Henry IV, Part I – William Shakespeare, c. 1597 ★★★★½

A Prince by any Other Name

There is a Shakespeare quote that springs to mind when reading Henry IV, Part I, but not from that play. Rather, it’s from As You Like It.

“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…”

In Henry IV, Part I, that man is Prince Henry, heir to the throne held by our title character. The Prince will play many parts in the course of his career, most notably two he develops in tandem here: a dissolute ruffian inspired by his friendship with the disgraced Sir John Falstaff; and a bold knight modeled on Hotspur, who leads an army against his father.

Young Henry is that consummate opportunist known in politics as a shapeshifter, cultivating Falstaff as surrogate father figure while ultimately pinning his future on becoming a smarter, steadier version of Hotspur. 

His game plan, he explains, is to set a low bar:

PRINCE HENRY

So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off. [Act I, scene ii, lines 202-209]

Antony Sher as Falstaff and Alex Hassell as Prince Henry in a 2016 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henry IV, Part I. Photo by Kevin Dobson from https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/shakespeare-s-400th-anniversary-celebrating-heroism-debauchery-and-unsparing-human-truths-a6921571.html.

Henry IV Pt. 1, one of Shakespeare’s greatest successes in his lifetime, remains robustly popular to this day. But each century, taking its lead from Prince Henry, has had its own version of what it is about.

For Elizabethans, it was Falstaff and his merry pranks. For the 18th century, it was Hotspur and his proud nobility. More recently, the pendulum has swung back to Falstaff, but now as avatar of relativism who understands man’s place in an uncaring cosmos:

FALSTAFF

What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What
is that honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No.
Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism. [V, i, l. 133-140]

Many would call this Shakespeare’s greatest history play. It’s not my favorite (Richard III is) but wow, this is one of the best rides the Bard ever put us on; bouncing us across social orders, serving up comedy and drama in equally accomplished parts.

William Elsman as Hotspur and Grant Goodman as Prince Henry are locked in combat in the play's climax in a 2007 Marin Shakespeare Company production. Image from https://www.marinshakespeare.org/behind-the-scenes-2007/henry-iv-part-1-2007-production/.

This play is a direct sequel from Richard II, which had set up the dilemma of this play’s title character, and fourth male lead, Henry IV, known then as Bolingbroke. Because he overthrew Richard II and in the process broke the lawful line of succession to the British throne, Henry finds his kingdom rapidly falling apart. With everything now up for grabs, nobles who once helped him dispatch Richard now gun for him.

These nobles include Hotspur, who dubs his king “this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke” after the latter demands some rebels Hotspur captured in battle. Spurred on by his father and uncle, Hotspur becomes a rebel himself. Soon he is leading an army of Scots and Welshmen against his former monarch.

King Henry is furious, but who is to blame? He opened the door for overthrowing rulers and now must deal with contenders closer in ancestry to Richard II than he. Prince Henry, ever the pragmatist, gets this, and tells us his game plan in advance: of “breaking through the foul and ugly mists/Of vapors that did seem to strangle him [I, ii, l. 196-197],” those surrounding his father and the crown. In order to confer a political legitimacy he can not gain from his sullied father, he will remake himself as a right bastard.

Which is where Falstaff comes in. Shakespeare’s most famous character from this play dominates his scenes with low comedy. He’s not as critical to the action of Henry IV, Part I as Prince Henry or Hotspur, but makes a strong impression with his knockabout antics and his merry if jet-black view of how the world works.

Falstaff (John Ahlin) brags of a daring robbery he (falsely) claims to have executed in a 2012 Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey production. Photo by Gerry Goodstein from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/nyregion/a-review-of-henry-iv-part-1-at-the-shakespeare-theater-of-new-jersey.html.

So we watch Falstaff attempt to rob a king’s money train, dodge bills, and take advantage of all who are poorer of wit and purse than himself. In response to Hotspur’s civil war, he conscripts a motley troop of poverty-stricken soldiers. Prince Henry dubs them “pitiful rascals,” which Falstaff shrugs off:

FALSTAFF

Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food
for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better:
tush, man, mortal men, mortal men. [IV, ii, l. 64-66]

Falstaff is being used himself, nearly as ruthlessly, by Prince Henry. Is it because Falstaff, though a fellow noble, affords young Hal a useful window on how the other half lives? Or is something in Falstaff’s antic, catch-as-catch-can spirit useful to the heir, once Harry is able to filter out the baser, more wantonly selfish elements?

Henry is after all a prince with designs to preside in court, and not a tavern. With this in mind, he sets his sights on acquiring the traits of the play’s other main character, Hotspur.

There is a scene where Hotspur finds himself prepared for battle near Shrewsbury, seriously outnumbered but game for a fight. No matter; Hotspur assures his troops they are better off for their lack of numbers:

HOTSPUR

I rather of his absence make this use:
It lends a lustre and more great opinion, 

A larger dare to our great enterprise,
Than if the earl were here; for men must think,
If we without his help can make a head.
To push against a kingdom, with his help
We shall o’erturn it topsy-turvy down. [IV, i, l. 76-82]

Hotspur met his end at the Battle of Shrewsbury when he was struck in the head by an arrow, as depicted in this 1910 illustration by Richard Caton Woodville Jr. In the play, it is Prince Henry himself who delivers the deathblow. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shrewsbury.

It’s not just Hotspur at Shrewsbury we hear here, but Henry himself in a later play, raised to the throne as Henry V and addressing “we happy few, we band of brothers” at Agincourt.

Hotspur is a magnificent model of knighthood in flower. He’s strong, brave, and self-confident, if sometimes to a fault. Early on, he endangers his new alliance with the Welsh blowhard Glendower when the latter brags about the mystical portents which accompanied his birth:

GLENDOWER

At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets, and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.

HOTSPUR
Why, so it would have done
At the same season if your mother’s cat
Had but kittened, though you yourself had never been born.

GLENDOWER
I say the earth did shake when I was born.

HOTSPUR
And I say the earth was not of my mind,
If you suppose as fearing you it shook. [III, i, l. 12-20]

In a 1784 painting by Henry Fuseli, a gesturing Glendower tells Hotspur he can "call spirits from the vasty deep." Hotspur's sardonic answer: "But will they come when you call for them?" Image from https://www.wikiart.org/en/henry-fuseli.

Hotspur scores his points and gets his laughs, but you can see why Prince Henry felt the need to simultaneously develop some social skills with Falstaff and company. You need both force of will and suavity to be a ruler; something Prince Henry is unique in understanding.

Falstaff’s antics have a certain grating quality about them; suggesting maybe the passage of time or else a subterranean subversive element of Shakespeare’s playcraft. Much of the humor is built around fat jokes made at Falstaff’s expense, sometimes by Falstaff himself but more often by Prince Henry, who enjoys insult humor as his target is not free to answer back in kind.

It isn’t Shakespeare’s most accessible comedy, reliant on a lot of wordplay. But the glimpses we get of lower-class tavern life feel amazingly authentic and alive despite the years, with minor characters getting their chances to make an impression amid the scrum.

The title page of a 1598 quarto of Henry IV, Part I, published at the height of its author's career, advertises the battle of Shrewsbury and "the humourous conceits of Sir John Falstaffe." Image from https://www.shakespearetheatre.org/watch-listen/playing-at-history/. 

I love the way the play moves from scene to scene, shifting from King Henry’s court to enemy encampments to the streets of London. Shakespeare makes it all very diverting, yet amid this kaleidoscope approach you feel the disparate elements Henry’s England of 1403 coming together in a way that remind you of the stakes involved.

In this way, Henry IV, Part I forms the pivot of the second Henriad, which begins with Richard II and continues with Henry IV, Part II and Henry V, examining the tricky question of how divine right and popular will intersect when it comes to ruling over a state. That it does so while managing to be so entertaining demonstrates both Shakespeare’s enduring greatness and the daunting complexity of medieval politics. A great play both for what it says by itself and how it connects to the rest of this epic drama.