Question for discussion: is Captain Fluellen a jerk or what in Henry V?
spinoza1111
Groundling
On Apr 11, 7:06 pm, "spinoza1111" <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Says it all. Let's here it from you!
Alright, Spinz, I'll bite. How, in your eyes, is Fluellen a jerk? Do
you hold Williams in equal contempt? After all, both have voted with
their feet (and arms). Leaving aside Hank Cinq for the moment, of the
two, who is the greater hypocrite? Who stinketh the most?
Joe Egert
spinoza1111 (with his parole officer)
Fluellen is a jerk because when we meet him, he is disobeying an order
from his commanding officer (the Duke of Gloucester) that is conveyed
by Captain Gower:
GOWER
Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the
mines; the Duke of Gloucester would speak with you.
FLUELLEN
To the mines! tell you the duke, it is not so good
to come to the mines; for, look you, the mines is
not according to the disciplines of the war: the
concavities of it is not sufficient; for, look you,
the athversary, you may discuss unto the duke, look
you, is digt himself four yard under the
countermines: by Cheshu, I think a' will plough up
all, if there is not better directions.
Instead of being the good soldier that he is thought to be my many
critics, and is re-presented in the warmongering Branagh version of
the play issued in 1990 during the run-up to the first assault on
Iraq, Fluellen remains "in the rear with the gear" to tease and bully
the Irish captain MacMorris in a racist fashion, because FLUELLEN IS
AFRAID that the mines will collapse on him.
Where do we find this "good soldier" at Agincourt? Apparently, in the
rear with the gear, since it appears to be Fluellen who conveniently
and in the van discovers that French knights, who have "cowardly run
from the battle" (like Fluellen himself?) have "killed the poys and
the luggage".
SCENE VII. Another part of the field.
Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER
FLUELLEN
Kill the poys and the luggage! 'tis expressly
against the law of arms: 'tis as arrant a piece of
knavery, mark you now, as can be offer't; in your
conscience, now, is it not?
GOWER
'Tis certain there's not a boy left alive; and the
cowardly rascals that ran from the battle ha' done
this slaughter: besides, they have burned and
carried away all that was in the king's tent;
wherefore the king, most worthily, hath caused every
soldier to cut his prisoner's throat. O, 'tis a
gallant king!
Pistol is Fluellen's nemesis, and a former drinking buddy of Prince
Hal. The warmongering Branagh film carefully encodes Pistol and his
friends as "holdovers from the Sixties": they are obviously a bunch of
hippies whose crime is that they wish to enjoy life ("for lambkins, we
shall live"). They are Sad Sacks who haven't got the word that they
need to become names on a wall for tourists to weep hyprocritical and
crocodilian tears over on holiday.
Pistol initially befriends Fluellen, enough to appeal to the higher
ranked man for clemency for Bardolph after Bardolph loots a church:
although Henry is engaging in a smash and grab, this is not to be
interpreted as "universal license" as seen in the "Sixties".
But aside from being a secret slacker and a coward, Fluellen is a cold
little bastard, since he refuses Pistol's request that he do something
that would cost him nothing:
PISTOL
Fortune is Bardolph's foe, and frowns on him;
For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must a' be:
A damned death!
Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free
And let not hemp his wind-pipe suffocate:
But Exeter hath given the doom of death
For pax of little price.
Therefore, go speak: the duke will hear thy voice:
And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut
With edge of penny cord and vile reproach:
Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.
FLUELLEN
Aunchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.
PISTOL
Why then, rejoice therefore.
FLUELLEN
Certainly, aunchient, it is not a thing to rejoice
at: for if, look you, he were my brother, I would
desire the duke to use his good pleasure, and put
him to execution; for discipline ought to be used.
But where is Pistol at Agincourt? Surprisingly, Pistol, and not
Fluellen, has marched to the sound of the guns and met the enemy:
PISTOL
Yield, cur!
French Soldier
Je pense que vous etes gentilhomme de bonne qualite.
PISTOL
Qualtitie calmie custure me! Art thou a gentleman?
what is thy name? discuss.
In other words, Pistol is like the United States Marines, the "jar
heads", who took Faluja twice and who are dying as I write. Like
Pistol, they were in many cases "losers" and "fuckups" in an America
of sniffy maiden aunts and God wallopers, who apprehended reality in
ways unsupported by the Scholastic Aptitude test and who joined in
order to avoid early homelessness and death. Many of them try to
articulate large, if only human, thoughts and in so doing mispronounce
and misuse big words. Lambkins, they want to live, and engage in
schemes of "Africa and golden joys". They don't have the smarts, nor
does the Marine Corps have the "logistical tail" to set up non com
officer's clubs in the rear with the gear where they can play racist
games and disobey orders. A gun is thrown into their hands, and they
(and NOT President Bush, and NOT Paul Wolfowitz) are marched into a
hell, where they say, yield, cur.
Of course, Branagh eliminated the above scene from his Fascist film.
Now, if you don't know how different a man Williams is vis a vis
Fluellen, you need to reread the play. Williams isn't a cold little
bastard. He speaks Truth to Power:
WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.
But this irritates the disguised Henry, who despite his "man of the
people" pretense is blind to the corruption and infighting between his
noncoms Gower, Fluellen, Jamy and MacMorris, who like a modern CEO
makes snap judgements ("though it be out of fashion, there is much
care and valor in this man" after five seconds of observation), and
who makes the fatal Lancastrian error, that his son makes, of thinking
himself sanctified and legitimate in an absolute way.
He risks Williams' life in revenge in scenes that don't appear in
either the patriotic Olivier film version or in the fascistic Branagh
version, where he gives the glove of the dead Alencon to Fluellen to
see Williams confront Fluellen and, hopefully, get killed...for
speaking truth to power.
In the same way Oliver Stone shows the moral reversals of unjust war
in Platoon, where the good, hard charging, dutiful and above all
compassionate sergeant is abandoned by the US helicopters while the
"bad" sergeant survives until he's so disgusted with himself that he
lets Charlie Sheen kill him, Shakespeare is showing the gradual
corruption of a bunch of heroes, a corruption that started when the
chicken hawk Bishop of Ely and the chicken hawk Archbishop of
Canterbury, men who won't have to fight, persuade Henry to violate an
international order that obtained even in the Middle Ages.
Fluellen is a contemptible, pedantic, lower middle class little man of
the very sort who is attracted to a war but in that war, immediately
on making noncom rank, acquires for himself a sweet little deal in the
rear with the gear. Henry is no better.
You know, the French have their own story TO THIS DAY of the Hundred
Year's war. Rodin's series The Burghers of Calais, examples of which
are in the Art Institute of Chicago and on the Stanford campus (and
which were in the World Trade Center, of all places, to be destroyed
on Sep 11) to memorialize Edward III's war criminality during the
first phase of the Hundred Years War. And, of course, Joan of Arc is
repeatedly celebrated in French art.
Branagh's version is fascistic but excellent in the way of Triumph of
the Will: for an explanation of this paradox, cf. Susan Sontag's essay
"Fascinating Fascism". Branagh's film is full of men (in particular,
the Berserker Exeter) who sneer and snarl at life, and Branagh, like
Leni Riefenstahl, shall answer "at the latter day" for the way his
film was used as part of the denial of the peace dividend in the UK
and America, and the disaster of Iraq. Branagh violated Wilfred Owen's
terrible curse.
>
> Joe Egert
Groundling
"Now, if you don't know how different a man Williams is vis a vis
Fluellen, you need to reread the play. Williams isn't a cold little
bastard. He speaks Truth to Power..."
But, Spinz, does Williams speak Truth directly to Power, or only
because that Power is masked? Williams reminds me a bit of Hector in
T&C, who, after challenging the feudal ethos in argument, nonetheless
dutifully complies with it in bloody deed. Again, Spinz, hasn't
Williams, like Fluellen voted with his feet and arms? Who is the
greater hypocrite? Doesn't Williams shift his own responsibility to
the King, as King Henry does to God?
As for Pistol, let Shakespeare's BOY, disillusioned by Pistol's hollow
bravado, have the last word: "I did never know so full a voice issue
from so empty a heart." Is bloodless Pistol then the mirror of his
Christian king?
Joe Egert
spinoza1111 (with his parole officer)
On Apr 18, 3:53 am, Groundling <tre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Spinz writes:
>
> "Now, if you don't know how different a man Williams is vis a vis
> Fluellen, you need to reread the play. Williams isn't a cold little
> bastard. He speaks Truth to Power..."
>
> But, Spinz, does Williams speak Truth directly to Power, or only
> because that Power is masked? Williams reminds me a bit of Hector in
> T&C, who, after challenging the feudal ethos in argument, nonetheless
> dutifully complies with it in bloody deed. Again, Spinz, hasn't
This is what men at war do. Their obligation to the unit supersedes
their intellectual moral convictions as aired over the camp-fire or
MREs because they survive only as members of a cohesive military
strike force; as the "evil" sergeant says in Platoon, "when the
machine breaks down, we break down". Why do you suppose American
troops continue to fight although a near-majority think the war in
Iraq a folly that America is losing?
> Williams, like Fluellen voted with his feet and arms? Who is the
> greater hypocrite? Doesn't Williams shift his own responsibility to
> the King, as King Henry does to God?
Shakespeare appears here more aware of simple, if partial,
determination of behavior by social class than Americans or Britons,
corrupted by denial that started with Thatcher and Reagan.
It strains sense to say that Williams has the freedom Henry had to
deny battle at Agincourt. As Poor Bloody Infantry he had NO CHOICE but
to fight on the morrow.
To apply upper clawss standards to Williams and to find him wanting is
just absurd. He retained a quanta of moral choice, but had no choice
but to fight for his King, having taken the shilling.
Sure, had his superior officer commanded him to commit a war crime
(which Henry does after the killing of "the poys and the luggage",
ordering his men not to take prisoners) he would have to refuse by
modern standards but it is generally accepted that we can't use those
standards, can we, to judge men before the Nuremburg laws, when
Grotius' *jus sovereignis* (which is affirmed by Williams) applied,
and the men turned over a PART of their decisions to the sovereign.
Henry's utterly absurd reply is that the men remain morally
responsible in all their affairs even though he commands their
obedience in all things, and it is indefensible.
He's trying the American argument to the troop discontent at leaving
his family for Iraq for the third time: "you volunteered for this".
This is the PRETENSE that we're all factually as well as legally free
men whereas absent a draft, men like Pistol volunteer for service out
of economic need.
>
> As for Pistol, let Shakespeare's BOY, disillusioned by Pistol's hollow
> bravado, have the last word: "I did never know so full a voice issue
> from so empty a heart." Is bloodless Pistol then the mirror of his
> Christian king?
I don't know what it means to call Pistol bloodless. He is in fact
quite sanguine in the sense of being moved by his passions, and this
is made clear in his exchange, early in the play, with Corporal Nym
over the favors and property of Nell Quickly.
And I DON'T accept that Henry V is the moral yardstick in the play. He
is quite flawed. He starts a useless war because of his clouded title
to his throne (rather as Bush started a useless war in part to cover
up the failed 2000 election), he orders his men to take no prisoners,
and he practically rapes the daughter of the French king. There are in
fact no men in this play that can be used as mirrors of good conduct.
The knuckleheads Bardolph, Nym, Pistol and boy have all the venial
failings of men at their station including lechery, cowardice (which
can be beaten into audacity, as it is, apparently, at Harfleur given
Fluellen's early report of Pistol's bravery), drunkenness and
dishonesty (to England I'll steal and therefore I'll steal). The
noncoms are a backbiting and emotionally cold bunch except for
MacMorris, who is angry at the world over Henry II's conquest of "my
nation" and Jamy, who doesn't have any lines that tell us his
character. The toffs are either traitors as at Southhampton or yes-
men.
The Constable of France is the only decent chap in the lot.
>
> Joe Egert
Groundling
>Why do you suppose American
> troops continue to fight although a near-majority think the war in
> Iraq a folly that America is losing?
But, Spinz, doesn't the overwhelming majority of American forces
believe they are engaged in the noble enterprise of rebuilding a free
Iraq, after the long dark Baath Socialist night of Sadaam's brutal
Stalinist tyranny?
Spinz continues:
> It strains sense to say that Williams has the freedom Henry had to
> deny battle at Agincourt. As Poor Bloody Infantry he had NO CHOICE but
> to fight on the morrow.
>
> To apply upper clawss standards to Williams and to find him wanting is
> just absurd. He retained a quanta of moral choice, but had no choice
> but to fight for his King, having taken the shilling.
So Williams, you concede, was simply a good German, who refused to
flee to Canada?
Spinz again:
> Sure, had his superior officer commanded him to commit a war crime
> (which Henry does after the killing of "the poys and the luggage",
> ordering his men not to take prisoners) he would have to refuse by
> modern standards but it is generally accepted that we can't use those
> standards, can we, to judge men before the Nuremburg laws, when
> Grotius' *jus sovereignis* (which is affirmed by Williams) applied,
> and the men turned over a PART of their decisions to the sovereign.
But Spinz, wasn't Henry's aggression the original war crime? Didn't
Grotius himself qualify the "jus sovereignis", as did other theorists
of the period who justified tyrannicide? Isn't Williams' affirmation
merely an evasion of his own complicity? The simple peasant who, in
LEAR at the cost of his life, executes Cornwall (the Sadaam of the
period) might not comply.
Spinz again:
> Henry's utterly absurd reply is that the men remain morally
> responsible in all their affairs even though he commands their
> obedience in all things, and it is indefensible.
But Spinz, isn't Henry at least partially right in arguing for his
men's moral responsibility?
> > As for Pistol, let Shakespeare's BOY, disillusioned by Pistol's
hollow
> > bravado, have the last word: "I did never know so full a voice issue
> > from so empty a heart." Is bloodless Pistol then the mirror of his
> > Christian king?
Spinz again:
> And I DON'T accept that Henry V is the moral yardstick in the play. He
> is quite flawed. He starts a useless war because of his clouded title
> to his throne (rather as Bush started a useless war in part to cover
> up the failed 2000 election)...
More unproven agitprop from Spinz. Do you have a single shred of
evidence to support your calumny of Bush's motives other than dutiful
agitprop?
Spinz concludes:
> The knuckleheads Bardolph, Nym, Pistol and boy have all the venial
> failings of men at their station including lechery, cowardice (which
> can be beaten into audacity, as it is, apparently, at Harfleur given
> Fluellen's early report of Pistol's bravery), drunkenness and
> dishonesty (to England I'll steal and therefore I'll steal).
Here we are for the most part in accord, though one may question how
reliable was the "report" to Fluellen of Pistol's bravery. Was
Fluellen an eyewitness? The rest of this play argues against it, as it
does against Spinz' charge of Fluellen's cowardice. A hotheaded
pedant, yes, but no coward. Pistol, on the other hand, is all talk and
no walk. Yet, at an allegorical level, Pistol, strangely enough, may
be seen as a Jesus figure, his head wound a stigma, who, despite his
threats, injures no one and (like Lucio in MforM) genuinely seeks to
save another's life. Similarly, Bardolph's theft of the "pax" or "pyx"
may reflect on Welshman Henry's disruption of the "peace" and the
later Tudor theft of monastic wealth.
Joe Egert