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Article Excerpt
Writers of historical drama in Shakespeare's time, as well as modern playwrights, are forced to make critical choices of what to include and what to omit from their sources, their traditions, and perceived audience expectations. (1) The theater's physical limitations of time and space require a condensation and alteration of personalities, places, and events. Because of the stage's requirements for compression, Shakespeare clearly had to select material that would fit into the time-and-space limitations of his theater. Often the kind of choices he made reflects designs of the material that are particular to him. In other words, what Shakespeare included and additionally what he excluded from sources indicate how he wanted his audience to absorb his plays.
Shakespeare calls attention to theatrical limitations with his Chorus in Henry V. To encompass the sweeping events of the famous military campaigns in France, Shakespeare produces a Chorus who provides an epic-like narrative to open the action of each act but who begins the play with an apology for the "imperfections" (Pro. 23) of the theater's "unworthy scaffold" (Pro. 10). In the rousing opening to Henry V, the Chorus supplicates the audience to transcend the theater's space, shape, and barrenness through imagination. Our thoughts are to deck the player kings, our mind's eye to see the proud hooves of verbal horses, and our imagination to suppose the theatrical walls are expanded into "two mighty monarchies" (Pro. 20). The audience is asked to conceptualize events that are not staged and to accept the narratives of passing time and distant places.
Henry V is Shakespeare's culminating play of Henry of Monmouth's development into a capable, self-assured, and responsible monarch; but some of the well-known stories of this Elizabethan heroic model receive scanty treatment or--like the gown-of-needles event examined in this paper--no reference at all. Examining what is omitted as well as what is chosen and realizing the import of such omissions can more fully illuminate the dramatist's vision.
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine an event from the histories that Shakespeare excluded in his three-play dramatic portrait of Henry of Monmouth. I call this the gown-of-needles event. A garment of that description lies at the heart of the historical record. The episode appears in the sixteenth-century histories and in the widely acknowledged Shakespearean source, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. (2) Both the historical accounts of the gown-of-needles event and the altered, non-historical version in The Famous Victories deserve a detailed examination and comparison. Second, because clothing, its meanings, and the fact of its choice account for much of the trilogy's substance, this paper discusses how apparel and the language of apparel affect our understanding of Henry of Monmouth. Clothing appears in the trilogy as actual garments worn or described, as metaphorical language, and as symbol. Most items in the wardrobe of the Elizabethan male--from yeoman to king--appear in the language of these three plays. The clothing associated with Henry of Monmouth operates as a consistent device that Shakespeare develops in order to present Henry not as the historical medieval king but as a humanist king representing the Erasmian model.
Shakespeare introduces us to Henry of Monmouth first as Prince Hal in 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV in alternating comic, familial, and military episodes. We follow his practical jokes, his disguises, his military prowess, and his filial reconciliations; eventually we observe the Prince donning the robes of majesty after his father's death. Finally, in Henry V, we witness the warrior king. While varying modes of dress and armor are associated throughout the trilogy with Henry of Monmouth, we neither see nor hear of the gown-of-needles that occurs prominently in the sixteenth-century histories of the medieval heir and that is melodramatically featured in Shakespeare's source, The Famous Victories. This omission of Shakespeare's is particularly fascinating since such a dramatic costume was, according to sixteenth century historians, worn by the Prince to repair a serious rift with his father in 1412; and the garment may well have been an expected accoutrement by Shakespeare's audience.
The gown-of-needles story comes to us from an early sixteenth-century biography whose author is known only as the Translator of Livius (3) in a work dated 1513, over ninety years after Henry's death in 1422 (Kingsford v-xx). The Translator's account provided an English version of Livius' Latin biography. The new English Life of Henry V (4) added material that purportedly came from an eyewitness, James Butler, the fourth Earl of Ormonde. The Translator apparently sought to present Henry of Monmouth--"the most puissant prince King Henry V"--to the young Henry VIII as an exemplum of "honour, fame, and victory" (Kingsford ix). Subsequently, the new biography became incorporated into histories written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. John Stow, for example, owned a copy of the Translator's biography and provided it to Holinshed, who includes the story in his account of Henry IV (Kingsford v). The Henry of Monmouth that is set down by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century historians maintained an active parliamentary and military presence during the reign of his father Henry IV. The rift these histories recount between the Prince and his father arose from a failed attempt to influence the ailing King to abdicate in favor of his son, and the Prince was forced to relinquish politically powerful positions (Wylie 89-90; Allmand 57-58). His subsequent response and exaggerated attire, according to Tudor historians, are intended to reaffirm his loyalty to the King (Kingsford xxvi). The story of this response contains engaging details and emphasizes the Prince's wisdom in regaining the King's trust.
In mid-summer or early fall of 1412, just months before the death of Henry IV in March 1413, the Prince succeeded in making peace with his very ill and suspicious father. Accompanied by a large number of supporters, the Prince came to court "apparelled in a gowne of blew satten, full of small oilet holes, at everie hole the needle hanging by a silke thred with which it was sewed. About his arme he ware an hounds collar set full of S S of gold ... (Holinshed 95). Alone with the King and a few of the King's trusted counselors, the Prince kneeled before his father and thus professed his loyalty:
Most redoubted and sovereigne lord and father, I am at this time come to your presence as your liege man, and as your naturall sonne.... And where I understand you have in suspicion my demeanour against your grace, you know verie well, that if I knew any man within this realme, of whome you should stand in feare, my duetie were to punish that person, thereby to remoove that greefe from your heart. Then how much more ought I to suffer death, to ease your grace of that greefe which you have of me, being your naturall sonne and liege man: and to that end I have this daie made my selfe readie by confession and receiving of the sacrament. And therefore I beseech you most redoubted lord and deare father, for the honour of God, to ease your heart of all such suspicion as you have of me, and to dispatch me heere before your knees, with this same dagger. (Holinshed 96)
Holinshed describes the Prince as then delivering his dagger to the King
in all humble reverence; adding further, that his life was not so deare to him, that he wished to live one daie with his displeasure, "and therefore in thus ridding me out of life, and your selfe from all suspicion, here in presence of these lords, and before God at the daie of generall judgement, I faithfullie protest clearlie to forgive you" (96).
The King was so moved that he "cast from him the dagger," embraced the Prince, and kissed him. Thus, Holinshed adds, the Prince "by his great wisedome [removed] the wrongfull suspicion" and was restored in the King's favor (96-97).
Holinshed follows the Translator in stating that the incident showed the Prince's "great wisedome" and emphasizes the Prince's reverential attitude throughout. The whole...
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