In the English history plays that are the subject of this chapter, the conjunction of love and erotic notions of service are severely attenuated: sexual service is now almost exclusively confined to the brothel. The relationship of companionship and service is both broadened and sharpened, however, especially in the context of warfare, rebellion, and the politics of state. This might appear to remove it from the ambit of the sonnets, but in the two parts of Henry IV, those poems' anxiety concerning the contaminating effects on nobility of its nonmagisterial contact with commoners is given a special place. The poet's charge that the nobly born young friend “dost common grow” is redoubled in the figure of Hall amongst the roisterers of Eastcheap, and especially in the troubled friendship between the old Vice Falstaff and his “sweet wag”, the Prince of Wales.

HENRY IV PARTS 1 AND 2

The role of performance also takes on a more subtle, less overtly meta-theatrical role in these plays. It is shifted to the possibilities and limitations available to masters and servants within the world of the play. In the figure of Falstaff the world itself becomes the medium of performance or play, as the fat knight mobilises the histrionic possibilities of war and tavern alike to evade the consistency upon which responsibility and accountability depend. The interaction of locus and platea becomes more flexible.