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 Henry IV Part I and Part II 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 andPart 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’s Falstaff was:
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 Disease of the Body Politic
The plays of Henry IV are pervaded by a sense of national disintegration—the curse on the usurper Bullingbrook for the sacrilegious act of usurping and killing a king by divine right, Richard II. Part I ends with the possibility of hope, of triumph for Henry and his seemingly reclaimed son. From the start of Part II, however, we are aware of a very different tone. The old England is dying—at court, tavern, and on the battlefield:
The second part of Henry IV presents actors with the difficulty of keeping up the theatrical energy through what is, in effect, one long “dying scene.” There is a sense of the characters being all covered in cobwebs and disease, saying the same sorts of things as they said in Part One, but now it’s all falling on deaf ears. They are all older now, the country is going down in wrack and ruin, and the king is going with it.40
When thi
nking of Henry IV Part II, the words of another of Shakespeare’s sacrilegious usurpers come to mind:
There’s nothing serious in mortality.
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.(Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 1)
What emerges in twentieth-century productions is an emphasis on this melancholic, elegiac aspect of the play, showing how it pervades all levels of society. The decay of the country stems from the top, the king’s illness and his lack of a reliable heir to the throne in Hal, and displays itself in lawlessness:
In Part Two, the whole country is afflicted by a mortal sickness. The London streets are filled with lawless mobs and unruly carnivals;…This is an England turbulent with decay…in which disease spreads through the whole body politic.41
The three contrasting worlds of court, rebel camp and tavern run throughout both plays; they interlock dramatically and offer a panoramic view of the state of the country. As a national epic, the plays link high and low life, and their engagement with the condition of England provides great scope for directors and designers.42
It is notable that the two parts of Henry IV have not been radically reconceptualized by the RSC. Even in 2000, Henry IV’s traditional setting was sandwiched in between two thoroughly modern representations of Richard II and Henry V. The modernization of the play happens mainly in the representation of the characters. In postwar Britain, the ideal of chivalric death in battle had died out after two bloody world wars. The jingoism of the 1950s had evaporated by the 1960s and a new skeptical generation emerged, unconvinced by their politicians, and doubtful about the necessity for a monarchy at all. Henry IV therefore does not particularly lend itself to a modern setting, as the England represented in the play appears a long distant memory. This fact, especially in Part II—which contains so much dialogue evoking thoughts of days gone by, of pleasures experienced, but lost—often leads directors to add a feeling of nostalgia to productions, evoked by autumnal imagery. Mirroring the atmosphere and themes of the play, that time of the year when life in nature begins to die reflects the death of the “old order.” In 1964, Peter Hall used this autumnal metaphor to great effect:
Mr Hall has a clear preference for autumn over the other seasons of the year…The play itself is autumnal. The leaves are falling, and on all sides life is coming to an end. The King is dying, his conscience incurably sick and his crusade only metaphorically achieved. Falstaff is ageing, his wit not quite what it has been, and his body—like Doll Tearsheet’s—is diseased…Where honour is in question, it is now six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. Old Double is dead, and the apples are ripening in the straw. Lancastrian England is sick with internal division, and there is no longer a chivalry to divide. It is crying out for new blood, even if more blood must be spilt to acquire it. Peace will be dearly bought, and it will not last for long. More will be required than two chantries, a hospice, and an agonized prayer before a battle to exorcise the curse of regicide.43
In the second part the tone darkens into elegy, and so far as the comic scenes are concerned the result is pure gain, for without some such deliberate change in mood the later revels can appear as mere echoes of their counterparts in the first play. As it is, they sometimes develop an almost Chekhovian atmosphere; there is a sense that time is running out and that the best days are already past.44
As these reviews of Peter Hall’s production indicate, Henry IV Part II has lent itself to Chekhovian interpretation. The characters walk a tightrope at all times, with farcical, absurdist comedy on the one side and abject tragedy on the other. The passage of time is a constant preoccupation, as is the desultory and unsuccessful search for life’s meaning. The play has an emphasis on moments of epiphany and illumination, a demand for psychological realism, and melancholy surrender to inevitability.
The work of Bertolt Brecht also proved a source of inspiration for Hall. In examining the brutal mechanics of power that moved behind Shakespeare’s history plays, Hall also laid special emphasis on the social detail, showing the effect that politics have on the ordinary people who inhabit this world:
The allegorical figure of Rumour was turned into the realistic figure of a maimed soldier, but Henry Knowles’ snarling performance and the uncannily successful echoic effects restored the symbolic quality.45
What the Royal Shakespeare’s producing triumvirate—Peter Hall, John Barton, Clifford Williams—have done is to turn the Histories into Brecht. Again and again, as unshaven, carefully muddied soldiery pulled their little canteen-wagons into stark, straw-strewn farmyards, I looked for Mother Courage to follow with her children. The result is impressive in many respects. It rationalises and humanises those miles of blank verse, explaining, motivating, lending historical and psychological solidity.46
This Brechtian element was also present in the performance of Ian Holm, who played Hal. He appeared to many reviewers to take on Brecht’s idea of actors alienating themselves from rather than inhabiting their roles. In doing so he created a coldly analytic Hal, an observer taking part, rather than engaged in the action of the play. He was criticized by many reviewers for his reading of the part, but several others thought that this style of acting suited Hal’s character, who does indeed appear manipulative, cold, and disengaged at times, and who remains an enigma.
Terry Hands in 1975 took on the Brechtian level of social detail and successfully evoked the epic nature of Henry IV Part II by his inventive symbolism:
it brings the best out of Terry Hands, whose direction expresses a joy in the sheer diversity of experience. He is not out to disclose any grand design, but to show all kinds of unconnected things happening simultaneously; and he shows his hand immediately by casting the Rumour Prologue for a chorus of hooded figures who then disperse into separate characters. What most holds the production together is its sense of time. It is divided between past and future, looking back regretfully to the straight heroics and gaiety of Part One, and forward to the new age which will follow the king’s death. Rightly, the Eastcheap scenes are played as an elegiac echo.47
One curious trait in Hands’s directorial character is that when he faces scenes which require plain, even pedantic, storytelling, he has a tendency to get bored with them and to stray into ornate symbolism…he presents us with some extraordinary images. The regional rebels cluster like black ravens, to pick the carcass of a king (and a kingdom) who is by no means dead. When Hal is crowned, Hands lays a glistening white carpet across the stage with the courtiers lined up one side and Falstaff’s friends roughly gathered on the other. Then Hal appears, covered from nose to toenail in gleaming gold. He walks downstage, to RSC trumpets, and raises his golden visor to speak to Falstaff: and reject him.48
In an episodic play that covers the whole gamut of society—from court, to tavern, to rural Gloucestershire, to the battlefield—a strong directorial vision and an excellent designer are needed to hold the strands of the play together in a unified way that doesn’t detract from the variety of tone. Adrian Noble’s production in 1991 had a versatile staging which:
heighten[ed] the play’s wide variety of tones, from the grim Expressionist intensity with which the whole milling cast deliver Rumour’s many tongued Prologue, through the many sight-gags which erupt round Albie Woodington’s crazed leather bike-boy of a Pistol in the Eastcheap scenes, to the elegiac rhythms of Shallow’s misty, autumnal Gloucestershire, with its slow-motion apple pickers and beekeepers. In a dream-like, non-naturalistic touch, the corpse of Henry is borne offstage through this last landscape, suggesting that none of the play’s seemingly separate worlds has been immune to the infection of his reign.49
This production achieved cohesion of setting and tone by having Henry IV wander through the worlds of his realm in different states of being. Thus:
the King delivers his great speech on the sleepless cares of majesty not from within the Palace of Westminster but while wandering like his own t
roubled ghost, through the darkened tavern at Eastcheap, to which his insomniac thoughts appear literally to have conveyed him. He sits down frailly in the armchair vacated only moments before by Falstaff on his way out to a night of pleasure with Doll Tearsheet. Around him, the disarrayed furniture betokens the riots and revels from which, as monarch, he is by definition excluded. It offers a haunting image of the emotional isolation which is one of the costs of kingship.50
FOR LAUGHTER FRAMES THE LIPS OF DEATH51
This is in many ways a twilight play: its characters are stalked by death, betrayal and disappointment.
—John Peter52
For a play, which deals with such melancholy themes, there is a tangible poignancy evoked by its comedic aspects. Where Part I offered a brightness and energy in the characters outside the court and the influence of Henry IV, in Part II there is a diminished joy, and a darkening in the laughter of the audience. This is nowhere more evident than in the Gloucestershire scenes where Silence and Shallow provide the most plangent and uproariously funny parts of this play, and Falstaff reveals a darker, melancholic side to his character.
In 1964, these scenes were played too darkly for the critics’ tastes as they adjusted to modern cynicism infiltrating productions. Hugh Griffith, who played Falstaff, was considered definitive in his day. He surprised critics when, in Part II, he gave us “an ageing Falstaff whose interior gaiety, if he ever had any, is stilled by the thought of the grave”:53
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