The King, Part III: Mano-a-mano, for the Trump era [Media Notes 15]

I'd say the latter.

— Adam Roberts (@arrroberts) November 3, 2019

Once more unto the breach!

As it were.

As I pointed out in the first post in this series, The King: Netflix does Falstaff, Hal, and Henry V, the most obvious difference between this film and Shakespeare’s plays is the transformation of Falstaff from a good-hearted and enthusiastic carouser into a cynical warrior so that Harry/Hal/Henry could make him his chief warrior in the campaign against France. That of necessity deprives of us the famous rejection scene at the end of Henry IV, Part II. The point of that scene is to emphasize the difference between Harry as a private individual, which he was when gadding about with Falstaff, and Harry as the King, which he became upon his coronation. It was the King, a public person(a) who rejected Falstaff, not the private individual. That is, Shakespeare has laid before us the distinction between the state as a legal and organizational entity.

That distinction disappears in The King. Of, of course, it’s implicit, but only that. Michôd doesn’t want us to conceptualize it, to think about it, to ponder it. And that (mis)conception has effects that ripple throughout the play. Consider the first battle, the one that didn’t happen. The dying King Henry has decided that Harry is not fit to inherit the throne and has told him that his younger brother Thomas will inherit the throne. Thomas is appointed to lead the battle against the rebels. Before the battle can be joined, however, Harry steps forward, challenges Hotspur to one-on-one combat, and wins. The rebellion is over.

Was he acting in his own capacity or in his capacity as, as what, no-longer-heir-apparent? At that point Harry had no official capacity; he was simply a high-born knight. And yet he could not have settled the matter in one-on-one unless Hotspur took him as a representative of the king, and hence of the state. The distinction between private individual and head of state is thus thoroughly muddied and confused.

That’s not how it happened in Henry IV, Part I. Harry reconciles with his father before the battle and, in consequence, is given command. Thomas is nowhere to be seen. The battle is a tight one and in the end Harry does Kill Hotspur in one-on-one combat. But this is only and the end of a full battle, not instead of one. Moreover, upon seeing Hotspur’s corpse, Falstaff stabs it and claims the victory for himself. Harry lets him get away with it. That’s a very different turn of events, one worth more attention than I can give it here.

Let’s now fast-forward to the Battle of Agincourt. In Shakespeare (Henry V) it is a straight-up battle, English long bows against French armor, and hard fought. It goes rather differently in The King. Before the battle begins, Harry travels to the French camp and challenges the Dauphin to one-on-one combat, as he had earlier challenged Hotspur. The Dauphin refuses. And so the battle commences, with the English adopting a high-risk plan proposed by Falstaff. Falstaff is killed. Then, and only after the battle had been raging most of the day, does the Dauphin decide to take Harry up on his offer. He offers to fight Henry one-on-one. Exhausted though he must have been, he accepts the challenge, knowing that the Dauphin had not seen combat that day and so was rested. What happens? The Dauphin slips and gets mired in the mud. Harry stabs him to death.

As Harry is now Henry V, we can no longer score this as a merely personal victory. But that, nonetheless, is how Michôd has set it up. The Dauphin treated Henry with utter contempt in the pre-battle meeting. So when he challenged Harry it was a personal challenge in which he intended to squash this contemptible English man like the vermin he was. He wasn’t fighting as the embodiment of the French crown; he was fight out of personal pique. The state barely exists in The King, which seems merely to be about rich and powerful men testing their mettle against one another.

And then we get to the end. Harry had decided that he had to wage war only after an assassin had come forward and revealed himself. Why would the assassin do this? Who knows? But it was enough to tip Harry’s mind in favor of the urgings of his Chief Justice, William Gascoigne, and go to war. When it was all over he the King was talking with his new bride, he learns from her that no assassin had been sent from France. Harry confronts Gascoigne about this and Gascoigne admits, yes, it was a ruse, and he goes on to point out that, as a result, the country is now united and at peace. Nonetheless the king stabs him. End of story.

None of that, of course, was in Shakespeare. Shakespeare gave us a clear distinction between statecraft, on the one hand, and personal interaction and loyalty on the other. The Henriad allows for national triumph and reconciliation. The King recognizes no such distinction and has no room for triumph or reconciliation. Battles are won, but there is no triumph, only the weary slog of mighty men fighting. Donald Trump recognizes no distinction between his personal interests and those of the nation he heads. The King is thus a story for the Trump era.

* * * * *

Jeb has called my attention to these:

• Netflix's 'The King' is anti-French nonsense that flatters a war criminal, says director of Agincourt museum
• Henry V, Anachronism, and the History of International Law

In the first we find:

When asked about his interpretation of events at its London launch, Mr Michôd said: "Our version is very different to Shakespeare's and it is very much about a young man being consumed by the institutions of power. There are various version of Henry V basically about a heroic king invading a country. To us, this story needed to be more complicated than that one."

Ah, well yes, that explains a lot, doesn't it?