A Lesson from Prince Hal

Whenever I sit down with Shakepseare's Henry IV, I have to admit that Hal captivates me even more than Jack Falstaff does. For a while I wondered why that was. Hal, as I’ve mentioned before, is cold and calculating. From the first we know that he’s only using Falstaff—although, to Hal’s credit, he forgets that fact at times. His affection for the brilliant, fat, old jester is genuine, but that only makes his final rejection of Falstaff more devastating.

So what am I seeing in Hal? Hal’s a shrewd politician—far shrewder than his father Henry Bolingbroke. But I don’t particularly like politicians. And I certainly don’t trust them.

You can argue that once Hal gets the throne, he can’t be the sort of king he needs to be—he can’t be the king England needs—if Falstaff is still in his life. I’m sure that’s true. Jack Falstaff is far too warm and chaotic to suit Hal’s needs as a monarch. His jests and cowardice and harmless crimes might even seduce Hal away from the ruthlessness he needs to maintain as a ruler.

No doubt that’s why there’s a cruel desperation about Hal when he rejects Falstaff. He can’t even bear to let Falstaff get a word in edgewise. Hal can’t take the chance of falling for Jack in earnest—he can’t risk forgetting, once again, that he was only using Jack.

But those facts don’t endear Hal to me. So why am I so enamored of him?

The answer came to me when I tried to look at the characters from an author's point of view. I was wondering if Shakespeare identified with Jack Falstaff; but then I realized that he more likely identified with Hal. Not that Shakespeare, as a man, was as cold and ruthless as Hal—but as a writer he had to be.

As a writer, Shakespeare had to be cold enough, ruthless enough and cruel enough to reject one of his greatest creations. Shakespeare couldn’t have been the playwright he was if he hadn’t been prepared to do that.

I stand in awe of Shakespeare's ruthless streak--it's so easy to shelter a character. I had a terrible time of it when I tried to figure out what to do with Reuben, my first-person-voice in For Want of a Brother. I got so attached to him that I wanted to protect him from all harm! At the very least, saying goodbye to a character can lead an author to soul-searching ruminations (as my friend and fellow blogger Jim Cooney found out.)

It must have cost Shakespeare something to be so ruthless with his characters. After all, rejecting Falstaff cost Hal his sharp wit, his sense of fun and his boyish pranks. His crown didn’t come without a price. The ability to reject Falstaff is part of what crowns Shakespeare as the greatest author ever known—but I’ll bet he paid as dearly as Hal did, even if we don’t know what currency he used.

Someone once said that an author has to be prepared to murder his darlings. I don’t think I ever understood that lesson until Prince Hal taught it to me.