Shakespeare’s Prince: A Lesson Plan for Contemplating Shape-Shifting & Authenticity in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1

“It is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case” — Machiavelli, The Prince

“The fallen Falstaff is what he is. Hal is what he is not”–Falstaff, in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1

“Machiavellian ideas were a prime ingredient in the Elizabethan theater, particularly for Marlowe and Shakespeare,” Hugh Grady writes in “Shakespeare’s links to Machiavelli and Montaigne: Constructing Intellectual Modernity in Early Modern Europe” (Comparative Literature, 2000). “Similarly, of course, Montaigne has long been discussed as a possible source for a number of Shakespeare’s ideas. … Shakespeare’s plays indeed display a multivalent reaction to both Montaignean and Machiavellian themes. In particular, Shakespeare’s plays go beyond the logic of The Prince to critique certain of its premises and to explore the cultural crisis of meaning that its logic creates” (3). To that end, to immerse students in Shakespearean, Montaignean, and Machiavellian themes, this lesson asks them to read this and other articles cited below which get at the “Machiavellian crisis” emerging in Renaissance Europe–from which both Shakespeare and Montaigne craft modern subjectivity (3). Shakespeare depicts “an orientation to multiple potential selves or identities, not merely the production of a unitary one: as a mental space critically distanced from, and not entirely defined by, circulating ideologies and discourses of institutions and power.” Grady states that “new historicists have been too Machiavelian and not Montaignean enough.” To that end, this lesson asks students to, in thinking about the Machiavelian themes/aspects in Henry IV Part 1, write in the spirit of Michele de Montaigne–the essay. The critical methodologies of this lesson–cultural studies and historicism–come together by practicing creative essay-writing thus cultivating self-awareness of subjectivity for students as they forge a more intimate understanding of the themes and modes of expression current at the time that Shakespeare created Prince Hal, Falstaff’s, and the complex relationship between a prince learning to interact with, and serve his people by staging a prodigal comeback.

Students will not be writing typical essays they are used to, in response to Hal’s shape-shifting from prodigal son to “sun”–a pun which he sets up in act 1, scene 2. They will be approaching questions of subjectivity, authenticity, and what it means to be a good prince/king as exemplified by the characters Prince Hal and Falstaff using “subjectivity as both a means of, and refuge from, Machiavellian power.” Two of Montaigne’s Machiavellian essays are, for Grady, “Whether the Governor of a Besieged Place Should Go Out to Parley” and “Parley Time is Dangerous (chapters 4 and 6 of book 1) (7); students will read these essays, and learn about the complicated and complicating genre of the essay, then use these as models for their own “conflicting opinions” and subjectivity regarding “the gap between political power and morality” which occurs in Machiavelli, Montaigne and Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1.

Self-doubt dominates the tone of Montaigne’s essays, the essayist frequently unserious and almost pathologically self-aware to the extent he appears rather to undermine himself than to preach (which sounds a lot like Falstaff). The looseness of the essays’ form radically rejects organization and procedure in a malleable, exploratory and speculative style (again, Falstaff). In embracing this form, students work in a similar vein as Shakespeare in his plays, like Hal, navigating moral ambiguity. This lesson is therefore ideal for the mid-level undergraduate students to assist them in shaking off certainty of their past friend, the 5-paragraph essay, and putting on the skeptical nature of the early essayist, of Shakespeare, and perhaps of Hal. The aims/expectations of this assignment are to tie in Shakespeare’s historical influences of Michel de Montaigne’s Essais and Machiavelli’s The Prince by employing the emerging genre of the essay that Montaigne created during Shakespeare’s time. This will further contextualize Shakespeare into his unique historical period while simultaneously allowing students a chance to practice the new genre that was emerging during the Renaissance to, like Shakespeare’s contemporary Montaigne, make sense of Machiavellian themes/concerns of how a Prince like Hal ought to act. In “Shakespeare’s Semiotics and the Problem of Falstaff,” Cameron Hunt McNabb (2016) posits that “the Henry IV plays evoke the plurivocity of language in order to who not only the multiplicity of possible interpretations but more importantly the location of those interpretations within the audience” (1). In this way, Shakespeare’s play operates similar to Montaigne’s essays. In their own essays, students can, for instance, accomplish what Falstaff could not: “Play out the play. I have much to say on behalf of that Falstaff” (479).

Overall goal/objective/theme: To tie in Shakespeare’s historical influences of Michel de Montaigne’s Essais and Machiavelli’s The Prince by employing the emerging genre of the essay that Montaigne created during Shakespeare’s time. This will further contextualize Shakespeare into his unique historical period while simultaneously allowing students a chance to practice the new genre that was emerging during the Renaissance to, like Shakespeare’s contemporary Montaigne, make sense of Machiavellian themes/concerns of how a Prince like Hal act.

Methodology: cultural studies, creative writing, historicism

What experience/knowledge do students already have? What is my strategy to accommodate all levels? (Audience): This lesson is designed for mid-level undergraduates who may or may not be English majors, who have studied Shakespeare in a survey course and/or in high school.

References:

• “Banish All the World: Falstaff’s Iconoclastic Threat to Kingship in 1 Henry IV”
• “The Changing Faces of Virtue: Plutarch, Machiavelli and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus”
• “Shakespeare’s Falstaff as Parody”
• “Performing repentance: (in)sincerity in prodigal son drama and the Henry IVs
• “Shakespeare’s Semiotics and the Problem of Falstaff”
• “Shakespeare’s Link to Machiavelli and Montaigne: Constructing Intellectual Modernity in Early Modern Europe”
• “The Prince’s Dog: Falstaff and the Perils of Speech-Previxivity”
• “The Essayification of Everything”
• Michel de Montaigne, Essays
• Machiavelli, The Prince