Faulconbridge is an admirable embodiment of the patriotic sentiment in its most attractive guise. He is a manly soldier, blunt in speech, contemning subterfuge, chafing against the dictates of political expediency, and believing that quarrels between nations which cannot be accommodated without loss of self-respect on the one side or the other, had better be fought out in resolute and honourable war. He is the sworn foe of the bully or the braggart. Cruelty is hateful to him. The patriotic instinct nurtures in him a warm and generous humanity. His faith in the future of his nation depends on the confident hope that she will be true to herself, to her traditions, to her responsibilities, to the great virtues; that she will be at once courageous and magnanimous:—
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.
Faulconbridge's patriotism is a vivacious spur to good endeavour in every relation of life.
Henry V. is drawn by Shakespeare at fuller length than Faulconbridge. His character is cast in a larger mould. But his patriotism is of the same spirited, wholesome type. Though Henry is a born soldier, he discourages insolent aggression or reckless displays of prowess in fight. With greater emphasis than his archbishops and bishops he insists that his country's sword should not be unsheathed except at the bidding of right and conscience. At the same time, he is terrible in resolution when the time comes for striking blows. War, when it is once invoked, must be pursued with all possible force and fury:—
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility.
But when the blast of war blows in his ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.[35]
But although Henry's patriotic instinct can drive him into battle, it keeps him faithful there to the paths of humanity. Always alive to the horrors of war, he sternly forbids looting or even the use of insulting language to the enemy. It is only when a defeated enemy declines to acknowledge the obvious ruin of his fortunes that a sane and practical patriotism defends resort on the part of the conqueror to the grimmest measure of severity. The healthy instinct stiffens the grip on the justly won fruits of victory. As soon as Henry V. sees that the French wilfully deny the plain fact of their overthrow, he is moved, quite consistently, to exclaim:—
What is it then to me if impious war,
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats,
Enlinked to waste and desolation?
The context makes it clear that there is no confusion here between the patriotic instinct and mere bellicose ecstasy.
The confusion of patriotism with militant aggressiveness is as familiar to the Shakespearean drama as to the external world; but it is always exhibited by Shakespeare in its proper colours. The Shakespearean "mob," unwashed in mind and body, habitually yields to it, and justifies itself by a speciousness of argument, against which a clean vision rebels. The so-called patriotism which seeks expression in war for its own sake is alone intelligible to Shakespeare's pavement orators. "Let me have war, say I," exclaims the professedly patriotic spokesman of the ill-conditioned proletariat in Coriolanus; "it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible.... Ay, and it makes men hate one another." For this distressing result of peace, the reason is given that in times of peace men have less need of one another than in seasons of war, and the crude argument closes with the cry: "The wars for my money." There is irony in this suggestion of the mercantile value of war on the lips of a spokesman of paupers. It is solely the impulsive mindless patriot who strains after mere military glory.
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
(I. Henry VI., I., ii., 133-5.)