Being honorable, at least in death, is a hard calling, but not one that is contrary to jollification. In fact, there is no true jollity without honor.
I say this as one who must labor to restore honor. Having begun badly, I cannot hope to anything other than to end with more honor. To dishonor one’s people, family, or community is bad, worst of all for others, but also bad for self. The temptation is to despise honor and not strive, by God’s grace, to end well. If one cannot be Galahad, then why not be Mordred?
God forfend.
Prince Hal to King Henry: the Road that Should Not Be Taken
No less a Christian than Shakespeare (following the story of the Prodigal) suggests that one can begin poorly and end well: Prince Hal, wastrel, can become King Henry V (if one reads Henry V as a hero). Yet the story of this prodigal is complicated as it is studied. Prince Hal seems to think his misspent youth will make his virtues seem more glorious. He says of his vice:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at, By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. So, when this loose behavior I throw off And pay the debt I never promised, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes; And like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glittering o’er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill; Redeeming time when men think least I will.
This is morally odious, the excuse of a man who will continue to sin that his glory may abound when he repents. God forbid it! Prince Hal postures as a prodigal son sitting with swine in order that his reconciliation with his people as King may be more glorious. Who would expect that wretched prodigal to come home so gloriously?
Prince Hal will pay a high price for this strategy in the rebellion of his subjects, endless mental torment, and setbacks on the way to redemption. One cannot sit with swine without picking up stink.
Prince Hal chooses Sir John Falstaff as his companion in vice, but Hal’s using of Falstaff and eventual rejection of the man ennobled him. John Falstaff rejected is left with his few virtues: jollity, lack of hypocrisy. If Falstaff ends well, despite having lived badly, what Prince Hal meant for evil in his life has been turned to good. For King Henry, redemption will be harder and more brutal. Prince Hal wanted the pleasures of sin with heightened wages of righteousness, but this would not be. King Henry was a man of constant sorrow until true repentance was gained.
Falstaff would end better than he began, but meanwhile he voices the case for dishonor over honor.
Falstaff Argues for the Living Dog Over the Dead Lion
If Prince Hal hides his good qualities, Falstaff flaunts his evil nature. He is fun unless you are one of the many people he uses. He is a coward in battle, harming his command, and has few true friends. Falstaff is more fond of a good drink than a good friend. He is a good time unless one wishes goodness, truth, and beauty.
He lies endlessly, is a parasite on those who create, and betrays his friends whenever possible. This can be funny unless like an Elizabethan audience you laugh with Sir John instead of at him. Shakespeare, being great, gives him an effective argument, as effective as that any made, for a life without honor. Falstaff has betrayed his men and his cause in battle and so will live when better men will die. When he sees the dead body of one such honorable man, he does not mourn the waste of wicked war, but glories in his cowardice. Instead of attacking the evils of an unjust war, Falstaff attacks the few virtues found in it: honor and courage.
Prince Hal points out that Falstaff owes God a death, as all men do, but Falstaff replies:
FALSTAFF I would ’twere bed-time, Hal, and all well. PRINCE HENRY Why, thou owest God a death. [Exit PRINCE HENRY] FALSTAFF ‘Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. ‘Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.
Falstaff give us the “catechism” of the unbeliever. “Honor” is just a word, since the dead have nothing. This is, of course, nonsense if there is life after death, but Falstaff is too cowardly to face this issue. Life he has. Death can be avoided. The after Falstaff can pretend is nothing, because if there is a just God, Falstaff is doomed. He has lived a reprobate life and will get a coward’s reward. Men have gone to death because of his inept command, but Falstaff cares only to keep himself alive.
Falstaff, and perhaps many in the audience listening to Shakespeare’s words, do not consider the lesson of Hamlet’s ghost. The dead feel dishonor.
But isn’t Sir John jolly and likable?
He is jolly and that is good, but his jollifications go too far. He has made an idol of jollity and so has destroyed good times. A just man can laugh at him, but not with him: he is a figure of fun. To watch Falstaff is to laugh, to know him is to be harmed. Hal is mistaken to think he can escape unscathed, he does not. The men who died in his inept, cowardly command do not laugh with Sir John: his pragmatic dishonor has sent them to untimely death.
Against a figure like Falstaff is the jolly, gentleman (a Pickwick?) who can frolic without vice. The honorable man need not repent of his small jollification and can go to eternity confident in God. In Shakespeare, we are reminded of the jollification in Arden Forest (As You Like It). The evils of the court are rejected, the goods of nature and of nature’s God accepted. A good time is had by all good men.
Let us all ask God for help, raise a glass of sack to honor, and do our duty as best we can.
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