9
9). An exception, however, is the Chief Justice, who had been the dogged prosecutor of Falstaff
and his Eastcheap gang of thieves, and even put the prince in jail on one occasion. In this scene,
the top nobility express deep fears about impending disorder in the realm on account of the poor
rule they expect from Henry, and the presumed fall of the Chief Justice is - somewhat ironically -
thought to be a harbinger of things to come. Henry initially heightens the mood by chastising
him for his audacity in presuming the prince to be under his jurisdiction. The Chief Justice
unflinchingly replies with an ode to the inviolability of the law, and Henry immediately assures
him that his influence will only increase under the new regime. The centrality of this to his
public transformation is confirmed when immediately after he declares:
And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you;
My father is gone wild into his grave,
For in his tomb lie my affections;
And with his spirit sadly I survive,
To mock the expectation of the world,
To frustrate prophecies and to raze out
Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down
After my seeming. The tide of blood in me
Hath proudly flow’d in vanity till now:
Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea,
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods
And flow henceforth in formal majesty. (2H4 5.2.123-33)
We should note the judicious mix of supernatural language that follows upon his making
manifest that henceforth there will be a stable legal order. Such an order is the bedrock of
commercialism and the best safeguard against oppression of the people insofar as it takes away
any extra-legal privilege from the nobility; now all princes are subject to the law. This mix of
the high and the low, or the noble and good, is a trademark of Shakespeare’s Henry.
3
3
Other signs of Henry’s republicanizing innovations to the legal system come at 2.240-1, where as part of his ruse
for the traitors he frees a soldier “That railed against our person.” Combined with the stronger example of letting
Williams go for challenging him when in disguise - despite Fluellen’s appeal to “martial law,” (4.8.45) –
Shakespeare is clearly pointing to an era of greater social freedom for the lower classes as a result of greater legal
equality – something the historical Henry was indeed noted for introducing.
Convention