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Prince Hal's “Shew of Zeale”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Herbert Hartman
Herbert Hartman*
Affiliation:
Bowdoin College
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Extract

In the familiar oration of Prince Hal over the body of the slain Percy occur the lines:

If thou wert sensible of curtesie

I should not make so deare a shew of zeale,

But let my fauours hide thy mangled face

And euen in thy behalfe ile thanke my selfe,

For doing these faire rights of tendernesse.

(1 Henry IV, v. iv. 94–98)

“Favours” in this passage is usually glossed as a scarf or riband, perhaps a glove. The lines are taken to imply a stage direction of some sort. It would seem, however, that Shakespeare here intended more than a conventional chivalric gesture on the part of the regenerate Prince. From a chain of textual evidence it is demonstrable that the playwright had in mind for his climax a far more dramatic, more tacitly ironic move—Hal's disengaging his royal plumes (the “budding honours” of his own helmet) to shroud the face of his dead rival. In three earlier passages the quarto text supports this interpretation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 1931 , pp. 720 - 723
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

1 Cf. the Harvard, Oxford, Rolfe, and Temple eds. “A knot of ribbons worn by a knight, the gift of his lady.”—Yale ed. etc.

2 The N. E. D. (favour, 9. c. Obs.) cites this passage. Warburton's gloss was “countenance,” Johnson's “features.” Steevens argued, “I believe favours mean only some decoration worn by knights in their helmets, as a present from a mistress, or a trophy from an enemy. So, afterwards, in this play:

‘But let my favours hide thy mangled face:‘

where the Prince must have meant his scarf.“ Mason reaffirmed Steevens' note; Boswell reverted to Johnson's, citing Richard II to the same end.

3 N. E. D. (honour, 6. b.). Cf. Fletcher's Noble Gent. v: “With the whisking of my sword about, I take thy honours off.” Favour (7. a.) a mark or favour; esp. a gift such as a knot of ribbons, a glove, etc.; (7. b.) a ribbon, cockade, or the like, worn at a ceremony. Steevens cites Heywood's Rape of Lucrece (1630),

“Aruns, these crimson favours, for thy sake,

I'll wear upon my forehead, mark'd with blood.“

4 Long a mooted passage, by reason of “bated with the wind”—which Malone related to falconry. Sh. Eng., ii, 365, gives “goshawk.”

5 “Everlasting shame Sit mocking in our plumes”—Henry V, iv. v. 4–5; “plume-pluck'd Richard”—Richard II, iv. i. 108; “Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars”—Othello, iii. iii. 350; etc.

6 Beaver, by metonomy for helmet, was actually the lower portion of the face-guard, often confused with the visor.

7 “Creasts being the ornaments set on the eminent toppe of the healme”—Camden, Rem. Armores (1605). Cf. King John, ii. i. 317: “There stucke no plume in any English Crest.”

8 “Three ostrich plumes have always been the cognizance of the Prince of Wales.”—Yale ed., through Malone, from Grey. This insignia, from a coronet with the scroll motto Ich dien, was first taken (by a tradition based upon Camden, Froissart, &c.) by the Black Prince from the King of Bohemia, near Crécy. For the actor in Hal's rôle, however, to have forfeited this actual princely cognizance would have seemed indecorous to an Elizabethan audience.

9 E.g., the Welbeck Abbey portrait of Southampton; or that of the later Prince Hal in Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1613).

10 E.g., The Faerie Queene, 3d ed.; Polman's Famous Battels (c. 1586); Watson's EKATOMIIAØIA (1582); and countless imported romances of chivalry.

11 Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels, ed. Feuillerat, 140.

12 Ibid., 296.

13 Ibid., 393.

14 Henslowe Papers, ed. Greg, 114, 121.

15 Henslowe's Diary, ed. Greg, 79.

16 In the “historical” version at Covent Garden, May 6, 1824 (with Kemble as Falstaff), the authorities for costume included: the effigy of Henry IV at Canterbury; portraits of the Prince of Wales, and others, in various illuminated MSS. in the Royal, Harleian, and similar collections; paintings on glass at St. Mary's Hall, Coventry; the Sumptuary Laws; and the works of Occleve, Camden, Dugdale, Stow, etc.—Odell, Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, ii, 173–4.

17 Geneste furnishes no clue to this triviality of stagecraft. However, Lester Wallach in the role of Hal wore an ornate plumed helmet (Theatre Mag., 1905). That attention to such minutiae was not uncommon in Shakespeare's own day is clear from the stage directions in the prompt copy of Henry VIII (cf. Times Lit. Supp., Dec. 18, 1930, p. 1085).