We are always looking for heroes. Often we find someone we admire, a political, religious, or cultural leader, only to be let down when we learn more about them. I have known some actual heroes and it gives me hope for the future. William Shakespeare helps us recognize a real hero by giving us an image of one in his Henry V. The Christian hero lives a sacrificial life for a community in service to a cause bigger than himself. Such men and women exist today and we can imitate them. If we do, amazing things, unlikely victories, are possible.
An alternative view of the hero . . .one much more contemporary . . . is found in The Ring Cycle. Wagner creates his own Henry V . . .his own ideal man in Siegfried: the boyish warrior, dragon slayer, and liberator of Brunhilde. Siegfried is also forceful and a winner, but he does not care for anything greater than himself. His heroic quest is to become Siegfried; the hero of the age.
Americans don’t like the racism or sexism explicit in Siegfried’s particular road to authenticity. We prefer “inclusion” as the pathway, but power will be used to push aside anyone who stands in the way of universal self-fulfillment. As Christian morality fades in the parts of the world that are dying off (look to birth rates), we will see the limits tested of what is acceptable for a person to be a hero.
For most of human history the hero was the person who denied himself for the sake of other people . . .the man who refused a seat on a lifeboat was a hero. Now a hero is anyone who is “brave enough” to defy previous conventions to fulfill his own desire to be happy.
Christianity gives the Prince, the future hero, a set of guidelines and demands he lives up to them. Moderns are like Siegfried, striving to be “authentic” and true to self. We want to be normal. Henry looked for the normal and we look for the special or unique. The great crime in Henry V was treason against the community which found expression in the body of the King. The greatest crime in our time is suppressing the desires of the individual and believing there is a normal.
William Shakespeare pictures the Christian hero in history through his play Henry V. The image is beautiful and complex and paints the Christian hero as we have known him from Wenceslaus to Henry.
The Christian hero is made, not born.
Read Henry IV Part 2 and you will see that for a variety of reasons, young Henry was . . . no good. He kept bad company that threatened to prevent his greatness, but Henry is redeemed. He knows his calling and never goes too far in vice. When the time comes to do his duty, his old companions in crime discover he has repented. To the worst of the group, the old rogue (lovable, but a rogue) Falstaff he says:
Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots.
A Christian hero grows great, he is not born great (unless the Son of God) and even Jesus: . . .grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
A Christian hero will be flawed.
From Shakespeare’s point of view, Henry V gets the big issue right: he asserts the noble English cause against the decadent French. We don’t have to agree with the politics Shakespeare assumes to see and admire the man he creates. Henry is brave, bold, and willing to suffer with his men. He wins a great victory against tremendous odds as a result and is humble in victory. He works to unite the crowns of France and England in his son and so bring peace to Western Europe.
Henry also has very bad moments in the play. His claim to the crown is tendentious, though France would be better off (the France of the play) with Henry in charge. He bends the laws of Christian warfare or threatens to do so (Harfleur). Henry is like Siegfried in that he is assertive, bold, and a winner. Unlike Siegfried, Henry is not winning for himself, but for a cause greater than self: England.
A Christian hero will be challenged and listen to criticism.
Forget the easy life. Christian heroes suffer and they experience pain. They understand the world is complicated by vice and error. Henry V prays before his great battle aware that he has the thrown of England due to his father’s rebellion against Richard II. He feels the burden of the blood of the English troops who will die the next day. He is tired, spent, and afraid. He says of his role as leader:
What infinite heart’s-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
A Christian hero leads by sacrifice and service.
Henry chooses to hide his identity so he can listen to criticism and candor from his lowliest troopers. He hears their love, but also receives the burden of their doubts and also the double burden of their trust. They lay responsibility for the war on him:
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.
Henry argues with them, but he also takes this seriously. No Christian leader is perfect or has inherited a perfect situation. The good guys are not perfect and the bad guys are bad, but not devils. It is a complicated world and the real Christian hero feels that burden. If you go to a church where a leader cannot express such self-doubt, you don’t go to a Christian church. After all, Jesus agonized in the Garden before the Cross!
A Christian hero has a band of brothers.
Henry is at his best when he goes out to meet with his men. In his famous speech to the troops before the battle, he says it best:
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
A Christian leader builds a band of brothers and sisters and this team becomes family. The unity of the cause of Christ “gentles the condition” of us all and makes even the common man royalty.
A Christian hero does not merely rescue the damsel to complete himself. He finds and marries an equal for the glory of God.
Henry finds his Katherine and the great hero is almost unmanned. She does not need saving and he can only win her by persuasion and not force. She has choices. Katherine is every bit his equal and together their union can end war and unite two Kingdoms. Sadly, like all good things in this life, love came to an end.
A Christian hero will die and his cause will be lost in this age.
Arthur, the greatest hero of Christian England, failed and Camelot fell. His own sins and the sins of his court brought down the better time Arthur and his band of brothers (the Knights of the Round table had created. Henry V died before his great plans could be achieved. His saintly son lacked the strength to tame unruly advisors and so glory departed:
This star of England: Fortune made his sword;
By which the world’s best garden be achieved,
And of it left his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown’d King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed. .
No leader is so great he can cheat death and decay. He must go, in the end, to Heaven there to heal him of the wounds of this world so that with Christ and his Holy Angels he can return and finally bring peace to earth.
Anybody can be heroic in Christendom.
One of the Houses in The Saint Constantine School is named after Saint Lucy. She achieved greatness as a young girl by refusing to say that Caesar was lord. She went from the fire to Paradise. She was no princess and was not born to greatness. She chose to follow Jesus and so He gave her glory, and honor, and power. Why? Because all glory, honor, and power are His and He loves to make his band of brothers and sisters great.
We can be heroes not by self-actualization, but by self-denial. A nation of Siegfried’s will face a twilight of all civilization and the destruction of beauty for hedonism. We cannot be heroic alone, but by elevating a community. We can gentle our condition if we fight for the Cross on this day and every day to come.
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William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero.
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