Essay 2 – Sparknotes – Sample Essay

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Robert Matz
ENGH 202.001
3/23/13

Care for the Commoner or for Himself?: Henry V’s Character

In its section on Henry’s character, Sparknotes worries that Henry can appear manipulative and power-hungry.^[1]  But it concludes that Henry does care about more than his own power.  In drawing this conclusion, Sparknotes stresses Henry’s sense of duty to his subjects.   A closer look at one of the passages in which Henry expresses this concern suggests, however, that Sparknotes itself has been won over by Henry’s manipulative charm, since Henry’s regard for commoners is much more limited than it first appears.  Commoners in Henry’s speeches seem to be rhetorical conveniences for Henry to justify his desires or to motivate others, not real people for whom Henry truly cares.

Considering whether Henry’s character is trustworthy, Sparknotes observes that Henry “uses every resource at his disposal” in a way that could lessen our admiration for him.  His use of “every resource at his disposal,” including a dangerously manipulative rhetoric, might suggest that this king is amoral or immoral.  If doing something increases his power he’ll do it, regardless of whether it is right.  Sparknotes counters this possibility, however, by suggesting that if Henry’s means can at times seem “morally questionable,” his worthy ends make him, in the last analysis, an admirable character.  What Henry does is not for his own pleasure or power, but to fulfill his duties as king, duties he takes very seriously: “he is dedicated to fulfilling the obligations of his exalted rank. He mourns his inability to sleep the untroubled sleep of the common man, hardly the behavior of a man dedicated to the pleasures of power.”

Sparknotes is partly correct.  Henry does stress his kingly responsibility to the common man, who “little wots / What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,  / Whose hours the peasant best advantages” ( 4.1.281-82).  Not only does the commoner not know (“little wots”) how the king guards the peace, he doesn’t understand how much work this “watch” over him and the peace is.  “Watch” means not only to protect, but also, in a now obsolete meaning, “going without sleep” (OED, watch, n.1a).  The commoner “best advantages” the king’s hours because he can sleep, while the king has to stay up all night to do his duty.  “Watch” can also have a religious sense—it is “a devotional exercise or religious observance” (OED, watch, n.2a)—and that sense seems possible in this passage as well.  The king does his duty with an almost sacred seriousness.  No wonder, we might think, the king has a good rapport with his subjects, given that he cares so much for them.

Yet a closer look at the language of this passage suggests a very different attitude of Henry toward his subjects.  Here is the passage that Sparknotes alludes to in full.  No king, Henry reflects,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body filled and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labor, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country’s peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages. (4.1.266-82)

Rather than true care, this passage is full of condescending and insulting attitudes about the “common man,” the phrase that Sparknotes uses but Henry never does.  Henry’s terms for the “common man” are much more derogatory.  That man is a “wretched slave” (266) a “lackey” (270; a “lackey” is a kind of servant, but with connotations of obsequiousness. See OED, lackey, n.), a “slave” (279) and finally a “peasant” (282), a word that connotes poverty and servitude.  Henry’s description of this man’s life reflects the condescension and insult of the names he calls him.  The “wretched slave” eats but does not think, since he has a “body filled and a vacant mind,” and a brain that is “gross” (“unwholesomely or repulsively fat,” OED, “gross,” adj. and n.4, 2a; we might say “fat-headed” or “thick-headed”).

Not only does Henry view what Sparknotes calls “the common man” as servile and stupid, but he also has no real regard for the work this man does.  While the king has to keep watch all night, this “peasant”—just—has to work from sunrise to sunset until he dies:  “From rise to set sweats in the eye of Phoebus” and “follows so the ever-running year, / With profitable labor, to his grave” (270, 275).  His reward for this constant labor is that he “sleeps in Elysium” (272).  Because he works every single hour of the day, he sleeps well, and that sleep is the only pleasure he has.  Only someone who’s never worked that hard could think that the “peasant” working from sun up to sun down has it easy.  And deep down Henry must know that this life is a hard one, that of a “wretch,” and a “slave” who eats “distressful bread” (268)—bread earned through the distresses of labor.

These words reveal Henry’s tendency to flatter himself, rather than his true care for those below him.  He doesn’t care truly to understand what it’s like to be a commoner, but flatters himself that he is the commoners’ protector who allows them to have lives that, in the height of blind self-indulgence, Henry imagines are happier than that of a king!  All the king has going for him, Henry thinks, is “ceremony” (276).  In truth: people bowing to you is pretty good, and the king has wealth and power too.  By imagining how easy the “peasant” has it,” and how important he is to this peasant’s happiness, Henry praises himself and justifies his exalted position as king.

This self-flattery and self-justification in the name of the commoner fits more generally with Henry’s habit of complimenting those beneath him when it serves his purposes.  Henry charmingly courts Catherine, even though he’s really after a political marriage to the French king’s daughter, and is as happy to make jokes about her with the Duke of Burgundy as to be with her.  And, famously, Henry’s flatters himself and his men that they are fighting as a “band of brothers” (4.3.60).  But once the battle is over, the  dead commoners (or “peasants”?) do not become gentlemen, as Henry promised, but remain “none else of name” (4.8.105), having fought for Henry in a war that wins him the crown of France, and then having been forgotten.

Henry doesn’t act out of love, compassion or care.  He just invokes these values when it serves self-image or ambition.  Sparknotes is right that Henry does not obviously evidence a selfish commitment to pleasure and power.  One can imagine worse rulers, such as Saturninus in Titus Andronicus.  But though Henry (and often Shakespeare) wants us to, we should never forget that Henry is a king and acts like one.  He’s not our brother.