19. C. H. Herford, P. and E. Simpson, edd. Ben Jonson, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1925-47), VII: 90.

20. Nichols, The Progresses of King James, II: 690-91.

All the citations from Shakespeare are (unless otherwise indicated) to the New Shakespeare editions, under the general editorship of J. Dover Wilson. All the references to the First Folio are to the facsimile edition prepared by Charlton Hinman (New York, 1968).