ABSTRACT
This chapter reconstructs the terrifying conditions for poorer commoners on the streets of London when this play was written, caught between famine, and potentially lethal government surveillance, figured in the drama by the theme of hostile eyes. Establishing the consonance between playhouse and alehouse, it traces alehouse anxiety over possible traitors, and demonstrates that it is Prince Henry who rounds on spectators in sudden betrayal, with deictic insult and threatfulness (“I will awhile uphold/The unyoked humour of your idleness. . . ”). In a systematic exposé of English state power, the play highlights, for commons audiences, the cultivation of popularity politics rendering regicide feasible, the contempt of the crown for the masses, and the enfeebling of military efficacy by corrupt gentry officers. As such, in an era of intrusive state surveillance, Shakespeare has appropriated the empowering privy gaze, the probing by “opposèd eyes,” for his fellow commoners.
