Henry IV, Part 1

by William Shakespeare

  Stay, and breathe awhile.

  Thou hast redeemed thy lost opinion,

  And showed thou mak’st some tender of my life,

  In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me.

  4. Alan Howard as Prince Hal, “a young prince growing up,” and Brewster Mason as Falstaff, who “relishes the simple pleasures in life, sack, sex and getting away with things,” in Terry Hands’ 1975 RSC production.

  It’s incredible that he is not able to say, “You are a wonderful son to me because you have given yourself in battle with this great beast of a man and fought him off. And it shows without question that you love me.” That’s not the way he thinks. It’s part of his hang-up, part of his trouble. If he had shown emotion to this emotional young man their relationship would have been that much easier.

  …It isn’t accidental that Shakespeare left his wife out of the play. He’s a lonely man surrounded by four big, surly, rebellious sons, whom he rules with a rod of iron…Here’s a man who hasn’t learned how to handle his emotions and his solution to the problem is to suppress them completely. Except in moments of extreme stress. Then they come out.56

  In order to emphasize the relationship between father and son, Hands deliberately merged Eastcheap and the court, with Henry and Hal often present, onlookers in their separate scenes:

  Here both king and prince stray into scenes from which they are usually absent. From the first, Henry IV watches, soft-lit and chorus-like, from the back of the stage as Hal and Falstaff flirt—almost literally flirt—with self-indulgence. From his dallying, Hal strolls off, seeing Henry lambaste the nobles who will turn against him, removed from his father yet linked as he circles the stage.57

  Props were also used to signify Hal’s half existence between two worlds:

  James’s Henry treats Hal as a child, takes his hand, pulls him onto the seat…beside him, hugs him, kisses him. He tries to supplant the physical affection evident between Hal and Sir John but the boy is only disorientated and reaches out of the scene to take a bottle and goblet from the tavern in which their palace meeting is limboed.58

  The deliberate merging of court and tavern also prompts us to think of Henry IV and Falstaff as the lords of two realms within England. The device was used to great effect in Michael Attenborough’s production in 2000:

  Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, sits on the same throne that serves as Falstaff’s perch in downtown Eastcheap. This neatly indicates that the king and the old reprobate serve as competing father figures to Prince Hal.59

  How the actors physically relate to each other reveals their character and the dimension of their relationships. Of the 1964 production, Scott McMillin observed that

  Falstaff offered what Hal ought to have sought according to a psychological reading, a little fatherly contact. Hal’s own father, the Henry IV of Eric Porter, was remote and unapproachable, but Falstaff showed warm feeling and caressed Hal’s face while acting the father’s role. [Ian] Holm did not spurn such gestures.60

  Holm played Hal in an antiheroic fashion, as an onlooker, never completely engaged or in contact with the people around him, “a cold-blooded young man who was working his way toward heroism”:

  in the vital matter of [Henry’s] relationship with Hal there seemed not even the contact of pity between father and son. Their meeting…was played with great physical and emotional distance between the two men. When the time came for Hal (Ian Holm) to declare his loyalty, he first went over and closed the door: a telling gesture with its suggestion of guarded secrecy. He remained inaccessible to his father.61

  In Adrian Noble’s 1990 production:

  Caught between King and clown is Michael Maloney’s slightly built Hal, initially an emotionally dependent adolescent. His relationship with Falstaff is intense: they hold hands affectionately in the opening scene; as the boy taunts Falstaff after the exposure of his cowardice, Falstaff kisses him on the lips on “no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me.” And Robert Stephens’…agile Falstaff is dependent on Hal too. There is introspection behind this bluff exterior; the spaniel eyes seek affection…Hal’s determination to conquer Hotspur is motivated by the need to demonstrate his maturity to his father; the thwarted love behind it seems about to resolve itself with a kiss from son to father when the King [Julian Glover] holds Hal at arm’s length.62

  David Troughton, who played Henry in 2000, believed, like Emrys James, that Henry is aware of his failure as a father and attempts to redress this in order to win back his son: “with his own son he has no idea how to behave at all. Hal’s search for an alternative father is a cry for help, because his own father wants him for only one thing: to be his successor.”63 Unable to be demonstrative in his love, Henry’s attempts at a bond between father and son are thwarted by awkward moments of unwanted physicality. Unlike Glover’s Henry, who chose to remain distant, Troughton’s actively sought to embrace his son when the opportunity arose:

  It takes just one speech from Hal to bring them together—metaphorically, anyway, for though I used to put out my arms to him here, he never noticed, and no embrace was achieved. Perhaps Hal doesn’t want to notice, or perhaps he simply doesn’t see; that ambiguity was important in our production, and I think right. It’s like one of those moments when you go to kiss your father—and it turns confusedly into shaking hands. Hal has said that he’s sorry; he has said that he will fight along-side his father; but there has been no expression of love of son to father, which is what Henry misses. But whether Henry could achieve the embrace, even if Hal were looking, remains a question. He simply doesn’t know how to touch his son properly. So I just used to give him a little push on his shoulder with my fist, and the awkward moment passed.64

  Troughton thought Part I “brilliantly written in its exploration of all the tactics that we use as parents: anger, loving kindness, emotional blackmail, they’re all there.” The character of Hotspur was key in this production as a means for Henry to get to his son: “he betrays his weird fixation on Hotspur, that son who is the ‘theme of honour’s tongue’…who is so good to his father, such a great soldier.”65 It is clear that this is the son that Henry would wish for, and that Hal, played by William Houston, was made aware of it.

  The parental battle between Falstaff and Henry for Hal never comes to a climactic moment when the two characters meet and argue over his emotional and moral education. In 1982 Trevor Nunn contrived

  a moment in which Hal finds himself between his father and Falstaff, with Bolingbroke’s look of envious contempt at Sir John and silent appeal for his son’s affections answered by Hal’s following his friend’s insistent call: “Hal, if thou seest me down in the battle…” The king turns away, apparently defeated, an interesting explanation for what in the text is the curious continuation of the estrangement of Hal and his father in Part 2 in spite of the outcome of the battle. Not until he sees his father dying is this Hal ready to demonstrate any emotional commitment to him.66

  Similarly, in 2001, “Troughton also gives us the anxious father aware that he is in danger of losing his son to the taverns and the fat knight: there’s a great moment when his path crosses that of Falstaff in battle and he shoots him a wounded look.”67 David Troughton recalled how this moment was realized:

  [Henry and Falstaff]…were symbolically present on stage together for a few moments between the first and second scenes of Part One…We created a brief moment in our production—after I had rejected (for fear of losing my heir) Hal’s offer to take on Hotspur in single combat and as we were all girding up for battle—when I look at him and Falstaff together and thought “O, God, I don’t want them meeting any more.”68

  Kingship

  Renaissance philosophy believed that the best man was the “fullest” man, the one with the widest experience of the world. Behind this lay the mediaeval theory of elements and humours, whose balance and combination was the key to mastery of oneself and others. A king should not only know the life of his subjects. He should contain in himself an equilib
rium of all human passions—anger, pride, melancholy, mercy and love…The best education is the world itself, and the best introduction to the elements of one’s own nature is other people.

  (Ronald Bryden)69

  Henry IV Part I posits many questions as to the nature of kingship. Shakespeare examines the political theory of the divine right of kings through Henry’s gnawing guilt, which stems from a belief that he has sinned against God in the usurpation and murder of Richard II. Regardless of the fact that he believed himself the right man for the job, Henry cannot escape the belief that he is a counterfeit king: “Confirming a change that had long been in incubation, on the day when Henry deposed Richard he became a double man, one thing to the world, another to his own conscience.”70

  Emrys James played Henry in 1975 as the most unregal of men. Erratic in behavior, he was a self-made man, an administrator and clerk, a cunning politician who made his way to kingship when, as Falstaff said (ostensibly of Worcester), “Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it”:

  He wants to assert his authority again and again, because kingship doesn’t come naturally to him…Richard could go through crowds as a golden figure, and you could never ever conceive of Henry IV as a golden figure. Here is an executive, an executive of the state, angrily aware that the kind of chief executive he is is better for the state than the preening vision of majesty that Richard II presents.71

  In David Troughton’s highly acclaimed performance in 2000, he embodied the idea of Henry as a man racked by inner conflict, caught between faith and the necessities of power:

  A dominant Bolingbroke, he now turns into a guilt-wracked Henry IV, ever conscious that he seized the throne by force. Yet, although first seen at prayer in penitent’s gown, Troughton’s king is still a brutal pragmatist who seeks to pre-empt rebellion by squashing his fractious nobles.72

  The opening is heavy with brooding anger, even melancholy…Power may be coveted; you may cheat, lie, manipulate, even kill for it; but when it is yours it can become a burden, a prison of responsibility…[Troughton’s] huge body suggests both brute force and vulnerability. The king is not at ease with himself…loyalties come at a heavy price. And over all this hangs Henry’s guilt about the murder of his predecessor, the deposed Richard.73

  5. David Troughton as King Henry IV “believes himself cursed by his sin of regicide” in Michael Attenborough’s 2000 RSC production.

  Having achieved power he believes himself cursed by his sin of regicide. If the king is God’s emissary on earth, to kill the king is an act against God:

  Once he gets the crown, things start to go wrong politically and personally. The guilt has started to eat away at him; it’s as though the year that elapses between the plays has hugely changed him. The fulfilment of that one aim of getting the crown was one thing; keeping it is quite another, for once you’ve got it, the only thing to do with it is to stop anyone else getting it.74

  In a very different reading of the part, Julian Glover’s Henry in Part I “was neither infirm nor tired, as so often he has been played, but firmly in control of the political world”:75

  When Glover is present there is no doubt where the power lies, and the daring and monstrosity of the challenge against him is palpable. There is a strong sense of personal ambition and vanity in these confrontations, but essentially they are about political power: great impersonal imperatives which command a man’s will and demand his self-sacrifice.76

  Until struck down with a heart spasm in his moment of victory, he plays with undiminished power throughout: curtly disdainful to Owen Teale’s hulking Hotspur, releasing thunderbolts of majestic wrath against Hal, and a match for Angus Wright’s fire-breathing Douglas on the battlefield.77

  [Julian Glover] is like some stern, unforgiving Old Testament patriarch who provokes rebellion by his curt dismissal of the Percys and who alienates his son by treating him as a recalcitrant hooligan. It is a marvellous portrait of a frosty spirit incapable of warmth.78

  The qualities of kingship are constantly discussed or displayed by various characters in the play, as if Shakespeare were asking us, What makes a king? The influence of Falstaff, Hotspur, and Henry offers Hal life’s alternatives from which he must choose and discard in his preparation for the throne.

  Hotspur so impresses his elders because he embodies the idea of chivalric honor, an exalted view of warfare and armed conflict that is tried and tested on the battlefield. Combining the qualities of military skill and political power, matched with a single-minded determination to promote the rebels’ cause, Hotspur drives much of the main plot and is admired by all, despite his occasional outbursts. Although historically older than Hal, Shakespeare makes him a peer to establish a direct rivalry between the two men, especially in Henry’s conception of the ideal son. If, as Montaigne suggests, “The reputation and worth of a man consisteth in his heart and will; therein lies true honour”79 rather than in martial prowess, we can see that Hotspur and Hal are on opposite sides of this maxim. Contrary to Hal, in Hotspur’s attractive arrogance we can see the essence of an unbending spirit, especially in the scene with his wife.

  In 1964, Roy Dotrice’s Hotspur, although capturing his usual inextinguishable humor and vitality, in the words of the Times’ reviewer, had “the mentality of an amiable psychopath.”80 The scene with Lady Percy took the form of rough foreplay, with “husband and wife pushing over, kissing, tumbling, wrapping-up, kneeling astride or lying on top.”81 In this very antiheroic production, Hotspur’s death was in keeping with Dotrice’s interpretation and the mood of the production. At war with Hal, he was in his element. Flying at him with a huge sword, laughing aloud, Hotspur’s sword jammed into the side of a horse trough, Hal got in quickly to stab him under the ribs. “Hotspur’s…violent death-throes…robbed his death of the last shred of heroic dignity.”82 “Lowering him, dying, into the trough Hal delivered his line ‘For worms, brave Percy’ [5.3.88]. Now he was dead; and curiously, the man who remained alive seemed to have no zest for life at all.”83

  In 1982, Timothy Dalton’s Hotspur emerged

  not as a contrast but as a parallel. The warm-hearted side of him was played down, and replaced by moodiness. Many of his more “poetic” lines were cut. His impulsiveness was much like Hal’s own. In the first scene with his wife, he knelt, reading, as his wife came creeping downstairs. Played by Harriet Walter as a very submissive lady, she crouched beside him. The two figures became, suddenly, two people talking about their marriage. They looked grim and lugubrious. Hotspur jumped up, to call for his horse. Lady Percy followed, attempting playfully to wheedle his secrets out of him. Quite suddenly he turned on her. The line, “Away, you trifler” was delivered with ferocious force. When he said, “I care not for thee, Kate,” there was no doubt that he meant it. If at the end he relented, holding out a hand to her which eventually she took, the patching-up of their marriage was only temporary.84

  Honor at the expense of the personal, or personal life at the expense of honor? Is there any way that a man in power can maintain a life of duty and keep intact his humanity? Key to Hal’s education, and a central concern of Shakespeare’s in many plays, is this understanding of “honour.” On discussing his portrayal of Falstaff in 2000, Desmond Barrit pointed to this questioning nature of the play in his performance of the famous soliloquy:

  I used to play the “honour” soliloquy as a sort of dialogue with the audience, with them asking the questions: “Can honour set to a leg?,” and Falstaff replies “No”; “Or an arm?,” and Falstaff replies “No”; “Or take away the grief of a wound?,” and again he replies “No” [5.1.131–3]. Falstaff is placing himself, I think, as an intermediary between the war and the audience, forcing them to wonder why men go to war at all, asking, and answering, the questions that are in their minds.85

  The effectiveness of this delivery was picked up on by most reviewers, and was an appropriately serious reading for the end of the twentieth century: “His beautiful delivery of the famous ‘honour’ speec
h here becomes a totally persuasive indictment of the hallow, macho posturing of war.”86

  The question as to whether Hal truly learns the lessons offered by both court and tavern is best discussed in the representation of the prince in Henry IV Part II: “Hal must learn to exercise authority with integrity. In Part I, this is the path Hal successfully finds for himself, on the way losing nothing in his admiration for Hotspur’s shining example and learning something of the warmth of humanity from Falstaff and his cronies.”87

  Despite the upbeat nature of the ending of Part I, productions often suggest a certain ambiguity as to Hal’s assumption of kingly behavior. What has he learned from these diverse parental figures that will make him a better king? The various workings of the father–son relationship demonstrate the battle in Hal to find a true path to kingship. Hal proves, as he said he would in the “I know you all” speech (1.2.175–97), his abilities to his father and the officials of the court. However, his education is at an early stage. For Shakespeare, honor and integrity do not come from wielding a sword, and Hal has his most difficult of battles yet to face. Only when fathers are lost and cast aside will we see the emergence of the man who will be king.

  THE ACTOR’s VOICE AND THE DIRECTOR’s CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH MICHAEL PENNINGTON, ADRIAN NOBLE, AND MICHAEL BOYD

  Michael Pennington, born in 1943, was brought up in London and read English at Cambridge University. While at university he appeared with the National Youth Theatre. He went on to join the RSC, playing small parts in The Wars of the Roses directed by Peter Hall (1964). He has since returned to the RSC on many occasions, playing Angelo in Measure for Measure (1974), Edgar in King Lear (1976), Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost (1978), Hamlet (1980), and Timon in Timon of Athens (2000). He has numerous radio and television parts to his credit, as well as film roles. He has written books on acting Shakespeare and Chekhov. In 1986 he and Michael Bogdanov founded the English Shakespeare Company (ESC), dedicated to taking Shakespeare to new audiences. Their inaugural production, The Henrys, comprising the two parts of Henry IV plus Henry V, in which he played Prince Hal/King Henry V, was enormously successful. Richard II, the three Henry VI plays, and Richard III were subsequently added, and their Wars of the Roses toured the world to great acclaim. He launched his one-man show, Sweet William, about Shakespeare’s life and writing and his own relationship with those works, in 2006. He talks here both about playing the part of Hal and about wider aspects of the ESC staging of the two parts.