Angus Vine

‘A Trim Reckoning’: Accountability and Authority in 1 and 2 Henry IV

1 and 2 Henry IV are plays all about the construction, questioning and acceptance of authority—paternal authority, monarchical authority, divine authority. This chapter argues that central to their engagement with the idea of authority is a persistent rhetoric of financial reckoning and fiscal responsibility. From the bantering exchanges between Hal and Falstaff and the tavern scenes, in which debts slip from financial ones to spiritual ones and back again, and bar bills and accounts (correctly reckoned up and otherwise) are discovered and brought on stage, to Hal’s promise of vengeance on Hotspur in Act 3 Scene 2 of 1 Henry IV (‘I will call him to so strict account’) and the Lord Chief Justice’s order to Falstaff simultaneously to repent of his sins and repay his debts in 2 Henry IV, both plays are suffused with the language of business, payment, and accountability. Connecting this language with a broader discourse of reckoning, financial, but also metaphorical, that was emerging in early modern England, and was especially important to Protestant ideas of moral responsibility, this chapter reveals that authority in the two plays is ultimately constituted in being (or, at least, appearing to be) of good account: a notion that culminates and is crystallized in the playful discourse of credit and debit that runs through the epilogue to the second play. Furthermore, the chapter shows that just as Hal’s authority as a prince and ultimately as a king depends on him being able to call both himself and others to account, so Falstaff’s threat to authority is signalled by his repeated refusal to be called to account—in the Eastcheap tavern, in the eyes of the law, and even before God. For this reason, when in Act 3 Scene 2 of 2 Henry IV the newly mustered Feeble gamely asserts, ‘By my troth I care not, a man can die but once, we owe God a death’, and later that ‘he that dies this year is quit for the next’, he may be rehearsing familiar proverbs, but they are tags that in the world of the two plays are invested with considerable exemplary potential. In summary, the chapter shows that in 1 and 2 Henry IV Shakespeare invokes an emerging discourse of accountability, which is both spiritual and financial, metaphorical and actual, first to examine notions of personal and public responsibility, and then to explore what those notions mean for the constitution of political, and more particularly, monarchical authority.

The antiquary: John Aubrey’s historical scholarship, by Kelsey Jackson Williams, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, xiv + 191 pp., £60.00 (hardback), ISBN 978–0–19–878429–6

handed down to us. A discussion of the role of Launce’s dog Crab in the re-enactment of his master’s family parting (The Two Gentlemen of Verona 2.3), for instance, takes into account Theobald’s emendation to the Folio text (129). The assertion that Macbeth’s weird sisters are “natural, supernatural and unnatural at the same time” is similarly refined by the suggestion that their “decisively supernatural” elements are probably down to Middleton’s hand in the play (174). As a coherent whole, however, MacFaul’s book doesn’t quite come off. The broad strokes of the outward-looking introduction rest somewhat uneasily with the more claustrophobic chapters that follow. A more thorough mediation between these two levels of focus would lend its provocative arguments far greater force. As delicately spun as its individual chapter discussions may be, abrupt endings to the penultimate and final chapters also make it difficult for readers to keep sight of this bigger picture. Shakespeare and the natural world may disappoint those for whom presentism is an intrinsic condition of ecocriticism, but it usefully points the way for further fruitful labour at the intersection of ecocritical and religious discourse. The incisiveness of its close readings guarantees that Shakespeareans, and scholars of early modern literature more generally, have much to enjoy here.

The antiquary: John Aubrey’s historical scholarship

handed down to us. A discussion of the role of Launce’s dog Crab in the re-enactment of his master’s family parting (The Two Gentlemen of Verona 2.3), for instance, takes into account Theobald’s emendation to the Folio text (129). The assertion that Macbeth’s weird sisters are “natural, supernatural and unnatural at the same time” is similarly refined by the suggestion that their “decisively supernatural” elements are probably down to Middleton’s hand in the play (174). As a coherent whole, however, MacFaul’s book doesn’t quite come off. The broad strokes of the outward-looking introduction rest somewhat uneasily with the more claustrophobic chapters that follow. A more thorough mediation between these two levels of focus would lend its provocative arguments far greater force. As delicately spun as its individual chapter discussions may be, abrupt endings to the penultimate and final chapters also make it difficult for readers to keep sight of this bigger picture. Shakespeare and the natural world may disappoint those for whom presentism is an intrinsic condition of ecocriticism, but it usefully points the way for further fruitful labour at the intersection of ecocritical and religious discourse. The incisiveness of its close readings guarantees that Shakespeareans, and scholars of early modern literature more generally, have much to enjoy here.

Search and retrieval in seventeenth-century manuscripts: the case of Joseph Hall's miscellany

abstract:One of the challenges faced by compilers of early modern miscellanies was how to find material after it had been copied. In this essay, Angus Vine explores schemes for search and retrieval, from incipient indices to tipped-in texts, using as a case study the meticulously planned miscellany later owned by Joseph Hall. The original compiler of this manuscript collected a wide range of material, including theological texts, scientific and medical items, political reports and other news, and large amounts of verse. He devised a system of seven categories, dividing his manuscript into sections. The essay examines the compilers classificatory system, what actually happened when he and another scribe started to copy material, and what this says about how early modern miscellanies were used.