There’s a second within the sequence finale of Succession that has such eerie Shakespearean resonances, it took my breath away. The scene by which Kendall sits down at his useless father’s workplace chair is an ideal mirror picture of the scene in Henry IV, Half 2 by which callow, untried Prince Hal places on his father’s crown. The parallel brings out all of the petty smallness of character, the meanness and the soiled, crumpled ambitions that Succession evokes so properly.
By now it’s develop into a cliché to say that Succession is Shakespearean, however the assertion is nonetheless correct. The present started with a nod to King Lear: Getting older patriarch Logan Roy, a Murdoch-like determine who has cultivated a large media empire, is attempting to determine which of his three kids to present his firm to, like Lear carving his kingdom into three unequal components for his daughters. The solid’s actors refer to Shakespeare’s components in interviews to attempt to clarify their roles, and the characters themselves make frequent mocking quotations.
“I land the deal, I kill Kendall, I’m topped king. Identical to in Hamlet,” plans Roman at one level. “If that occurs in Hamlet. I don’t care.”
It doesn’t occur in Hamlet, and what comes after Kendall sits in Logan’s chair doesn’t occur in Henry IV, Half 2, both. The parallel makes it clear that Kendall believes himself to be Shakespeare’s celebrated, heroic Prince Hal. The tragedy of Kendall is that he combines all of Hal’s freezing chilly detachment with none of his actual talents.
The shadow of succession hangs over the Henriad
Henry IV, Half 2 is considered one of a sequence of Shakespeare’s historical past performs typically known as the Henriad. They concentrate on England’s King Henry V, a Fifteenth-century monarch who famously spent his adolescence consuming and carousing, residing life as a playboy, earlier than unexpectedly rising up instantly upon his ascension to the throne. He would ultimately develop into beloved for a sequence of main navy victories in opposition to France. Shakespeare calls Henry V Hal when he’s a prince.
In Henry IV, Half 1, Hal spends most of his time hanging out with charming, drunken, irresponsible outdated Falstaff. For Hal’s father, King Henry IV, or Bolingbroke, this conduct is a serious downside. Bolingbroke is a powerful and efficient king, however he’s additionally a usurper who took the throne after overthrowing weak King Richard II. The plan is that Hal will redeem his father’s reign. Because the son of a king, he’ll have a stronger declare to the throne than Bolingbroke did; he’ll additionally get pleasure from studying how one can reign from his father. Hal, Bolingbroke hopes, will rule each by divine proper and by pressure, uniting the most effective of Richard II and Bolingbroke. However he can’t do this if he spends all his time getting wasted on the tavern.
Logan-like, Bolingbroke feels that Hal isn’t a severe particular person. He frets over how ill-suited Hal is to take over the throne. He tells Hal he needs the martial Hotspur was within the line of succession as an alternative of Hal. “Now, by my scepter, and my soul besides / He [Hotspur] hath extra worthy curiosity to the state / Than thou, the shadow of succession,” Bolingbroke says bitterly in Henry IV, Half 1.
Just like the Roy siblings, Hal is satisfied that when he really ascends to the throne, he’ll be nice on the job. His playboy act, he tells the viewers, is simply that: an act. He’s absolutely ready to tackle the obligations of kingship as soon as the time comes, and he’s sure that his sober reign will likely be all of the extra spectacular for his misspent youth. “When this free conduct I throw off,” he explains, “My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault / Shall present extra goodly and appeal to extra eyes / Than that which hath no foil to set it off.”
We catch a glimpse of how engaging the thought of kinghood is to Hal within the self-crowning scene in Henry IV, Half 2. Hal finds his father asleep in mattress, the crown mendacity on his pillow subsequent to him, and turns into satisfied that his father is useless.
“Thy due from me / Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,” Hal says to what he believes is Bolingbroke’s corpse. “My due from thee is that this imperial crown / Which, as quick from thy place and blood / Derives itself to me.”
He plucks the crown away from bed and places it on, and directly is overwhelmed with need for it. “Put the world’s complete energy / Into one big arm, it shall not pressure / This lineal honor from me,” he declares.
Then his dad wakes up and yells at him, and Hal begins crying and assures him that he by no means needed the crown and actually hates it and simply needs his father to be alive. We’re proven sufficient, although, to pay attention to some quantity of ambivalence on Hal’s half right here.
Hal does genuinely love his father, simply as he genuinely loves his consuming buddy Falstaff. He additionally genuinely needs to be king.
On the finish of the play, Bolingbroke is useless and Hal has develop into King Henry V. Falstaff comes dashing in joyously to greet his buddy, and Hal repudiates him. “I do know thee not, outdated man,” he says. Accountability and ambition collectively have pressured him to surrender each his father figures directly. That’s Hal’s tragedy.
Hal’s redemption comes from the truth that, in any case that, he really does develop into an awesome king. He wages warfare in opposition to France and wins an unattainable navy victory. “He right now that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother,” he declares within the celebrated St. Crispin’s Day speech as he urges his badly outnumbered males ahead.
For the Roy household, being brothers isn’t precisely one thing to have fun.
When Kendall tries to dad it, he all the time goes improper
Kendall has been channeling his father for just a few episodes by the point he sits down in Logan’s chair within the sequence finale. He’s developed extra confidence and showmanship than he displayed whereas Logan was nonetheless alive: nailing the presentation for Residing+, delivering a genuinely affecting eulogy at Logan’s funeral. With that confidence has come rising callousness.
“You fucked it,” he tells Roman brutally of the deal between the Roys and the president-elect. “You tried to dad it. You failed.” When he learns Shiv is scheming to verify Waystar is bought slightly than assist Kendall keep on as CEO, he yells that she’s a bit of grime. A few of Logan’s sadism has develop into the “poison” that “drips by way of” in Kendall’s relationship to the world. More and more, it appears as if Kendall believes sadism is a essential element of his newfound competence, like Hal denying Falstaff in an effort to be a great king.
Nonetheless, Kendall hesitates earlier than he sits in Logan’s chair in entrance of Shiv and Roman, glancing up at them for his or her okay. They provide it to him directly: “It’s not a magic chair,” Roman tells him sarcastically. It’s not, however it’s a symbolic chair.
As Kendall will get more and more snug together with his new seat, Shiv appears to be like extra peeved, narrowing her eyes at him when he props his toes up on the desk. The unease that may lead her to make the decisive vote in opposition to Kendall is starting to brew on this second, watching him look snug in Logan’s outdated chair.
Kendall, in the meantime, is starting to glow with confidence and energy that verges on the sting of violence. Minutes after he sits down at Logan’s desk, he pops open Roman’s stitches throughout an ambiguous hug of affection and domination.
Kendall, like Hal, wept with grief upon his father’s demise. And, like Hal, he’s enamored with the thought of holding on to his father’s throne. He feels it’s his due for a similar purpose Hal feels his reign will likely be extra respectable than his father’s: He’s the eldest boy. (By no means thoughts that Connor, the precise eldest boy, is true there.) Absolutely, absolutely, Kendall can mix the vicious pressure of Logan’s reign with the divine proper of kings and convey a simply and affluent reign to Waystar Royco?
“Put the world’s complete energy / Into one big arm, it shall not pressure / This lineal honor from me,” Hal says as soon as he has the crown on his head, and when Shiv begins to maneuver to take the chair from Kendall, he screams at her with the identical livid dedication.
The a part of Hal’s story that Kendall doesn’t get is the redemption. Hal redeems his betrayals and his ambitions by advantage of his prowess as an awesome navy chief and king. However nobody round Kendall thinks he has the stuff to make that type of chief.
“I don’t suppose you’d be good at it,” Shiv tells Kendall plainly when he calls for to know why she received’t give him her vote to make him CEO. It’s an inexpensive stance to take: Kendall persistently fails in any respect his wheelings and dealings. He’s continually attempting to dad it, and he’s continually fucking it within the course of.
Maybe a part of why Kendall appears so positive to fail comes with the opposite main place the place his story diverts from Hal’s: their pals. Falstaff offered Hal with a refuge from political scheming and ambition, as a result of all he cared about was pleasure. By the finale, Kendall has lengthy since alienated all of the emotional connections he has to the world exterior Waystar Royco. The closest factor he has to a Falstaff is Shiv and Roman, who carouse joyously of their mom’s home with him one evening after which double-cross him the following. Kendall is what occurs when all Hal’s Falstaffs need to be king, too, and everybody who says Hal wouldn’t do a great job as king might be proper.
The Henriad is designed to grapple with the issue of what it means to be a great king. As its three successive kings cycle on and off the stage, it circles across the query of whether or not seizing energy or inheriting it make you good at wielding it.
On Succession, the actual fact of getting inherited their energy leaves the Roy siblings disqualified from having the ability to use it properly in any respect. Logan gave them sufficient cash and social capital to insulate them from ever having to expertise true penalties, whereas he wielded his brutal private pressure over them like a whip to maintain them from ever studying to do the identical. Ultimately, Kendall may give the St. Crispin’s Day speech, however he can’t ever really lead anybody into battle.
