University of Bucharest Review Vol. X, no. 2, 2008 130 Oana-Alis Popescu University of Bucharest HENRY V: THE MACHIAVELLIAN PRODUCTION OF AN IDEAL KING Keywords: Honour. Identity. Justness (of war). Legitimizing power. Machiavellian politics. Obedience (to the king). Providential power. Realpolitik. Role-playing. Self-representation. Violence. Abstract:. The present paper aims to analyse the Machiavellian power strategy that Prince Hal, the new King Henry V, develops in Henry V in order to construct a legitimate self-image. We shall argue that Hal manages to become, by means of an extremely calculated technology of self-representation, the successful Machiavellian producer of his own hero-image. Shakespeare’s play Henry IV ends with Prince Hal’s cruel rejection of Falstaff, an act that has the function of rendering evident to the others Hal’s complete and completed reformation. His juggling of identities and role-playing are nevertheless not brought to an end by his reformation. Actually, he is only shedding off one mask, that of the prodigal son, in order to put on another, that of “the ideal Christian ruler”, the king who will redeem England. The first step in fulfilling this new role consists in choosing a new father and a new companion in the Lord Chief Justice, who embodies loyalty, justice and order, the antithesis to both his real father and to Falstaff. Having perfected his education in Machiavellian politics, Hal is now ready to develop a more complex and subtler power strategy based, however, on the same Machiavellian precepts. The present paper aims to analyse this new strategy which consists in the construction of a legitimate self-image, in evading the responsibility for any controversial decisions or violent acts. This plan is remarkably applied in Henry V, a play in which, according to critic Hugh Grady, Hal, the new King Henry V, manages to become, by means of an extremely calculated technology of self-representation the successful Machiavellian producer of his own hero-image. (Grady 217) A “Backstage” Machiavellian Plan Henry IV ends with the words of Hal’s younger brother, Prince John of Lancaster, who forecasts the main event that is going to take place in the following play, Henry V, namely war with France: I will lay odds, that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords and native fire As far as France. I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleas’d the king. Come, will you hence? (5.5. 106-110) After a chorus that predicts the approaching conflict, Henry V opens with a conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely that takes war for granted, although Canterbury is cautiously using more ambiguous words : “causes now in hand…as touching France.” (1.2.78, 80) What the King’s brother, the Chorus, and two Bishops agree in foreseeing is certainly coming. Following his father’s advice to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels, Henry is determined from the very beginning to attack France, a decision based on a Machiavellian understanding of the supremacy of