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In writing his history plays, Shakespeare was actually commenting on what he thought about the notion of kingship. Through his plays, he questions the divine right of kings, which the kings and the aristocracy used heavily in their favour to win the people's love. In Macbeth, King Richard II and King Henry IV part 1, Shakespeare shows us his opinion of kingship in general. Although the plays are written about individual kings, I think that Shakespeare used the plays as an opportunity to voice his opinion on kings and kingship in general. This was assisted by the fact that he was not prohibited by the true events, because it is well known that all of Shakespeare's plays were written purely for entertainment value, not as a historical record of what occurred. The main notion of kingship that Shakespeare attacks in Macbeth, King Richard II and King Henry IV, is the divine right of kings, where the kings claimed that they were God's counterpart on Earth, and a 'step up' in divinity from the other aristocrats and the common people.
In his plays, Shakespeare depicts the kings, and Hal, in King Henry IV, as people who were not, or at least did not act like the direct descendants of God. In Macbeth, he commits treason and murder, the two worst crimes of the day, and neither Duncan nor Macbeth were saved by God, who, according to the theory of the divine right of kings, should have saved Duncan and then Macbeth. When they were killed, they were both king, and therefore the right-hand man of God, the creator, who controls the entire world and who could have stopped them from being killed. In Richard II, Richard bankrupts the country with his blatant mismanagement and his excessive spending on his 'favourites', who are already rich aristocrats, while ignoring the common people who are living in poverty. Richard's behaviour leads to both the aristocracy and the common people disliking him. The aristocrats disliked him because he was bankrupting the country, which they did not like because they were proud to be English and wanted their country to dominate for many more years.
The common people disliked Richard because they were living in poverty while Richard was spending huge amounts of money on people who were already wealthy. What Richard did is not the sort of behaviour that is expected from God's representative on Earth, and Shakespeare makes this point quite clear to the reader. In King Henry IV, Prince Hal associates heavily and almost solely with the common thieves and drunks in the pubs and brothels of the city. This means that he is liked by the common people, but his behaviour, particularly the robbery which he is involved in, in Act 1, scene 1, is not what is expected from son of God's representative. According to the theory of the divine right of kings, Hal should have been almost as divine and 'perfect' as the king himself, but Shakespeare shows us that this was not the case and again questions the notion of the divine right of kings through Hal's actions.
Duncan listened to the people and was widely respected, whereas Macbeth ignored the people, and associated only with his noble friends. Macbeth thought that he was assured the kingship and so he thought that there was no need to listen or respect the common people in the least. It was because of the witches' prophecies that Macbeth became king, and it was the prophesies which brought his downfall - Macbeth felt assured that he would be safe, because he was told by the witches' apparitions to: "Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn | The power of man, for none of woman born | Shall harm Macbeth." However, Macbeth has been tricked by the witches because MacDuff is able to kill him because he was "From his mother's womb | Untimely risk'd" Because of the witches' prophecies, Macbeth thought that he was assured the power of king, knowing that the only way he could be brought down was when "Great Birnam wood [comes to] to high Dunsinane hill", something Macbeth was sure could not ever happen. He was also told that "none of woman born | Shall harm Macbeth", and Macbeth did not think that it was possible that anyone could not have been born from a woman.
Macbeth was told all these things by apparitions which the witches had shown him, and he believed them, probably because it was what he wanted to believe - that he could not be harmed by anyone, that his demise would never happen. Macbeth was so sure that he could not be defeated that he totally disregarded the people, killing people at a whim, and he did not ever think that they would go against him and eventually overthrow and kill him. In Richard II, Richard totally ignores the common people, to an even larger extent than Macbeth did. The people came to hate Richard because he paid no attention at all to them, did nothing to support them and then bankrupted the entire country by spending money on his 'favourites', who were already rich aristocrats. The people resented this, and I think that Richard's total disregard for the common people allowed Bolingbroke to step in and usurp the crown without any public outrage whatsoever. King Henry (Bolingbroke) was admired and respected by the people, because he took the country out of the pure mismanagement of Richard and back into the profitable country it once was.
It is clear that Henry respected the common people and understood they did in fact matter, because it was them that would implement change if they were not happy with what the current king was doing. The way he bowed to the oyster wench when he was being exiled, shows that Bolingbroke understood that in order to become king he would have to have the support of the common people, and it was this realisation that allowed him to come to power with such ease.
The main contrast between Hal and all the other major characters in Macbeth, King Richard II and King Henry IV part 1, is that Hal is not only associates with the commoners, he spends all his time in the pubs and brothels, talking, joking and drinking with the low-lives. Hal was loved and respected by the common people because of his association with Falstaff and the other low-lives. Even when he 'converted' and became everything his father had always wanted him to be, the common people still liked him because they had known him personally, and still thought that deep down he was really like them. Although it may seem that Hal was the one character that was based on what Shakespeare considered to be a good king, I think that Hal really represents the other extreme of kingship - while Macbeth and Richard disregarded the common people, Hal was one of the common people. King Henry fits right into the middle and I think would, by Shakespeare's standards be a perfect king, if only his claim to the throne could not be questioned, particularly the murder of Richard and the "voyage to the Holy Land | to wash this blood from my guilty hand", which he still hadn't done in the opening scenes of King Henry IV, about a year later. Much of the things that the kings in the plays do may not be an altogether true representation of what they, or even the kings of Shakespeare's day were like.
Most of what Shakespeare comments on is his personal opinion - it is he that thinks the kings mistreated and disregarded the common people and he that did not believe in the divine right of kings. It is also important to remember that all of Shakespeare's plays, even the historical ones were above all, written to be entertaining and to impress the Elizabethan audience that they were aimed for. Shakespeare did not write the plays as historical references, but instead as interesting and exciting plays that would make for good, entertaining theatre.
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