Gloucestershire was a bale of hay, some bunting, blossom, and a barbecue.
Our battlefields were the bodies of men fighting over the rusty body of England, which Tom Piper created. Our set suggested arms and legs and a head and viscera.
The plays dramatize the movement from feudalism (with the powerful barons of the north) to the early modern state (with an absolutist idea of monarchy). But they also speak to very Elizabethan concerns, such as the administration of the nation by means of a network of local justices (not all of whom are entirely free from corruption...). And at the same time, the idea of the education of a future leader is a timeless theme. So: medieval setting, Elizabethan, modern, or some eclectic mixture of them all?
MP: I'm not so sure about this education of Hal. I think he has a great struggle between his impulses and his duties; he realizes what he will have to sacrifice, and in playing the part I came to think it costs him something. Not that he lets on: in Henry V he hardly mentions his past and is completely ruthless about hanging Bardolph for robbing a church, the kind of thing he might once have done himself. So if this is an education, it is not a very inclusive or compassionate one, more a hard lesson in realpolitik.
AN: We chose to set it pretty accurately in its period. I think it becomes a nonsense if you take it out of its period, to be absolutely honest, because we all know too much about other periods in which you might set it, and its own period is itself so interesting and resonant. When you've got a wonderful company of actors and you do it reasonably well, relevance jumps out at you.
MB: We found ourselves more interested in Shakespeare as a storyteller for his own age than as medievalist scholar. After the corruption of the old world, the old faith, and the would-be absolutist Richard, comes the cold wind of religious and political reform. Elizabeth may have seen herself characterized as Richard II, but she is also the reforming Protestant ruler beset with a dissenting and unruly populace that we see in Henry IV. The Archbishop of York, who "Turns insurrection to religion," can't fail to have reminded Shakespeare's audience of the Pilgrimage of Grace which threatened Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, with a militarized Catholic backlash from the north.
We opted for three generations: the glamorous remnants of Richard/Elizabeth's golden age; the new black, simple, puritanical broom of Bullingbrook/Elizabeth; and the new generation of Hal and Poins willfully revisiting some of the decadent glamour of the past (with a little help from the saloon glamour of westerns).
Prince Hal is sometimes one of the lads, sometimes coolly detached from his companions. Does this change over the two parts of the drama? Or, to ask the same question in another way: his first soliloquy, "I know you all," is crucial, isn't it? Do you see him speaking it essentially to himself or to the audience in the theater? Does it reveal him as a Machiavellian manipulator from the start, just playing a game in order to improve his own image, always intending to reject his companions when the time is ripe? Or is there much more ambivalence in the progress from "I know you all" early in Part I to the rejection speech, "I know thee not," at the end of Part II?
MP: Yes, he oscillates--he's tugged in two directions, as anybody might be. He pulls princely rank sometimes in the tavern, and in the court he plays the bad boy. He's quite unresolved.
"I know you all" is a very unusual soliloquy in that it seems not to be addressed to the audience but to his offstage friends and is overheard by the audience. Shakespeare hardly ever does this. A soliloquizer normally confides in the theater audience more intimately than this, more trustingly. The effect here is to make Hal seem a little remote from us.
Playing him as what you call a Machiavellian is possible, but it's not very interesting theatrically, like playing the Duke in Measure for Measure simply as a manipulator.
6. "O polished perturbation! Golden care!" Michael Pennington as Prince Hal and John Castle as Henry IV in the English Shakespeare Company's Wars of the Roses, 1986-89.
Hal is very monosyllabic when he comes to the point--as in those two cases [his first soliloquy in Part I and the rejection speech at the end of Part II], and also "I do, I will" when he promises Falstaff he will reject him. I think what keeps the play and the part alive is that he has great difficulty in resolving his conflicting urges. He sets out his program at the start, but he doesn't find it that easy to execute. He leaves the tavern and goes to the court, but is disappointed by his father, who is manipulative and self-absorbed; he goes back to Falstaff, but realizes he can't truly be part of that world either. There is a lot of implied conflict in him.
AN: He is all of those things. He's very complex because if you try and play it as somebody who's being manipulative and Machiavellian, in terms of a great scheme, it doesn't sustain itself. It's unactable and it's incredible to the audience. The only way it works is if he thoroughly embraces the Eastcheap world and is a protagonist within it. You have to work back from that and from the fact that he says "I know you all." Some people find it necessary to have the character one or the other; I think he's both. I think he's a human being and human beings are extremely complex people. Young people, especially, live several lives: they live the life they live with their parents and they live a completely different life with other people. That's part of growing up and of how you relate to your parents. Hal has, in a way, been very lucky, in the sense that he has two fathers who each represent the two aspects of his character, so again you get this counterpoint which is very creative and very abrasive; it creates intellectual energy. I think Hal embraces that world fully, and the key moment for him is when he finally answers his dad: "Do not think so. You shall not find it so" [3.2.130]. It's a monosyllabic line and you can't rush that line, because there are too many vowels in it. That's a turning point for the character; that's when he realizes he actually has to decide. It's also, interestingly enough, when he finds a voice. I think it's when he finds the voice that will attack Hotspur and will attack the French in Henry V. He embraces both worlds happily, and I think that's part of his personality. It's part of the education of the king, but it's more particularly part of the humanity of the king. Another way of looking at it is to think of Hal's time with Falstaff as a time of disguise; the disguise allows him the freedom to explore and develop and thereby achieve wisdom. The character is both with and outside the disguise at one and the same time.
MB: Hal's genuine longing to be a hard-drinking, womanizing Corinthian is in tension from the beginning with his dark understanding that he is heir to the throne and therefore the target of flattery and envious rumor. He starts by flirting with the political theater of the deferred appearance of the sun from behind the cloud, and ends as the leading player in a much darker piece of political theater as he renounces Falstaff, and is groomed for war with France.
The comparison and contrast between Prince Harry and Harry Hotspur is obviously crucial. Did you have particular stylistic or visual devices for establishing and exploring it?
MP: Hotspur seemed like a version of Bonnie Prince Charlie--quite a romantic, eighteenth-century rebel. Hal was completely modern except on the battlefield when he went into chain mail. So as I said above we handled these things not so much conceptually as expressionistically.
AN: It's unavoidable, isn't it? All you have to do is read the play. It's totally and utterly in your face. It's a constant reminder to the audience of what the danger of Prince Hal's behavior is, that he is messing up big-time, because it's a dominating dramatic presence. Hotspur is such a charismatic man. He's a natural leader, he has such command of language, and he has all the other things that audiences want kings to have, like a good wife, a great sense of humor, the ability to deal with his elders in a fair, just, but respectful manner. He's got all of those things; they're there like this great big elephant in the room.
MB: Our Percys were descended from Shakespeare's earlier father-and-son duo in Henry VI: the Talbots. By now the honorable code of chivalry of this pairing has become warped. The father caves in horribly in Part II and the son is
bold but arrogant and reckless. Chivalry is stone dead by Henry IV.
Prince Hal moves in the other direction, from selfish, hedonistic criminality to a new contingent morality which will find its fullest paradoxical expression in Henry V (and then of course in Hamlet).
To answer the question: Geoffrey Streatfeild's Hal was more of a decadent dandy in Part I and Lex Shrapnel's Hotspur a glamorized vision of martial prowess.
It's sometimes said that in Part I Hal learns the military virtues of the true prince, in Part II the civic virtues. So Hotspur is a key opponent in Part I, the Lord Chief Justice a key figure in Part II. Was that a productive way of looking at it for you?
7. "O, Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth!" Geoffrey Streatfeild as Hal and Lex Shrapnel as Hotspur in Michael Boyd's 2007-08 RSC production.
MP: That didn't occur to me, and I don't think Shakespeare writes that programmatically. The developments in his characters are more subtle, less easily explained. And I'm not sure Hal learns any virtues really, only pragmatism--how to handle everybody effectively, in fact. The Lord Chief Justice is his third father figure, after Falstaff and the king--Falstaff is the one that loses out of course.
AN: Not at the time, but yes, that's quite interesting!
MB: No, but it is one template to apply to the plays. It feels more like the Lord Chief Justice's template than Shakespeare's, and it makes the royalist assumption that "becoming a true prince" is Shakespeare's subject.
Having staged all the histories, I began to realize that the drive for power and the yearning for the crown is one big politically acceptable MacGuffin [plot device] that allows Shakespeare to examine the nature of humanity under pressure. Shakespeare is consistently skeptical and critical of those in power, and this famously nonjudgmental author makes an exception for any character showing signs of being over-influenced by Il Principe.*
In Part I Hal wrestles with authority and his father, trying to find/avoid his place in life. In Part II Hal confronts the mortality of the very man he has defined himself against and therefore confronts his own mortality. And he kills Falstaff.
Another difference between the two parts is that, simply in terms of size of parts, Part I is dominated by Hal, Falstaff, Hotspur, and King Henry, whereas Part II has a far larger number of substantial roles. Does that suggest that they are very different kinds of play? Part I a star vehicle and Part II an ensemble vision?
MP: They're both ensemble pieces--fabulously so. Hotspur's death and Hal's withdrawal from events in Part II makes room for Shallow and Silence and the rest, and there's much more Falstaff too. I think Part II is just Part I rebalanced--not essentially different, except that there's definitely a sense of imminent change, and loss, with the king dying; the tavern scenes have less vitality and Hal generally keeps away from Falstaff, as if he was preparing himself for his future.
AN: The second half is for me the great director's challenge, because it is symphonic. Some plays work as concerti, with a series of solo turns, and some operate more symphonically. This is particularly true of the eight history plays. Henry VI Part I, Part II, and Part III operate symphonically. My mistake when I did Richard III, as the last of that tetralogy, is that until I started rehearsing it I thought it also operated symphonically, but it doesn't: it's written in a completely different manner to the Henry VIs. It's written as a series of concerti: one after the other, somebody stands up and plays the violin, plays the viola, plays the cello, plays the trumpet. Edward IV, Clarence, Hastings, one after the other they all stand up. It's not true to such an extent with the two parts of Henry IV, but it is to a degree.
I'd wanted to do Henry IV Part I and Part II for years, but for me you don't even start until you've got Falstaff, which I was very fortunate to get in Robert Stephens. That's the character that not only sets half the agenda of the plays, but is also the person who attracts all the other actors. If you don't have a genius Falstaff, then you won't get a brilliant Henry IV, and if you don't have a brilliant Henry IV, then the spine of the two plays is very shaky. Hal and Hotspur are much easier. It's for Falstaff, Henry IV, and Shallow that you really need people at the top of their game to fulfill the majesty of those two plays.
MB: Not really. Part II was in part conceived as a vehicle for the runaway success of Falstaff as a "turn" in Part I.
Does Falstaff change between the two parts?
MP: In Part I, Hal and he are wonderfully matched, especially in their capacity for (more or less) friendly insults. Falstaff feels Hal's absence in Part II very keenly--he knows in his heart the best times are past. Falstaff talks about him all the time, wistfully.
AN: He matures somehow and gets wiser in the second part. I think the reason he appears to get older in the second part is because he has the Page. That's why Shakespeare gives him a young person to walk about with, so you realize he's old. Also in Part II he associates much more with people of his own age, particularly with his fellow students from when he was a law student at Temple. By hanging out with Silence and Shallow, on the one hand, and with a twelve-year-old boy, on the other hand, we get a strong whiff of mortality coming off Falstaff in Part II, which we don't so much get in Part I.
MB: Falstaff has become a star in Part II because of his false success in Shrewsbury, and his real success in the theater in Henry IV Part I. Shakespeare promotes him to the courtly world and gives him exchanges with the most powerful people in the land, but then punishes him with cynicism, gout, and mortality.
He's a force of nature in Part I, and in Part II he's someone clinging on to influence, and opportunity, and life.
What did you learn in the process of rehearsing the great playacting scene in Part I--the preenactment by Hal and Falstaff of Hal's confrontation with his father? And did it teach you things that you could use when working on the actual encounters between the prince and his father?
MP: Not so much that, but the two successive scenes are at the center of the part. The scene in the Boar's Head has terrific tension--how far will Hal go in mocking his father? How far will he let Falstaff go? The onlookers don't know how loudly they're allowed to laugh. It's a great relief to Hal to make fun of his father; then he goes to see him for real and is very disappointed. He apologizes to the king and promises to toe the line but gets little thanks for it. Hal is very frustrated by his father. It's interesting that he takes Falstaff into battle with him and even lets him take credit for the death of Hotspur--it's as if he were serving notice that he'll do his duty by his father but he's not giving up his old ways that easily.
AN: Not particularly. It's most important because it stands as a rehearsal of the denial of Falstaff; that seems its main function to me. It was fun and funny--it couldn't not be that and I made it that--and I made it very anarchic, but my main purpose related to the denial of Falstaff. I remember feeling it was profoundly wrong that Hal engaged in this playacting. The whole idea of impersonating the monarch had a slight whiff of danger about it, and I think for an Elizabethan audience it would have been almost obscene: a very dangerous thing to do and very disrespectful. The dice are loaded very heavily against Hal in Part I and I think that's why it is such a dramatic piece: it's because he turns the stakes around, he overturns the odds, that it is remarkable.
MB: Clive Wood had already shaped his testosterone-fueled, reforming Bullingbrook in our Richard II, so we already knew that Hal's encounters with his father would be bruising and straight out of Eugene O'Neill or Tennessee Williams.
There was a moving mismatch of styles in the playacting scene: David Warner's Falstaff revealing an old-fashioned delicacy that had no place in Bullingbrook's actual cold, pragmatic palace.
It's mostly a male world, but, small as they are, the female parts--Hotspur's wife, Quickly, Doll--seem very significant, don't they? What was your take on the women in these plays?
MP: I think Doll's little scene with Falstaff in Part II is a real love scene--both of them at their best; open, honest, and affectionate in ways they aren't elsewher
e. Mistress Quickly represents one kind of female constancy in her love of Falstaff, and in a sense, Lady Percy the other, in her anger at Hotspur's withdrawing from her and her grief at his loss. They're very good parts, all three of them.
8. Robert Stephens as Falstaff and Joanne Pearce as Doll Tearsheet at Hostess Quickly's tavern in Eastcheap in Part II of Adrian Noble's 1991 RSC production.
AN: They're wonderful parts and you can do fantastic things with them with the right people. I was very lucky and we did great things with those parts. What Shakespeare does is genuinely present a great portrait of a nation. Look at the language of the scene of the two Carriers in Rochester: it's a couple of lorry drivers at Watford Gap services, it's a couple of guys who have done an overnight stay in a B&B somewhere. What he creates with that language--and of course it's distilled and slightly heightened--is the cadence of Elizabethan England. Shakespeare perfectly captures it: people working in an industrial situation. Now compare that with the sound of Shallow and Silence. Again, the cadence there is extraordinary. It's a remarkable soundscape, probably of Warwickshire when he was a boy, and that's part of the richness of the play. The Henry VI plays don't attempt that at all: you get little snippets of them with Cade and Dick the Butcher, but they are only snippets. In Henry IV they are in-depth portraits of a nation. You get the clergy, you get the courtiers, you get the tapsters, you get the prostitutes. Doll Tearsheet is an amazing portrait of a prostitute. Shakespeare captures the language in an extraordinary way.
MB: And Glendower's daughter possibly wins the war for Bullingbrook.
Ann Ogbomo's Kate Percy was an intelligent, beautiful, and feisty sketch for Shakespeare's later leading women, Rosalind and Beatrice.
Henry IV, Part 1 (Folger Shakespeare Library) Page 18
