Hotspur and Harry: Two Sharks in a Pool

Hotspur and Harry: Two Sharks in a Pool#

Johannes Siedersleben, Oxford, June 2022

At the time of Shakespeare’s kings, England, Wales, Scotland, and France were each divided into competing camps, ruled by powerful clans, no one trusting each other, families and individuals forming different coalitions within and across boundaries, and quick to rebel against whoever happened to be king. Ireland was an English nearshore colony, to be occasionally reined in. Disloyalty and inequity were frequent, few if any rules of the game observed, unimaginable cruelties exerted. Each family, each individual acted for their own profit. (Has anything changed? the rash reader could ask.)

Two stand out in that pool of sharks: Henry V, the most successful of the Lancastrian kings, born in 1386, called Henry of Monmouth, Harry, or Hal before his accession, and Henry Percy, born in 1364, the eldest son of Henry Percy, 1st earl of Northumberland, dubbed Hotspur for his frightening performance on the battlefield. They stand out for their courage, their military prowess, the charisma they must have had, and their political and military success. There were others in the same league, such as the Black Prince, father of Richard II, or Lord Talbot, antagonist of Joan of Arc. But let us focus on Hotspur and Harry.

Fact and Fiction#

Prior to that we have to make clear what we are dealing with: There are the historical facts we know today, over 600 years later. Then, there are the facts known to Shakespeare who drew much of his wisdom from the Tudor chroniclers Hall and Holinshed. There are, finally, the plays Shakespeare kneaded from the material available. In Shakespeare, facts can be distorted, squeezed, or mixed with fiction, at times for lack of knowledge, at others for dramaturgic purposes: In [Henry IV], Hotspur and Harry are of the same age, while in reality the former could have been the latter’s father. Hotspur was indeed killed at Shrewsbury, but not at Harry’s hand. Harry’s riotous youth, as presented in [Henry IV], is probably a myth. As to the feelings and fears of nobles and commoners, for which historical evidence is scarce, we are free to accept or reject Shakespeare’s presentation. Whatever its accuracy, it is ingeniously invented.

Hotspur#

Hotspur amassed diplomatic and military honours at a young age: he was sent to Cyprus (1393), appointed Lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine (1394), and took part in Richard II’s expedition to Ireland (1395). At Homildon Hill in Northumberland (1402), Hotspur and his father, the 1st earl of Northumberland, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Scots under Archibald Douglas, who was captured with many of his nobles. Hotspur died in the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403), five years before his father’s death in the Battle of Bramham Moor (1408), which ended the Percy Rebellion. The 2nd earl of Northumberland, Hotspur’s son, was slain in the First Battle of St. Albans (1455), the 3rd in the Battle of Towton (1461), the 4th during the Yorkshire rebellion (1489), and the 5th was the first to die in his bed (1527). The fate of the Percys was not uncommon: the first Stuart to pass away peacefully was James V, the father of Mary Stuart (1542). Being king or noble tended to be less deadly after 1500 or so, statistically at least. But I am digressing.

Hotspur appears in seven scenes of [1 Henry IV]: He refuses to render his prisoner Archibald Douglas and to waive the expected ransom [1.3], decides to go to war against the King [2.4], plots with Glendower, Worcester, and Mortimer how to divide England among themselves after the victory. This latter meeting happened historically in February 1405, only after Shrewsbury. Hotspur and his fellow rebels prepare for the battle in their base camp [4.1, 4.3], and in [5.1], we watch the final showdown with Hotspur killed and Harry victorious.

Harry and Hotspur are frequently compared to each other, not always to Harry’s pleasure. Harry famously mocks his rival: I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the north, that kills me some six or seven Scots at breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, ‘Fie upon this quiet life, I want work’. [1 Henry IV, 2.4, 99]. He not only mocks him but feels superior: Percy is but my factor, good my lord, to engross up glorious deeds on my behalf [1 Henry IV, 3.2, 147 – 148]. In the famous dressing-down scene [1 Henry IV, 3.2], Henry IV presents a different view: While considering his wayward son the punishment for his own misdeeds, he is most impressed by Hotspur’s feats: He does fill fields with harness in the realm, turns head against the lion’s armèd jaws, and, being no more in debt to years than thou, leads ancient lords and revered bishops on to bloody battles and to bruising arms [101 –105]. Harry, who tries twice in vain to interrupt his father’s diatribe [18 – 28, 91 – 92], finally manages to convince him of his conversion.

Harry#

When Henry Bolingbroke, Harry’s father, was exiled (1398), Harry became King Richard’s page and accompanied him in 1399 on the King’s last journey to Ireland which opened the way for Bolingbroke’s usurpation (1399). In 1403, Harry, at only sixteen, led his own army into Wales against Glendower, then joined his father and commanded the left wing of the Royal Army in the Battle of Shrewsbury. He was almost killed by an arrow that struck him in the face and left him scarred for the rest of his life. The battle was won, but at a price. It was carnage; many did not know which side had won. Despite his military competence, Harry was discharged from the Council in 1411. According to Dan Jones, this was due to tensions between the ailing King (he died in 1413) and the heir, burning for action. The reference in [1 Henry IV, 3.2, 32 – 33] is unhistorical, because Henry IV presented his accusations while Hotspur was still alive, that is before 1403.

On his accession (1413), Henry V wanted to unite England, assert the pending claim to the French throne, and go on a crusade. He was successful in the first two aims but failed in the third. Henry quelled the Southampton plot, immediately before leaving for Harfleur. He embarked on a war with France in 1415, resulting in the victory at Agincourt and the almost unconditional French surrender: The treaty of Troyes recognized Henry as heir apparent to the French throne. In 1420, Henry married Charles’s daughter Catherine of Valois. But Henry died in 1422, bequeathing his infant son an empire too large and heterogeneous to be governed by a single king, let alone a weak one like Henry VI.

Shakespeare tells us in [1 Henry IV, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4] that Harry spent a great deal of time in the taverns of Eastcheap, together with his cronies Falstaff, Poins, Bardolph and others. Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can call them all by their Cristian names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis. … And when I am king of England, I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap. [1 Henry IV, 2.4, 10] But Harry’s record of involvement in war and politics disproves Shakespeare’s account of his lewd behaviour. In his famous soliloquy (I know you all, [1 Henry IV, 1.2 170]), he gives an odd explanation of his strange behaviour: I’ll so offend to make offense a skill, redeeming time when men least think I will. As [Sutherland & Watts, p. 120] point out, first to defile oneself with pitch is an odd way of making eventual cleanliness seem impressive. But Harry can be cold and inexorable: He breaks with the past on his accession and severs the links to his former friends. At the Battle of Agincourt, he has his former companion Bardolph hanged for looting: We would have all these offenders so cut off [Henry V, 3.6 96].

Hotspur and Harry#

Hotspur died in battle at 39, after having won several wars against the Scots, but before he could rise to more than local importance. Shakespeare tells us little about his feelings. Hotspur comes across as a bit of a caricature, the prototype of the frightening, furious, awe-inspiring medieval warrior devoid of long-term, strategic thinking. Had he won at Shrewsbury, he might have become king, a different Henry V, as Henry IV alludes to when comparing his own rivalry with Richard to that of Hotspur with Harry: As thou art to this hour was Richard then when I from France set foot at. [1 Henry IV, 3.2, 94 – 95]. Would he have been as successful as Harry? I doubt it.

Harry died in his bed at 36, after having quelled two rebellions (the Lollards and the Southampton Plot), united England and subdued most of France. He had risen to European importance. As a king and, after all, an ordinary mortal, he was fraught with qualms: his dubious claim to the English throne given his father’s usurpation, his even more dubious claim to the French throne given the equivocal Salic law, his envy of commoners, his rights and responsibility as a military commander, his contrition for misdeeds in war and peace, his desire for absolution by means of a crusade – these were Henry V’s trials and tribulations which, if Shakespeare is right, tormented him throughout his career, but that is another story, told in [Henry V].