A king tells his son how to make a good show of himself ...

The other day, when I was discussing our Word of the Week, show, I mentioned that when Jesus was talking about hypocrites, he didn’t simply mean that they said one thing and did another. He told his disciples not to blow a trumpet before them when they gave alms so that everybody could see them doing something good. In that case, the hypocrite does what he says, and with fanfare, to be seen doing it. And in fact the Greek source of our word hypocrite did not, in the first instance, imply deceit. It was the word for an actor on stage. If you’re doing your good deed to be seen or to win the praise of men, you’ve put yourself on a public stage, and even though you are doing what you said you would, or what you always do, there’s still something false about you. Maybe that explains why the more sober and traditional Romans so long resisted the introduction of Greek theater into the city, and why actors were long held in low esteem. By the time of Cicero, though, the actor Roscius was one one of the richest and most renowned men in the city, and in fact Cicero’s own good friend, too. Cicero did have something of the ham about him.

Breeze past the next 1600 years, to the lifetime of Shakespeare. Two great streams of drama have united to produce the most brilliant flourishing of plays since ancient Greece, and I believe the most brilliant, ever. One of the streams was Christian, popular, vigorous, and visually daring. It sprang up from the rollicking “mystery” plays (here “mystery” means “craft, artisanship,” because the plays were performed in cycles that took up one or two days, and each craftsman’s guild would be responsible for one play — say, the carpenters for the Noah play, and maybe the fullers or weavers for the Shepherds’ play). Shakespeare, when he was a boy, heard such plays and profited by them, though he pokes gentle fun at them, since they were usually performed by amateurs or even your neighbors, not professionals. It’s what he’s thinking about when Hamlet criticizes actors who go overboard with noise and wild gestures on stage — such an actor, he says, “out-herods Herod.” That’s one stream. The second was the mighty river of classical learning that characterized the Renaissance. The popular and the learned meet, and we get, in England, the profoundly Christian playwright Shakespeare — but also, in Shakespeare, not only a playwright, but an actor, a director, and the manager of his own theater company. He had to think about the art of acting, both its glory and its peril.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that Shakespeare the actor and playwright should be keen-sighted when it comes to another kind of actor and playwright, namely the politician. The danger in political life might be put in this way. The able politician must be aware of how he is seen by his people. He must manage his appearances. This need not involve deceit. It may well involve misdirection, though — when you deliberately set up certain worthy expectations, but then fulfill them in a surprising and unexpected way, much to the cheers of the crowds; or, more dicey, when you set up certain unhappy expectations, and then show, in some public way, that you are not at all the scoundrel or idiot the people thought. You become your own playwright, director, and actor, and the public is your audience. Does that mean you must be a hypocrite, too, as Jesus uses the word? An uncomfortable question, to be sure.

Here’s the situation Shakespeare gives us in Henry IV, part one. King Henry has only a tenuous claim to the throne. He maneuvered Richard II into abdicating in his favor. Then, Richard, under house arrest at Pomfret Castle, was assassinated, and whether it was by Henry’s orders (which he denied), no one knows. Henry cannot afford to take risks with his image, as Richard did by his careless and too public lifestyle. But his eldest son, Prince Hal, who will become the much admired Henry V, seems utterly careless of his duties and of his image in the people’s eyes. He’s been hanging around with the roguish and cowardly knight Sir John Falstaff, and such riffraff. But that is all part of Hal’s strategy. He knows exactly what he is doing, and he has said so, alone, to the audience. But the King doesn’t know that. So in our speech today, Henry begs Hal to be more chary of his appearances. The point is not that Hal shouldn’t make any show of himself, but that he should make the right kind of show, to secure his power when he inherits the throne. And we needn’t think of this as purely selfish. A nation suffers under a weak king. Think of the disastrous and villainous King John.

Here, then, is Henry’s appeal to Hal. I’ve shortened it by omitting about thirty lines from the middle. It is the appeal of a man with an uneasy conscience and an insecure throne, to a son whom he does not really know. And he really does weep at the end of it. He needn’t have, as it will turn out.

“Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Prince Hal.” Downes. Public Domain..

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.
By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wondered at,
That men would tell their children, "This is he!"
Others would say, "Where? Which is Bolingbroke?"
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dressed myself in such humility
That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts,
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths
Even in the presence of the crowned king.
Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen but wondered at; and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast
And won by rareness such solemnity.
The skipping king, he ambled up and down
With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,
Soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state,
Mingled his royalty with capering fools . . . 

And in that very line, Harry, standest thou;
For thou hast lost thy princely privilege
With vile participation.  Not an eye
But is aweary of thy common sight,
Save mine, which hath desired to see thee more;
Which now doth that I would not have it do -- 
Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.

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