I spent a good deal of space in my write-up of the BBC’s 1979 version of Henry IV Part 1 to the much more recent and expensive The Hollow Crown. It wasn’t a fair comparison for a number of reasons, but given I use The Hollow Crown in class quite a bit, it was a natural one I couldn’t help making in my head.
Well, that won’t be happening for this installment because, well, there isn’t much that anyone can do to make Henry IV Part 2 all that good. More on that below.
Notable cast members: Anyone whose character survived Part 1 is back for Part 2, so there isn’t much to add here. There is one somewhat noteworthy addition in the form of Robert Eddison in for Falstaff frenemy Justice Shallow. His best known role was probably the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Trivia: Like Part 1, this one starts with some short scenes from the previous part as well as Richard II.
The play: OK, so, maybe I was a bit harsh on this play in my introduction, but truthfully, this one plays out like a lot of modern day sequels. Everything people liked about the first one was repeated, only bigger. That means there are a lot of scenes of Falstaff being Falstaff, pulling cons and tossing back jokes and insults with his gang, particularly with newcomer Shallow. Oddly enough, he only has two scenes with Prince Hal, and the second one is the end of the play, when Hal, newly crowned King Henry V, banishes Falstaff from his company forever.
Falstaff, being Falstaff, doesn’t believe it for a second.
But as for the rest of the play, it’s very haphazard. As I said, there’s a lot of repetition from the first part. The Prince is screwing around and that worries the King. We get speeches from Hotspur’s surviving family, the civil war drags on though there are no battles depicted in this play, and people worry what kind of king Prince Hal will be, though this time we actually have people defending the prince’s actions to his father.
And that isn’t to say there aren’t good or noteworthy scenes in the play. For controversy, Prince Hal’s younger brother John arranges for some rebels to disband their armies under the promise of amnesty or something only to immediately arrest and execute the men as soon as their armies are dispersed, a highly dishonorable action. John will grow up to be the Duke of Bedford, a man who would rival his brother Henry as a battlefield commander in France. And I will admit I enjoy a scene where King Henry IV falls asleep next to his crown, and Hal, seeing his dying father, opts to try the crown on for size to get a feel for the weight of it, the full responsibility hitting him all at once. Hal then forgets to remove the crown and wanders off, dejected, and his father wakes up to completely misinterpret his son’s motives before calming down.
And, of course, we have the final scene where the new Henry V banishes his tavern friends, never to see or acknowledge them again.
But for such a messy play, was there anything worthy mentioning? Actually, yes, Anthony Quayle’s Falstaff is still a delight, and the tears rolling down his cheeks when Hal finally rejects him are earned. Sure, he was looking like a fool up to that point and he was deluding himself if he thought he really was going to have a nice position in court, but that doesn’t make the way the prince used the old man any less heartbreaking.
And then he immediately assumes he’ll be summoned later. He isn’t, of course, but he assumes he will be. Shakespeare seems to have assumed as much as well. This play does have an epilogue that promises the story would continue with King Henry V in France, wooing a French princess, and that Sir John would be there. Two-thirds of that statement would be true. Falstaff dies off-stage between scenes in the first Act of Henry V, casting a long shadow over the early scenes. But for now, he gets to fool around some more in a series of scenes that almost seem like they came from a different play.
Grade: This may be a weak play compared to the other History plays in this cycle, but it’s far from Shakespeare’s worst. There are still some good scenes and speeches, most notably Hal’s banishing of Falstaff at the end. But it’s still something of a mess. C+
Next: Well, obviously the next one would be Henry V. The BBC was on a roll at this point.
0 Comments