A the school I work for, I try to give my students a few Shakespeare plays every year, and quite frankly, Henry IV Part 1 almost always goes over well. My students are inclined towards the military (without saying where exactly I work), and many of them come from backgrounds that make them all new to military life. I like to compare them to Prince Hal, a youth more inclined to goof off and party with bad influences who, by the end of the play, has become a responsible leader of men into battle and a war hero. My students usually appreciate that.
For me, I think this one might be the best of Shakespeare’s history plays, and considering it gave the world Sir John Falstaff, it may be the least historically accurate of the various histories.
Notable cast members: For the most part, we don’t have too many recognizable faces in this crowd. Jon Finch returns to continue the role of King Henry IV, and actor David Gwillim comes on board to play Prince Hal/Henry V in this and the next two plays. On the other hand, onetime Oscar nominee Anthony Quayle is on-hand to play Falstaff. Quayle earned that nomination for playing Cardinal Wolsey in Anne of a Thousand Days, and he has a rather impressive film resume, so even if his name doesn’t ring any bells, he sure as heck has what is probably a familiar face.
Trivia: There isn’t much to say about this particular production for trivia. I can toss off a few points about the play itself. While Falstaff is a completely fictional character, evidence suggests he may have originally held the name of someone who wasn’t, a man named Sir John Oldcastle who ended up executed for heresy. He had some still-living family around then, and they weren’t happy, so Shakespeare changed the character’s name. Likewise, though the play posits Prince Hal and Hotspur as being roughly the same age, in reality, Hotspur was something like 17 years older than Hal, and the real Hotspur had even trained Hal in combat before turning rebel. Finally, while the play shows the prince’s antics causing personal embarrassment for the king, in reality, the disputes between the two were likely political, and as anyone who’s seen the Star Wars prequels will tell you, those are far less interesting than other forms of conflict.
The play: Yeah, as much as I love this play and have no real issue with this production, I’ve also seen and used as a teaching tool the much more recent, much more extravagant TV mini-series The Hollow Crown, and while Finch and Gwillim are fine in their respective roles, they aren’t Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston. And for all that the tavern in Eastcheap looks like a pleasant place to hang your hat, for budgetary reasons, there aren’t a lot of people in there. I know it isn’t fair to compare the big budget Hollow Crown to this less expensive BBC production, but I’m only human and the differences show.
Likewise, the raging of Hotspur seems a lot more sedate here than it does in Hollow Crown. I’ve seen Hollow Crown‘s first hour or so to know many of the lines, and hearing Tim Pigott-Smith’s Hotspur lose his temper, all I could think was Joe Armstrong sounded a hell of a lot angrier.
That said, I think this version may have a stronger Falstaff. Simon Russle Beale in Hollow Crown is fine, but something about Quayle really puts this production into something really good. He addresses the camera more than once, and there’s a certain twinkle in his eye as he goes about misbehaving and being the comedic drunk that he is. He looks like, even if the character isn’t, he himself is having a really good time with the role. A good Falstaff will make or break any production of this play, and if nothing else, he’s a downright great Falstaff.
As for the rest, it does hold with the general aesthetic of these productions. This seems to be the first one to try to depict a battle scene, and it goes OK, with men in shadows running past a camera to a fight off-screen somewhere, and while it may not be a big, impressive battle, it is a big impression of a battle, and I’m fine with that. The BBC made these to show off the Shakespeare, and not their fight choreography. While I may have mentally been comparing it to the Hollow Crown series, that doesn’t mean this wasn’t the best adaptation thus far.
Grade: OK, as much as the crowd scenes seemed less crowded, I really liked this one. A.
Next: Apparently, the BBC opted to finish off the second of those history cycles because the next two plays are the next two plays in the series. That means up next is Henry VI Part 2.
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