It has become the norm since then for the two plays of Henry IV to be performed together, often within the context of a larger cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays. The resources required for such ambitious projects are only realistically available to the national subsidized companies, and productions by the RSC (discussed below) have constituted the majority of these. In 1986 Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington formed the English Shakespeare Company with the aim of promoting and presenting the works of Shakespeare both nationally and internationally. The inaugural production, The Henrys, consisted of Part I and Part II of Henry IV plus Henry V. The following year they presented The Wars of the Roses, comprising Richard II, Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, Henry V, the three plays of Henry VI telescoped into two plays (Henry VI: House of Lancaster, Henry VI: House of York), and Richard III. The production toured successfully for two years, both within the UK and internationally. The company deliberately worked against the dominant mode of theatrical realism to present radical and exciting productions, designed to engage a modern audience:
We would provide a space that would allow the plays to range over the centuries in imagery. We would free our, and the audiences’ imaginations by allowing an eclectic mix of costumes and props, choosing a time and a place that was most appropriate for a character or a scene. Modern dress at one moment, medieval, Victorian or Elizabethan the next. We would use a kit of props…[which], as far as possible, would remain on stage. The means of transformation from one scene to the next would remain visible. No tricks up our sleeves (until we needed one). We would create a style that was essentially rough theatre, but would add, when we needed it, a degree of sophistication.30
The relatively few American productions of Henry IV have concentrated historically on Part I, focusing on the roles of Hotspur and Falstaff. Stuart Vaughan directed both parts which played in repertory at New York’s Phoenix Theater in 1960: the emphasis on Eric Berry’s widely praised, compelling Falstaff led to the accusation that it “might accurately be called ‘The Decline and Fall of Sir John Falstaff, Fat Old Knight.’”31 In 1993, Ron Daniels directed back-to-back stagings of Part I and Part II for the American Repertory Theater, updated to an American Civil War setting which enjoyed a mixed critical reception:
Mr Daniels has created a wildly anachronistic, culturally mixed salad in which different elements of Shakespeare’s epic portrait are accorded theatrical analogues from wholly disparate historical moments. The result, given visual life by John Conklin’s time-traveling, slightly ragged scenic shorthand, is less disjunctive than one might expect.32
Barbara Gaines’ 1999 production of both plays at Chicago’s Shakespeare Repertory Theater was widely praised for its simple staging and strong performances. In 2003 Dakin Matthews conflated the texts of both plays in a production at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, directed by Jack O’Brien. The resulting adaptation lasted nearly four hours with two intervals, but compressed the action to create a fast-paced, fluid text. Kevin Kline played Falstaff.
…made up to resemble a threadbare Santa Claus with a blimp of a prosthetic belly and a snowy beard, Mr Kline looks like the most traditional Falstaff imaginable. The wonderful surprise is how he deviates from the convention of bluster and braggadocio. Mr Kline has never had more of a chance to make a meal of the scenery. Instead, he delivers a finely measured performance that matches the actor’s infinite resourcefulness with that of the character he plays.33
Remarkably, London’s National Theatre did not stage a performance of Henry IV until Nicholas Hytner’s production in 2005 played on a “roughly arrow-shaped stage” in the large Olivier Theatre. The production managed “to suggest the mighty sweep of the plays—their oscillation from uptight court to frowsty lowlife, from the frenetically urban to the peacefully pastoral, from the battlefield to the boozer—with depth and definition.”34 Michael Gambon was praised for the way he:
wonderfully incorporates the contradictions of Falstaff. He looks like the kind of wily, drunken bohemian tramp that Just William would ill-advisedly let into the Brown household, where he would later be found comatose in the wine cellar. In the moveable feast of his accent, you hear the tones of a parvenu whose poshness is pretty precarious and inclined to slip into saloon-bar bravado. This is not a sentimentalised fat knight. He’s utterly out for himself, and the last thing we’re treated to in Part 1 is the sight of him shamelessly robbing two venerable corpses.35
Matthew McFadyen made a “shrewd witty prince,” and David Bradley played the “haunted cadaverous king,” while:
The scenes in Gloucestershire are delectably comic, thanks to the great John Wood, whose Justice Shallow is a transcendent study in florid, nervously energetic self-delusion about a wild youth that he did not experience. He is delightfully partnered by Adrian Scarborough, who, as Silence, is like a little slip of death inadequately warmed up—until he gets a few glasses inside him, when he cannot be restrained from providing quavering, unwanted cabaret.36
The two parts of Henry IV with their broad cross section of scenes and characters have come to be regarded as a sort of national epic firmly established at the heart of the Shakespearean repertory. The most remarkable film version is Orson Welles’ 1966 film adaptation, Chimes at Midnight, in which the entire tetralogy from Richard II to Henry V is telescoped into less than two hours. In 1938 Welles directed an unsuccessful play called Five Kings in which he had gathered all the Falstaff material from the Henrys and The Merry Wives of Windsor. This formed the basis of Welles’ film, shot while he was supposedly making Treasure Island. As Scott McMillin suggests, “he was not interested in the historical epic formed by the histories; he was interested in Falstaff—or, perhaps more accurately, in a certain angle of vision which he thought of as Falstaffian.”37 The star-studded cast included Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud (as Henry IV), with Ralph Richardson as the narrator. The film’s “brilliance” lies in Welles’ characteristically bravura film vocabulary and style. As McMillin puts it: “If Falstaff had made films, he would have made something like this one.”38
The BBC Shakespeare version, by contrast, offers a conventional historical cycle of the second tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, Henry V) made for television and directed by David Giles. Anthony Quayle, who had played Falstaff so successfully in 1951, reprised the role. The narrow focus of television does not, however, lend itself easily to the broad sweep of history:
If cycle-thinking puts the realm and its rulers ahead of Falstaff, and if the performance of Falstaff puts him well ahead of the realm and its rulers, trouble is brewing. Quayle’s assured performance as Falstaff is the strongest element of the production, and the separate “sphere of intelligence” provided by his addresses to the audience happily interrupts the dutiful effort to capture history in the space of the television studio. He is in better control of the medium—and this makes Prince Hal’s efforts to take better control of the kingdom seem second-rate.39
The English Shakespeare Company’s highly politicized, eclectic Wars of the Roses was recorded for television in 1989.
AT THE RSC
The stage is the world, as in a mediaeval morality play. It may represent court, camp, tavern, England, France, but it is always the blank slate on which life writes its lessons for [Hal], the bare, mental arena in which the soul of a royal Everyman discovers his destiny and true friends.
(Ronald Bryden)40
In mid-twentieth-century postwar Britain, Hal took center stage in productions of Henry IV Part I. Caught between the mighty figures of Henry IV and Falstaff and the worlds of court and tavern, his education became the focal point of the play. Directors instilled an ambiguity into the proceedings, with Hal never truly revealing his nature but remaining enigmatic, and therefore slightly dangerous and antiheroic. An adolescent under the sway of two highly charismatic father figures, manipulative and aware of the power he wields, critics and audiences have often found him a difficult character to like. Sympat
hy for Hal derives mainly from the portrayal of Henry IV and Falstaff. The prince attempts to learn from two men who are not what they seem to be; who present one face to the world and another to themselves. He inhabits two worlds, different in their emotional propensities and ethos, but equal in their duplicity.
When looking at RSC productions, the resulting influence of these environments on Hal can be seen reflected in the design concept chosen by directors. Pointing to an overarching theme, court and tavern were either designed as stylistically opposed or inextricably linked. With Henry IV Part I rarely performed on its own, the design of a production will often be part of a larger scheme, involving Henry IV Part II, Richard II, and/or Henry V. Occasionally, they have been performed as part of the cycle of Shakespeare’s histories (produced in 1963–65, 2000–01, and 2006–08), chronologically following through and encompassing the eight plays from Richard II to Richard III.
In 1964 Henry IV Part I and Part II were performed as part of a seven-play history cycle called The Wars of the Roses that examined the politics, the mechanics of power that moved behind Shakespeare’s history plays. These:
were bleakly anti-heroic, capable of making war seem devastating and inhuman. The younger theatregoers of 1963 did not share the end-of-war patriotism that had motivated the… 1951 Stratford series for the Festival of Britain. The sensibilities of the new audience were being shaped by Beckett, Osborne, Pinter, Brecht. This was not a crowd given to what they would have regarded as the sentiment and jingoism of the past… Peter Hall saw the dominant image as a mechanism of power:
Over the years I became more and more fascinated by the contortions of politicians and by the corrupting seductions experienced by anyone who wields power…I realised that the mechanism of power had not changed in centuries.
…[Designer, John] Bury saw the violence and power politics of the cycle as framed in steel:
It was a period of armour and a period of the sword: they were plays about warfare, about power, about danger. One spent one’s time either in armour, or piercing someone’s armour—or being pierced…We were trying to make a world: a dangerous world, a terrible world, in which all these happenings fit.41
The hard and heavy oppressive nature of the set complemented a darkly political reading of the play. The fragility of the characters and the dehumanizing effect of war were also reflected in the costumes, which assimilated the metal world:
The stage floor was plated steel. The acting space for all seven plays was defined by two huge triangle-based metal-plated walls, which could be turned to present different faces and shifted to form different angles…[For Henry IV] the dominant metallic textures were modified here and there by wood and cloth, and banners were used in the battle scenes, but austerity prevailed in the overall visual impression.42
When Bury joined the RSC in 1962, he brought with him a revolutionary concept—that a production’s design should be based around a central “image” which should be followed on in the costuming and sound of that production. He altered the use of stage space by using real materials that had texture, substance, and a natural sound when the actors worked on them. His style was a rejection of the romantic designs and costumes frequently seen in the 1950s.
As in so many of Shakespeare’s plays, the physical and mental condition of the king is reflected in his state. The ill health of the “body politic” was clearly visible in John Napier’s design for the 1982 production. Picking up on the idea that “We are all diseased,” director Trevor Nunn
contrived to suggest that a whole range of minor figures suffered from the general malaise…[The] set consisted of four tall wooden structures, each built like the open-section interior of a three-storey square house…each structure could be moved separately backwards or forwards, to build a different “house” for each location. Often the structures were full of people, even as they were moved into place, particularly with the tavern-scenes, which became momentarily large portable pubs. At times, the scene practically seethed with extras, working hoists, trundling kegs, mounting ladders to paint signs, bustling about with sacks or trays of drinks, beating carpets, making beds…these sets remained drab. The boards were twisted. They were hung with shields and lances, but all were painted black—the colour of the wood itself—and the dark heavy structures seemed gloomy and overpowering. The effect was enhanced by David Hersey’s lighting: often a dim suffused light; at other times a bright overhead spotlight, leaving dingy shadows all around. In addition, Eastcheap extras often remained on the set, lounging up stairs, watching, during the intervening court scenes. The effect was to suggest a political world which was haunted by shabbiness.43
In keeping with the idea that Henry IV takes its form from the medieval morality play, Adrian Noble’s designer, Bob Crowley, strongly marked out the symbolism of faith and sin, heaven and hell, in the set design in 1991. He “sharply juxtaposed the excesses of the tavern with the calculation of the court”:44
Julian Glover’s King Henry and Robert Stephens’s Falstaff form the opposing poles of Adrian Noble’s production of Henry IV Part 1, the King stern, cold and authoritarian in grey and black, Falstaff warm, mercurial, libertarian, and faintly epicene in scarlet…The King’s bare court is furnished with hard chairs and severe tables; while soft fabrics and yielding sofas in glowing shades of red characterise the tavern scenes. The Eastcheap tavern erupts on us like a mediaeval vision of hell, a lurid maze of private rooms with sex visibly on sale.45
We could hardly be reminded more forcibly that Shakespeare’s matchless history has its roots in mediaeval drama or that Hal is poised between an angry God in Henry and a ribald Satan in Falstaff.46
Meanwhile, the greed, the violence, the humble bustle, the sordid pastimes of ordinary English life go on. Shakespeare’s greatness is at its most awesome when he shows you how the politics of the nobility is mirrored, refracted, parodied and complemented by the goings on in Eastcheap and Rochester. Noble has retained Act Two Scene One, in the inn at Rochester, which directors usually cut. Here the robbery is set up when Shakespeare’s equivalent of the hotel manager tips off Gadshill as to which guests are carrying the loot. The underworld types are played without a touch of mockery. These are dangerous but ordinary people who have a living to make, and their lives are no laughing matter any more than the Percys’.47
When explaining his entrance as Falstaff, Desmond Barrit explained the idea for the design of Henry IV in 2000:
Up through the floor I pushed, by way of a sort of rubber flange that we came to know as the sphincter…The idea of this curious entrance, of course, was symbolic: our production was part of the RSC’s “This England” project to present eight of Shakespeare’s history plays, and the subject of those plays was this island, this England, this earth that we live on, and the director wanted Falstaff, as a man of the earth, to be seen to be born from the earth.48
In contrast to the history cycle of 1964, no design concept linked the plays. Each was individually conceived by separate directors and designers. This was criticized by some who felt that the continuity of the cycle was less apparent, and confusing, when the same actors in the same roles appeared in completely different times and settings. However, Es Devlin’s set design for the two parts of Michael Attenborough’s production of Henry IV was completely appropriate to the play: “England is basically conceived as an often blood-stained, earthy battleground, with a steep hill at the rear, [conveying] Attenborough’s sense that the play intensifies the impression…of a country rent asunder.”49 With lights shining up through the floor, the earth appeared primordial and volcanic, as if awaiting a moment of violence. With “its mound of smoke-filled peat [the set] effectively embodies the idea that “the land is burning.”50
Fathers and Sons
What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father’s revealed secret.
(Friedrich Nietzsche)51
As Harold C. Goddard points out, it would be hard to find a better illus
tration of this axiom than Henry IV and Hal: “In his concentration on power the elder Henry has suppressed both the playful and the passionate tendencies of his nature…What he has kept under comes out in Hal, who leads a life of abandon under the tutelage of Falstaff.”52 Hal finds in Falstaff a father who embodies the “unrealised half of [Henry’s] soul,”53 providing him with a rough education and emotional warmth.
Of the 1975 production, directed by Terry Hands, John Elsom wrote:
Alan Howard’s Hal is a young prince, growing up. His mind is being formed by two mutually opposing fathers. His natural father, the King, is tortured by guilt and obsessed with ideals of kingship. His debased “father,” Falstaff is impervious to guilt, scornful of honour and duty, but relishes the simple pleasures in life, sack, sex and getting away with things.54
Hands’ production focused on this central relationship, providing “a study in domestic psychopathology, probing the tortured relationship of father and son.”55
Emrys James, who played Henry IV, portrayed him as a lonely character frustrated by his inability to express emotion in a non-aggressive fashion:
The play is about the longing a father has for a relationship with his son. It is peculiarly painful to have that figure high above, cut off from his son, but watching. He is a distant father-figure for Hal because this man doesn’t, cannot unbend…
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