PERFORMING IDENTITY: HAL, A THEATRICAL MACHIAVELLIAN PRINCE
PERFORMING IDENTITY: HAL, A THEATRICAL MACHIAVELLIAN PRINCE

Summary/Abstract: Treating Part 1 and Part 2 of Henry IV as one single and united play, we intend to analyze in this paper the development of Prince Hal throughout the play as the exploration of what it takes to be an effective political leader in a Machiavellian world. The first part of the paper shall deal with the identification of the continuities and moreover the ruptures that occurred in the sixteenth century between Machiavelli’s ideas and the humanist tradition of moral and political thought. Considered to be a threshold marking the emergence of the early modern political age, Machiavelli's work, "Il Principe" represented an important shift in the discourse of temporality and politics in early modern Europe. By the exploration of such themes as instrumental reason, the logic of power and by his verdict that theological and moral imperatives are insufficiently attuned to the rhetorical concerns of effective political action, Machiavelli departs from the humanist tradition of moral and political thought, provoking an intellectual crisis, a disruption in the Renaissance understanding of power, politics and ethics. Subsequently, starting from Machiavelli’s comments upon the crucial importance of appearances in politics we shall argue that Hal acts from the very beginning as a calculating Machiavel who, by devising a cunning plan based on constant disguise, role-playing and elusiveness of his “true self”, performs identity in order to attain in the end his power-oriented goals.

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