Baker, Herschel. Intro. 1 and 2 Henry IV by William Shakespeare. Riverside Shakespeare (842-846).

(excerpted by Clifford Stetner)

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In the long arch of the second tetralogy—that serial presentation of early fifteenth century history from the deposition of Richard II to the glittering triumphs of Henry V—these plays are made to bear the central thrust of action and of theme.  As they trace the slow and ultimately successful efforts of the Lancastrian usurper to secure his hold upon the throne, they also trace the preparation of his son for the duties he must learn to bear, and these two lines of plot converge to underscore the massive central them: the sources, uses, and responsibilities of power.

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Part 2 has no such record of popularity.  Following its entry in the Stationers’ Register on August 23, 1600, and its quarto publication soon thereafter, The Second Part of Henry the Fourth was not reprinted until the Folio…

Evidence of one species of revision may be discerned in Hal’s allusion (Part 1, I.ii.41) to “my old lad of the castel” and in the speech-prefix “Old.” (Part 2, I.ii.120), which show that Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle after the corresponding character in The Famous Victories of Henry the Fift, an old play  that was one of Shakespeare’s sources.  In what seems to be an addition to the epilogue of Part 2 (lines 26-34) Shakespeare is careful to dissociate the historical Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham—a notorious Lollard who had been executed for heresy in 1417 and had come to be regarded as a martyr—from the fat knight of the play.

…Sir John Oldcastle, a collaboration by Drayton, Munday, Wilson, and Hathaway that was acted in 1599 and printed in 1600.  “it is no pampered glutton we present,” the authors of this rival play explained,

Nor aged counselor to youthful sin,

But one whose virtue shone above the rest

A valiant martyr and a virtuous peer.

[deference to William Brook Lord Cobham]

…Harvey and Russell (preserved in the quartos at Part 1, I.ii.162 and Part 2, II.ii. o.s.d.) to Peto and Bardolph for a similar reason.

As in Daniel’s Civil Wars (1595ff.) which Shakespeare almost surely knew and drew upon, these telescopings and distortions give shape and speed and moral meaning to Holinshed’s inept narration; and just as they lead us to view Henry’s reign as one of urgent and successive perils and as a drawn-out act of penance for the crime of usurpation, so Shakespeare’s juggling with the ages and the motives of his characters serves the other, cognate theme of Prince Hal’s preparation for the awful burden of the crown…sixteen at Shrewsbury…Hotspur… thirty-nine in 1403…

…valor of Prince John… remorseful Henry’s hope of leading a crusade to the holy Land … uxorious Mortimer and his lovesick wife… incisive Lady Percy … “extraordinary” Glendower …worked up from the merest hints in Holinshed.

…Tito Livio’s quasi-official Vita Henrici Quinti…

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[anon] … The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth …reported version of a more substantial two-part play.  This knockabout farce presents the basic plot and almost all the episodes that Shakespeare reconstructed for his vastly different purposes: the wild young prince who, in consort with a pack of low companions named Sir John Oldcastle, Tom, and Ned, commits a robbery at Gadshill, frequents an Eastcheap dive, and runs afoul the Lord chief Justice before he is reconciled with this dying father, rejects his former cronies, and emerges as the valiant king who conquers France and takes its princess as his bride.  Shakespeare’s use of this material in a work ostensibly devoted to the politics of Henry IV’s reign was a stunning innovation, for by the introduction of a low-life comic element he achieved a counterpoint… We move back and for the … from bold exploits and valor to chicanery and crime, from verse to prose.

…facile patriotism of Henry VI, the dark, pervasive evil of Richard III, the rhetorical excesses of King John, and the univocal lyricism of Richard II yield to life itself, and as a result Henry IV, in its vitality and variety… triumph of the form.

…each scene pushes hard upon the next

…  persistent duality is the basic principle of organization.

… politics and folly…King and the court …Prince and the tavern

…King and Falstaff are aligned… to Hal… convention, duty, and control… disorder, crime, and license.

…Hal and Hotspur… corresponding but contrasting

…Hal and Henry… youth and age…

…Falstaff and the Lord Chief Justice… “riot” and law…

…Hotspur and Falstaff … “honor” and total lack of it.

… comic and serious… provide relief …

…sometimes parallel ….Henry’s scheme to meet the troubles in the north (Part 1, I.i) is matched by Hal’s and Falstaff’s preparations of the Gadshill escapade (Part1, I.ii)…

… sometimes antithetical …Prince’s lethargy and indeision (Part 1, I.ii) are set against the fiery Hotspur’s zeal… (Part 1, I.iii)…

…Falstaff, with a jointstool for a throne, a leaden dagger for a scepter, and apillow for his crown… (Part 1, II.iv) just as King Henry, though in avery different style, reproves him later … (Part 1, III.ii; Part 2, Iv.v)

…sometimes…juxtaposed, sometimes widely spaced.

…Vernon’s stirring news about King Henry’s forces as they advance upon the foe

All furnish’d, all in arms;

All plum’d like estridges that with the wind

Bated, like eagles having lately bath’d;

Glittering in golden coats, like images’

As full of spirit as the month of May

And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;

Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls,

(Part 1, Iv.i.97-103)

…we hear Falstaff describe his ragged troop as “a commodity of warm slaves” so disreputable that he cannot bring himself to march with them.

The ceremonial parley before Shrewsbury (Part 1, V.i)… Falstaff left alone upon the stage to jeer at honor as a “mere scutcheon”

…Prince’s valediction to the “great heart” he has slain, yield to the sight of Falstaff stabbing Hotspur’s corpse…

…greater interval… rebels’ high-flown quarrel about the booty… (Part 1, II.i) and Falstaff’s fracas with the Hostess… (Part 2, II.i), or Hotspur’s farewell to his lively Kate (Part 1, II.i) and Falstaff’s to his drunken Doll (Part 2, II.iv)… polyphonic structure.

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Viewed from Eastcheap, however, Henry is a different man…

Hal and Hotspur are subjected to the same incessant contrapuntal presentation.

…Hotspur, for all his bravado, wit, and charm… is a danger to the state and to the heir apparent and therefore his destruction at the hands of Hal—the seeming wastrel…

Falstaff…since the eighteenth century he has probably prompted more discussion than anyone but Hamlet…

…Vice of the morality play, the braggart soldier of Roman comedy, the witty parasite, and the Fool as liberator… complex genealogy…

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Like Hotspur, then, for  a very different reason, Falstaff is a threat that Hal must meet and overcome before he earns the right to power, and therefore his rejection, so necessary and painful, is the moral climax of these plays.

It is the price that greatness pays for power.