Lines 1–24: The king urges an injured Prince Henry to withdraw, accompanied by Prince John, but they refuse. Prince John and Westmorland return to the fight and the king and Prince Henry comment on John’s bravery before the prince also returns to battle.
Lines 25–58: Douglas finds the king alone and, although uncertain whether it is another “counterfeit,” begins to fight him. The king is in danger of defeat when Prince Henry rejoins them, causing Douglas to flee. King Henry tells his son that he has “redeemed” his “lost opinion” before heading back into battle.
Lines 59–111: Hotspur arrives and the prince declares that one of the Harrys must die: “Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere.” As they fight, Falstaff arrives, followed by Douglas. They also fight and Falstaff collapses as if dead. As Douglas leaves, Henry kills Hotspur and eulogizes over his body, acknowledging his bravery. He sees Falstaff, apparently dead, and delivers an ambiguous but fond eulogy, promising to return for both bodies later.
Lines 112–163: In a moment of bathos after the tensions of the scene, Falstaff sits up, revealing that he faked his death to avoid being killed. He decides to claim that Hotspur regained consciousness and that he, Falstaff, killed him. He stabs the body and is interrupted by the two princes, to whom he tells his unlikely tale. Unconvinced, Henry tells Falstaff he will back him in his claims if it will do his friend “grace.” They leave as the retreat signals their victory over the rebels.
ACT 5 SCENE 4
The royal party enters, with Worcester and Vernon as prisoners. The king lays responsibility for the day’s bloodshed on Worcester for not accepting his offer of peace, and condemns both rebels to death. Prince Henry reveals that he has Douglas prisoner and asks permission to release him in recognition of his bravery. The king agrees and issues his instructions: Prince John and Westmorland are to lead forces against Northumberland and Scroop, while he and Prince Henry march to Wales to fight Glendower. Despite the victory, the play ends as it began: with the country in civil conflict.
SYNOPSIS OF HENRY IV PART II
In despair at the death of his son Hotspur, the Earl of Northumberland lends his support to a second rebellion, led by the Archbishop of York. As the threat of civil war looms over the country, King Henry IV grows sick, while also fearing that his son Prince Henry (known as Harry and, by Falstaff, as Hal) has returned to his old life with Falstaff and the other disreputable denizens of the Eastcheap tavern. Falstaff is sent on a recruiting expedition and renews old acquaintances in Gloucestershire. The rebel army is met by the King’s forces, led this time by Hal’s younger brother, Prince John of Lancaster. On his deathbed, King Henry is reconciled with his son, who has begun to distance himself from his former companions. A new, mature Hal accepts the crown as Henry V.
HENRY IV IN PERFORMANCE: THE RSC AND BEYOND
The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.
We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.
We then go to the horse’s mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director. He or she must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear the directors of two highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways. And finally, we offer the actor’s perspective: a view of the play through the eyes of Prince Hal.
FOUR CENTURIES OF HENRY IV: AN OVERVIEW
Henry IV Part I was probably written and performed between 1596 and 1597 with Part II following a year later. The first performances of which records survive were at court in 1612–13 when a total of twenty plays were presented to celebrate the marriage of James I’s daughter Elizabeth to Frederick, the Elector of Palatine. They are listed as The Hotspurre and Sir John Falstaffe, and were only later identified as the two parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. These alternative titles suggest that both were originally seen in terms of their star parts rather than as a political study of kingship with Prince Hal at the center. As scholars and theater historians have pointed out:
That change of emphasis required a change of format. It takes both parts of Henry IV followed by Henry V to make Prince Hal into a fully-fledged hero, or anti-hero, and it was not until the mid-twentieth century that an influential cycle of these plays…was staged in the English theatre.1
Until this point the plays were performed individually and, although Part II was clearly designed as a sequel to Part I—probably in order to capitalize on the enormous and immediate popularity of the first play—there is little evidence to suggest that they were performed in sequence. Numerous contemporary references and reprints of the Quarto editions all point to their popularity and success, however. The writer Nicholas Breton mentions seeing “the play of Ancient Pistol,”2 and Leonard Digges’ prefatory poem to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems provides further evidence of their popularity:
…let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest, you scarce shall have a room, All is so pestered…
In his commendatory poem to the Folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (1647), Sir Thomas Palmer claims he could “tell how long / Falstaff from cracking nuts have kept the throng.”
Falstaff was originally played either by company clown Will Kempe or comic actor Thomas Pope, while Prince Hal was almost certainly played by Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian with Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s (later the King’s) Men. John Lowin took over the role of Falstaff: “before the Wars Lowin used to act, with mighty applause Falstaff.”3 During the interregnum from 1642 to 1660, the theaters were technically closed, although various means were employed to get around the prohibition on plays, such as the introduction of music and dancing into sketches from popular plays known as drolls; a collection of twenty-seven of these, The Wits, or Sport Upon Sport, by Francis Kirkman, was published in 1662 with three featuring episodes from Shakespeare’s plays, including The Bouncing Knight, or the Robbers Robbed, centered on Falstaff’s exploits. The frontispiece illustration places Falstaff and the Hostess in prominent positions.
Henry IV Part I continued to be popular after the Restoration and was one of the first plays performed by Thomas Killigrew’s King’s Company in 1660. Samuel Pepys’ diary records his attendance at no fewer than four performances over the period 1660–68. The play’s main attractions were still Hotspur and Falstaff. Thomas Betterton, the great Restoration actor-manager, played Hotspur in 1682, with “wild impatient starts” and “fierce and flashing fire,”4 but in the 1700 revival he took on the role of Falstaff. Thomas Davies records how “the versatility of Betterton’s genius was never more conspicuous than in his resigning the choleric Hotspur, in his declining years, and assuming the humour and gaiety of Falstaff, in which he is said to have been full as acceptable to the public as in the former.”5 In contrast to most Shakespearean revivals in the period, it underwent relatively few changes apart from textual cuts of long political speeches, the Welsh dialogue and song, and much of the mock trial in the tavern. Betterton’s continued popularit
y as Falstaff was largely responsible for a revival of Part II during the eighteenth century, in which the star turns were Falstaff and Justice Shallow.
In the next generation, James Quin, who had previously played Hotspur and the king, was the most notable Falstaff. David Garrick played Hotspur on five occasions, dressed “in a laced frock and a Ramilie wig,”6 but was plainly unsuited to the role, and the part was taken over by Spranger Barry. One of the theatrical highlights seems to have been Falstaff carrying Hotspur offstage:
No joke ever raised such loud and repeated mirth, in the galleries, as Sir John’s labour in getting the body of Hotspur on his back…Quin had little or no difficulty in perching Garrick upon his shoulders, who looked like a dwarf on the back of a giant. But oh! how he tugged and toiled to raise Barry from the ground!7
His successor, John Henderson, reportedly had so much difficulty with his Hotspur that a small gang of “Falstaff’s ragamuffins” were used instead to bear the body offstage.8 Other late eighteenth-century Falstaffs included at least one woman, Mrs. Webb, who “excelled in corpulent and grotesque characters” in Norwich in 1786.9
John Philip Kemble played Hotspur at Covent Garden in the early nineteenth century and his brother, Stephen, was one of a number of actors to play Falstaff without padding, although William Hazlitt remarked of his performance, “Every fat man cannot represent a great man.”10 The American actor James Henry Hackett played the part in England and America for forty years, and his Hotspurs included John Philip and Charles Kemble, as well as Edmund Kean and William Charles Macready. He received mixed reviews; The Athenaeum reported:
His is the best Falstaff that has been seen for many a day,—which, however, is not saying much for it. But it has positive merits that deserve recognition. He did not…reach the full conception which Shakespeare has here embodied…but he aimed at it, and accomplished much; his soliloquy on honour, in particular, was well delivered, and, take him for all in all, we are disposed to give him a cordial welcome.11
His identification with the role was such that he became known as “Falstaff Hackett.”
In 1821 a spectacular production of Henry IV Part II with Macready as King Henry and Charles Kemble as Prince Hal included a magnificent staging of the coronation procession as a tribute to the coronation of George IV. Kemble’s production of Part I in 1824 with himself as Hotspur was mainly noted for the historical accuracy of costumes and sets, which included “the King’s Chamber in the old Palace of Westminster; the inn-yard at Rochester with the castle, by night; Hotspur’s Camp; a distant view of Coventry; and Shrewsbury from the field of battle.”12 Samuel Phelps’ production at Sadler’s Wells in 1846 was similarly spectacular:
All has been done with a lavish and judicious hand, without a regard to cost or aught beside, save the desire of gratifying the public. The accoutrements, armour, and trappings worn by the several armies in the fourth and fifth acts are indeed splendid, and the minutest care has been shown in the arrangement of the costumes, even to the very crests of the different parties. The battle was admirably managed—the scenery was entirely new, and elicited much applause.13
The 1864 revival at Drury Lane which included the Glendower scene in full for the first time was distinguished by Phelps’ Falstaff: “He lays stress not on Falstaff’s sensuality, but on the lively intellect that stands for soul as well as mind in his gross body,” in a performance marked by “a smooth delicate touch that stamps the knight distinctly as a man well born and bred.”14 Phelps’ remarkable doubling of the king and Justice Shallow in Part II later that year earned further praise.15
Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s 1896 production at the Haymarket Theatre used a fuller text of the play and was well received by the critics, with the exception of George Bernard Shaw. William Archer praised the overall conception—“There has been no nearer approach in our day to the complete performance of a Shakespearian drama.”16 Of Tree’s performance, The Athenaeum reported: “it is the fat knight himself that comes before us.”17 Shaw, however, thought that “Mr Tree only wants one thing to make him an excellent Falstaff, and that is to get born over again as unlike himself as possible.”18
Victorian spectacle went out of fashion in the early twentieth century, influenced by the ideas of William Poel and the English Stage Society, which favored performances on a thrust stage with minimal scenery and faster-paced, fluid action.
1. Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Falstaff in his 1896 production at the Haymarket Theatre. The Athenaeum reported: “it is the fat knight himself that comes before us.”
History does not update in the same way as the comedies and tragedies that have lent themselves to a variety of settings, costumes, and periods. The effect on the history plays has been to emphasize their historicity. Between 1901 and 1906 Frank Benson staged a cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays for the first time at the Stratford-upon-Avon festival season which omitted Henry IV Part I but included King John, Richard II, Henry IV Part II, Henry V, Henry VI Part II, and Richard III. W. B. Yeats was impressed by the way in which “play supports play”19 when presented in this way. Henry IV Part I was included in the new cycle in 1905, as was Marlowe’s Edward II. In 1921 Barry Jackson had staged both parts of Henry IV on the same day (23 April) in Birmingham. The two parts of Henry IV were the first plays performed after the opening of the New Memorial Theatre in Stratford by the Prince of Wales in 1932—Part I in the afternoon and Part II in the evening.
In 1935 Robert Atkins and Sydney Carroll staged a production of Henry IV Part I with the popular vaudeville comedian George Robey as Falstaff. Despite his lack of classical training many critics were impressed by his performance; Herbert Farjeon reflected that “We learn from Mr Robey’s Falstaff many things. One of them is that it is a tremendous advantage to have Shakespeare’s clowns…played by men who are funny before they begin…Mr Sydney Carroll’s brilliant casting of Falstaff should put an end to the long dreary line of legitimate actors who have made soggy hay of Shakespeare’s comics.”20 However, The New Statesman regarded Robey’s Falstaff as an “old soak rather than the fallen gentleman…nothing more than a super-Bardolph.”21
John Burrell’s production a decade later at the New Theatre was warmly received:
Feliciter audax [pleasingly audacious] is, indeed, the phrase for Mr Burrell’s production. Choosing not to adopt the uninterrupted flow of the Elizabethan method, he closes each scene with a moment of dumb-show, shadowy and significant. I shall never forget Glendower, standing at the window (the actor is Harcourt Williams, who knows how to stand)—standing and staring after Hotspur as he gallops away, with the two women weeping at his feet while we know what they guess, that they will never see Hotspur again.22
Harcourt Williams’ performance was not the only one to be widely praised. Ralph Richardson’s Falstaff was universally admired:
a grand buffoon and rapscallion in Part I, proceeded in Part II to a still richer understanding which could catch the sombre illumination of “Do not bid me remember mine end” and suggest, as Falstaffs rarely do, the attraction of the man for the Prince as well as the considerable brain behind the wit. This was a metamorphosis assisted by make-up but by no means entirely dependent on it: for Richardson’s greatness—and I think the word is justifiable—in the part was a greatness of spirit that transcended the mere hulk of flesh.23
2. Ralph Richardson as Falstaff and Laurence Olivier as Justice Shallow in John Burrell’s 1945 New Theatre production: Ralph Richardson’s Falstaff was universally admired, and Laurence Olivier triumphed as Hotspur in Part I and Justice Shallow in Part II.
Laurence Olivier, meanwhile, played Hotspur in Part I and Justice Shallow in Part II, and triumphed in both.
But it was the 1951 presentation of the tetralogy of Richard II, Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, and Henry V by Anthony Quayle, John Kidd, and Michael Redgrave at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre which was to prove decisive in the plays’ fortunes. Anthony Quayle explained the thinking behind the productions:
> it seemed to us that the great epic theme of the Histories had become obscured through years of presenting the plays single, and many false interpretations had grown up, and come to be accepted, through star actors giving almost too persuasive and dominant performances of parts which the author intended to be by no means sympathetic.24
3. The 1951 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre presented Richard II, Henry IV Part I and Part II, and Henry V as a tetralogy: with Harry Andrews as Henry IV and Richard Burton as Hal.
One critic suggested: “One will never again think of these plays as single entities, and when they are played as such we shall feel them to have been lopped.”25 Tanya Moiseiwitsch designed a single set of “plain unvarnished oak” which could be “embellished as the occasion demanded with props or with hangings” and “provided three acting spaces and a large variety of entrances; it allowed the action to move in an uninterrupted flow.”26 There were star performances though—“Mr Redgrave’s poetic Richard and dazzling Hotspur, Mr Quayle’s splendidly rich Falstaff and Mr Richard Burton’s sultry intriguing Hal,” as well as “Mr Harry Andrews’s superb and masterly Bolingbroke”;27 the balance was shifted decisively away from Hotspur and Falstaff toward Hal.
Douglas Seale directed both parts of Henry IV at the Old Vic in 1955 in productions admired for being “simple and direct and, while comparatively and mercifully static within each individual scene… they are driven with a brilliant sense of the narrative speed over all.”28 Again, a strong cast achieved unanimous praise, from Paul Rogers’ Falstaff—“leaner and considerably dilapidated, is already some of the way downhill,” to Robert Hardy’s Prince—“a very strong and charming performance,” while “John Neville makes a fine Hotspur and a whirlwind Pistol, and Paul Daneman an ominous Worcester followed, in a miraculous transformation, by an extremely funny Shallow, withered with senility and malice. Rachel Roberts and Gwen Cherrell draw fruitfully on Hogarth for Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet.”29
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