Certainly you see Shakespeare reacting to the success of his first Henry IV play by giving audiences more of the same. More rebel plotting, more Prince Henry antagonizing the squares, and especially more hijinks from Sir John Falstaff, who proved a comic sensation in his debut.
The structure even mirrors the first play, with a lead-up to a big battle, protracted and merry side business involving Falstaff, and a final reconciliation between the Prince and his father, Henry IV.
In the previous installment, Henry IV, Part I, we waited to see if Prince Hal would shake Falstaff’s corrupting influence and prove worthy of the throne. In Part II the question remains.
This time, we don’t see much of them together. While Prince Henry discusses his preparations for assuming the throne, Falstaff is being sued for breach of promise by Mistress Quickly, who let him not only sleep with her but borrow other valuables under the assumption he would somehow make good. Even a London sheriff can’t make that right.
 |
| Stacy Keach as Falstaff at left, with some of his gang, in a 2014 Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Henry IV, Part II. Keach, known for playing screen heavies, has also played Falstaff for many decades. He notes there used to be more makeup involved. Photo by Scott Suchman for https://www.washingtonpost.com/henry-iv-part-2-entertains-lavishly/2014/04/21/a06b6f9a-c977-11e3-b81a-6fff56bc591e_story.html. |
The action of their bodies from their souls;
And they did fight with queasiness, constrained,
As men drink potions, that their weapons only
Seemed on our side; but, for their spirits and souls,
This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond. [Act I, scene i, lines 194-200]
The opening words of the play are delivered not by a human at all, but rather “Rumour, painted full of tongues,” who introduces the proceedings by telling us nothing plays out as we expect. Sure enough, the first character we meet, Northumberland, spends much of his opening scene vows revenge for the killing of his son Hotspur, only to skedaddle by Act II and leave his allies in the lurch.
 |
| "Open your ears, for which of you will stop/The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?" The opening lines are delivered by this one-and-done metaphor for loose lips, painted here by Stanley Meltzoff. Image from https://www.silverfishpress.com/SM+Original+Art/id/30/gr_id/11/. |
Henry IV, Part II winds up being a more subtle if less accessible and driving production, hammering on this theme of faulty perceptions and how they can both create and block paths to power.
Prince Henry is revealed as a master of this game very early on in the play, discussing his heirship with his one true confidante, Poins. Hal finds himself in a tricky situation, needing to appear kingly and in control yet at the same time emotionally invested by a sudden decline in his father’s health. He coolly tells Poins he will aim for the former.
PRINCE HENRY
By this hand thou thinkest me as far in the devil’s
book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and
persistency. Let the end try the man. But I tell
thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is
so sick. [II, ii, l. 44-48]
 |
| To what extent Prince Henry is intimidated by the prospect of kingship, and to what extent he is playing humble, is an open question. Here, Tom Hiddleston prepares for coronation as Hal in a 2012 BBC adaptation of the Henry plays, known as "The Hollow Crown." Image from https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/the-hollow-crow-7687. |
Before the scene is over, Prince Henry announces a new stratagem, playing waitstaff at Falstaff’s favorite tavern. For the audience, it’s a final chance to see Falstaff and Hal play together. For the prince, it’s practice for deeper games that lie ahead, “for in every thing the purpose must weigh with the folly.” [II, ii, l. 176]
The rebels have their own purposes and follies, but their illusions are gone. They have been brought down a lot from the spectacular crew that rose up against Henry IV in the first play. Instead of dynamic Hotspur or wild Glendower, you have the crafty but passionless Archbishop of York, who uses his religious office to give the rebellion a legitimacy it otherwise lacks. In reality, he and the other plotters are just trying to stave off the inevitable.
The play must burrow deeper into Falstaff’s demimonde to come up with new characters of interest. That it does so demonstrates Shakespeare’s commercial savvy as well as his inventiveness and investment in the lower classes. In Henry VI, Part II, we had Jack Cade’s Rebellion and “let’s kill all the lawyers.” This time the mob gets to have faces and feelings, not to mention a clear moral code.
 |
Falstaff enjoys the buxom companionship of Doll Tearsheet,
as depicted in this Eduard von Grützner illustration for Act II, scene iv. "Thou'lt forget me
when I'm gone," he tells her. Image from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV,_Part_2. |
FALSTAFF
The brain
of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not
able to invent anything that intends to
laughter, more
than I invent or is invented on me: I am not
only
witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in
other men. [I, ii, l. 7-11]
Which is very true here. The humor is broader and raunchier than it was in Part I, with Mistress Quickly introducing the line “Do me, do me, do me” into the Shakespeare oeuvre as well as a number of suggestive malaprops that offer an antecedent for Betty Slocombe in the British sitcom “Are You Being Served?”
MISTRESS QUICKLY
Alas the day! Take heed of him. He stabbed me in
mine own house, and that most beastly in good
faith, ’a cares not what mischief he does, if
his
weapon be out. He will foin like any devil; he will
spare neither man, woman, nor child. [II, i, l.
13-17]
One character that gets more attention in the sequel is our titular king. Henry IV should be better-pleased with his eldest son after the prince’s heroics at Shrewsbury, but instead he doubles down on his parental scorn. Perhaps that is why Prince Hal, despite talking about his sadness, is so dry-eyed about his father’s pending demise.
 |
| King Henry IV (Clive Wood) has a heart-to-heart about the heaviness of the crown with Prince Hal (Geoffrey Streatfeild) in a 2007 Royal Shakespeare Company production. He wishes to pass it on with "better opinion, better confirmation" than he himself enjoyed. Image from https://www.rsc.org.uk/henry-iv-part-ii/past-productions/key-moments. |
Harkening back to the issues of perception versus reality, we have in Henry IV an example of how image can be a difference-maker for the worse. He’s constantly aware of his shaky status as an usurper, famously noting: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” [III, i, l. 31], truer for him than most monarchs.
Like it was for the man he deposed, Richard II, self-pity is his most notable and annoying feature. He soliloquizes quite beautifully about how people in his country sleep easier in hovels than they do in palaces, but his carping and endless prattle about leading a crusade to Jerusalem to earn redemption shows just how much change is needed, which is what you get in the latter, tougher part of the play.
It is the last two acts alone that make Henry IV, Part II memorable. The first three acts are mostly Falstaff fan service and setting up the big reveals near the end, both of which serve the message of faulty perception we first heard delivered by Rumour in the Induction.
Not only are characters misled; so is the audience. We watch the rebels agree to a truce, only to be led off for execution as soon as they disband their forces. And we watch Henry finally tell Falstaff to drop dead after he vowed to do the same in Part I.
Both events are wins for the good guys, which renders the perception question more acute. How are we to be cheered by Prince Henry’s glorious ascension to the throne when our final image is of a crestfallen Falstaff trying to convince his followers (and himself) that all will somehow be alright despite their rejection by the new king?
The perception-vs.-reality theme comes up one last time, in Falstaff’s assurance to his fellows that “Look you, he must seem thus to the world” [V, v, l. 79]. But we feel the hollowness in those words.
 |
| One Henry IV Part I scene cloned in Part II is Falstaff conscripting recruits for the king's war. This scene, as engraved here by William Nelson Gardiner in 1792, is longer than the first one, and funnier, too; perhaps because the victims of Falstaff's draft this time won't actually die in combat. Image from https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/774305/ |
To be fair, we don’t feel bad for either the rebels or Falstaff. At least I don’t. The former are a band of self-interested misanthropes who engender no loyalty from either the population or one another. Seeing them served up the way they are is not disquieting at all by itself. But it does suggest just how well a cold-blooded duplicity can dictate matters of national interest.
“You are too shallow, Hastings, much too shallow,/To sound the bottom of the after-times” [IV, ii, l. 44-50] is how Prince Henry’s ruthless brother Prince John of Lancaster explains this to one of his future victims before sending him to the block.
Falstaff’s fall is even harder to begrudge, however entertaining his character. In his last moments before he gets taken away, we watch him plot all the crimes he will commit and the lawmen he will avenge himself upon. He even ironically lectures about corrupt influences:
FALSTAFFIt is certain that either wise bearing or
ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases,
one of another. Therefore let men take heed of
their company. [V, i, l. 77-80]
No comments:
Post a Comment