Mowbray departs with a moving farewell to his native land and language; the effect of his words is to suggest that love of the English earth and the English word goes deeper than dynastic difference. We do not hear similar patriotic sentiments in the mouth of the self-interested Bullingbrook; he does nothing to bring back the old England idealized in the deathbed speech of his father, John of Gaunt (whose name and whose England will also be remembered by Shallow).

In Shakespeare’s own time, those who suffered banishment because of ideological difference, but who claimed that they were nevertheless loyal to England, were predominantly Catholics. And this suggests another level to the allusion that binds Falstaff to the Duke of Norfolk. To an Elizabethan audience, the name of Norfolk—the only surviving dukedom in the land—was synonymous with overt or suspected Catholic sympathy. The old Catholic ways persisted in the country long after the official change of religion inaugurated by Henry VIII’s break from Rome. The Catholic liturgy’s integral relationship with the agricultural calendar and the cycles of human biology could not be shattered overnight. There may, then, be a sense in which Falstaff’s journey into deep England is also a journey into the old religion of Shakespeare’s father and maternal grandfather. One wonders if it is a coincidence that, in fleshing out the skeletal character of the prince’s riotous companion which he inherited from the old play of The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare retained and made much of his own father’s name, John. It is ironic that Falstaff’s original surname, Oldcastle, had to be changed because the character was regarded as an insult to the memory of the proto-Protestant Lollard of that name: “for Oldcastle died a martyr,” says the epilogue to Part II, “and this is not the man.”

Indeed, it is not the man, for Falstaff is if anything an embodiment of those ancient Catholic rhythms that were suppressed in the name of Reformation. Vestiges of Oldcastle litter the text: “Falstaff sweats to death” suggests a martyr burning on a bonfire, and “if I become not a cart as well as another man” could suggest a religious dissident on the way to the stake as well as a criminal being taken to the gallows. Protestants, especially in the extreme form of puritans, were traditionally lean; fat monks were symbolic of the corruptions of Catholicism. By making Sir John fat and not calling him Oldcastle, Shakespeare raises the specter of Catholic as opposed to Protestant martyrdoms. Falstaff is Malvolio’s opposite: he stands for cakes and ale, festival and holiday, all that was anathema to puritanism. At the beginning of Henry V, the Archbishop of Canterbury confirms that Prince Harry’s transformation was completed with the rejection of Falstaff: “Never came reformation in a flood, / With such a heady currance, scouring faults.” If there is a proto-Protestant or embryonic puritan in the plays, it is King Harry V, newly washed of his past, casting off his old companions, turning away England’s former self.

Even as he uses Hal for his own advancement, Falstaff is always a truer father than the cold and politic King Henry IV can ever be. The point is made with beautiful clarity by the contrast between Falstaff’s heated engagement in the scene in which he and Hal act out the prodigal prince’s forthcoming interview with his father and the king’s chilly detachment in the interview itself. The complexity and the pain of the end of Part II stem from the way in which, by casting himself as the prodigal son and coming home to his politic heritage, Hal tears into the heart of old England. According to Holinshed’s Chronicles, King Henry V left no friendship unrewarded. This cannot be said of Shakespeare’s version of history. “Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound,” says Falstaff immediately after he has been publicly denounced by his “sweet boy,” changing the subject in the way that people often do when they feel betrayed or bewildered. At this moment, the spectator who has attended carefully to both parts may remember an earlier exchange when Hal asks: “Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?,” and Falstaff replies: “A thousand pound, Hal? A million. Thy love is worth a million: thou ow’st me thy love.”

In the epilogue, Shakespeare promises that “our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France.” Audience members attending Henry V on the basis of this promise might be justified in asking for their money back: we do not see Sir John Falstaff in the Agincourt play. His presence would raise too many awkward questions of the “reformed” king. We only hear—most comically and at the same time most movingly—of his death. The king has broken his heart.

* Since the play is a continuation of Henry IV Part I, some sections of this introduction overlap with that to the companion edition of Part I. Readers who are unfamiliar with Part Imay wish to begin by reading the synopsis of its plot.

ABOUT THE TEXT

Shakespeare endures through history. He illuminates later times as well as his own. He helps us to understand the human condition. But he cannot do this without a good text of the plays. Without editions there would be no Shakespeare. That is why every twenty years or so throughout the last three centuries there has been a major new edition of his complete works.