Henry IV in two parts on Salford Quays

Antony Sher as Falstaff

Youth and age, the passing of time, are among the themes in explored by Shakespeare in Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and watching Gregory Doran’s production for the RSC at the Lowry last week the decades slid away and I was a youth again, turning the pages of the play we studied for A-level, never imagining I could ever be as old as Falstaff or Justice Shallow.

Now freed from the chains of toil at desk or workbench, we can join the silver-haired throngs and spend an afternoon watching Part 1, and then see Part 2 in the evening. Seeing the plays back to back like this showed how much Shakespeare was on a roll: having kicked off his series about the rise of the House of Lancaster with Richard II in 1595, a year or so later, in Henry IV Part 1, he produced one of his most popular plays, introducing comic characters who reappeared in the equally successful sequels that followed in quick succession – Henry IV, Part 2 (1598) and Henry V (1599).

Both of the Henry IV plays mix  serious history and politics with riotous comedy in a way that has probably never been done so seamlessly and so successfully.  In fact, for most of us what lingers  after seeing these plays is the memory of the comedy scenes – and of the character of Falstaff in particular. Ever since their first performance, it has been the boisterous rowdiness of the tavern scenes presided over by that ‘ squire of the night’, that ‘sweet creature of bombast’ Falstaff that have won the hearts of audiences.

In this production Falstaff is played by Antony Sher – not a man of great stature – who is bulked up and padded out in a fat suit and enormous wig of white flowing locks. Sher’s movements are not only those of a fat man (there’s an hilarious moment on the battlefield when, legs waving in the air like a beetle, he struggles to get off his back), but also those of a gouty, arthritic old man.  Sher’s Falstaff enunciates his words with an educated precision and a throatiness that often sounded as if he was gargling. Sher delivers Falstaff’s lines in a manner that eliminates any sense that the fat man is at all lovable. Quite the opposite: Sher’s performance makes it abundantly clear that he is a schemer and a rapacious deceiver, every riposte and criticism answered with a sharp and deliberative wiliness. Not so ‘fat-witted’, then, but the ‘villainous abominable misleader of youth’ and ‘old white-bearded Satan’ that Prince Henry calls him.  This means that any sympathy you might feel for Falstaff when he delivers this speech is eliminated:

But to say I know more harm in him than in myself,
were to say more than I know. That he is old, the
more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but
that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster,
that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,
God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a
sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if
to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine
are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant,
being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him
thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s
company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

Falstaff is also quite clearly an alcoholic.  While there’s obviously a great deal of sack quaffed in Shakespeare’s text, Antony Sher gives us a Falstaff whose hand shakes with delirium tremens as he pours yet another glass. One of the highlights of Sher’s performance is his delivery of Falstaff’s celebration of good sherry, and assertion that if he had sons the first humane principle he would teach them should be ‘to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack’:

A good sherris sack hath a two-fold
operation in it. It ascends me into the brain;
dries me there all the foolish and dull and curdy
vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive,
quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and
delectable shapes, which, delivered o’er to the
voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes
excellent wit. The second property of your
excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood;
which, before cold and settled, left the liver
white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity
and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and makes
it course from the inwards to the parts extreme:
it illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives
warning to all the rest of this little kingdom,
man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and
inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain,
the heart, who, great and puffed up with this
retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour
comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is
nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and
learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till
sack commences it and sets it in act and use.
Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for
the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his
father, he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land,
manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent
endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile
sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If
I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I
would teach them should be, to forswear thin
potations and to addict themselves to sack.

As always, the Falstaff scenes are great entertainment.  But I also particularly enjoyed the long scene in Part Two between Silence and Justice Shallow (a soulful Oliver Ford Davies) in which they reminisce about the days that used to be. Shallow is wonderfully eloquent about the loss of youth and the rewards of friendship:

By the mass, I was called any thing; and I would
have done any thing indeed too, and roundly too.
There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire,
and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and
Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had not four such
swinge-bucklers in all the inns o’ court again: and
I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were
and had the best of them all at commandment.

(‘Bona-robas’, by the way, were prostitutes.) At times I thought their exchanges sounded almost as if they might have been written by Beckett:

SHALLOW:
Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I
have spent! and to see how many of my old
acquaintance are dead!
SILENCE:
We shall all follow, cousin.
SHADOW:
Certain, ’tis certain; very sure, very sure: death,
as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall
die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?
SILENCE:
By my troth, I was not there.
SHALLOW:
Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living
yet?
SILENCE:
Dead, sir.

Another scene of dissoluteness and debauchery in Part Two that caught my attention was the one in which Mistress Quickly – in a stream of consciousness torrent of words that might have come from the pen of James Joyce – rages about all Falstaff’s unpaid bills:

I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he’s an
infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang,
hold him sure: good Master Snare, let him not
‘scape. A’ comes continuantly to Pie-corner – saving
your manhoods–to buy a saddle; and he is indited to
dinner to the Lubber’s-head in Lumbert street, to
Master Smooth’s the silkman: I pray ye, since my
exion is entered and my case so openly known to the
world, let him be brought in to his answer. A
hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to
bear: and I have borne, and borne, and borne, and
have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed
off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame
to be thought on. There is no honesty in such
dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and a
beast, to bear every knave’s wrong. Yonder he
comes; and that errant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph,
with him. Do your offices, do your offices: Master
Fang and Master Snare, do me, do me, do me your offices.

Time passing, and old age creeping on. With maturity comes responsibility, atheme explored by Shakespeare in his depiction of the central relationship between Falstaff and Prince Hal (Alex Hassell) as he frequents the taverns of Eastcheap.  In some productions, Hal is portrayed as a dissolute youth Lacking any sense of his future kingly role, but here Gregory Doran has JHassell play Hal as much more self-aware: a young man who knows he’s not being particularly princely, but fully intends to change his behaviour when the moment comes.

The most surprising feature of Doran’s production of Part One is the treatment of Hotspur. Though Henry IV rebukes his son for haunting taverns and playing truant from honour while Hotspur is valiant and battle-hardened, Trevor White’s unusual performance presents him as a near-autistic hothead, impatient to the point of derangement, who continually prances around in anger, unable to listen to other people. He is far from being the dutiful son King Henry wishes Hal would be: rather than embodiment of chivalry and valour, he is more like a violent overgrown child.

Henry IV part I: tavern scene

What is so remarkable about these plays is the way in which Shakespeare weaves together low-life scenes with serious themes of politics and kingship. What makes a ruler legitimate? Which qualities are desirable in a ruler? When it is acceptable to usurp a ruler’s authority?  In the programme, there’s an interesting essay in which the historian Ian Mortimer notes how Shakespeare had to be very careful in how he approached that last question. Henry’s seizure of the throne from Richard II might have removed a tyrannous ruler, but he had been the rightful king of England:

Henry had saved England from tyranny by removing Richard from the throne but such a strategy was anathema to ElizabethI, who locked up one historian in the Tower of London simply for writing a book about Henry IV. To portray such usurpation as not only succesful but blessed by God was far too dangerous. So Shakespeare downplayed the role of Henry IV.  He focussed on the people around the king. There was no danger in celebrating the king’s son, Henry V, the hero who led the English to victory at Agincourt.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. We might add that Shakespeare’s portrayal of Henry IV (played here by Jasper Britton) is of a man wracked by guilt, determined – as soon as the rebel alliance of Percy, Mortimer, Glendower and Douglas has been put down – to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (he only gets as far as the Jerusalem chamber in the palace of Westminster).  In the dramatically-staged opening scene, with a candlelit background of chanting monks, Henry IV is a tormented usurper, seen beneath the figure of Christ prostrate  in self-abasing prayer. Stephen Brimson Lewis’s set design was sombre throughout, the stage lined on all sides with wooden slats, like unplastered lath walls, though perhaps not best suited to bringing out the rambunctiousness of the tavern scenes.

With recent political events in Scotland and the growing restiveness in places far-flung from London fresh in mind, I found myself tuning into Shakespeare’s portrayal of a kingdom not only disunited but also one of great diversity. The presentation of the accents, culture and traditions of the North, and of Wales and Scotland forms a key element of Part One. Shakespeare incorporates into the play many different languages, dialects and manners of expression, from Welsh and Scots dialect to the rough language Hal encounters in the taverns of Eastcheap.  Gregory Doran emphasises this beautifully in the scene from Part One in which the Welsh leader Owen Glendower is present with Lord Mortimer and his Welsh wife, Glendower’s daughter. She can speak only Welsh, her husband only English. Shakespeare’s stage directions read: ‘Glendower speaks to her in Welsh, and she answers him in the same’. Doran treats us to an extended interchange between the the three characters, with Glendower’s daughter speaking expansively in Welsh.  This was a captioned performance and it was lovely to be able to see, as well as hear, the Welsh words.

Shakespeare was obviously fascinated with the accents, traditions, and legends of the various nations of the British Isle, though his portrayal of the Welsh Glendower and the Scottish Douglas does also obtain laughs from what would have been for his audience recognisable stereotypes – Glendower the magician (looking like Ian McKellen’s Gandalf complete with staff) and Douglas as the hotheaded warrior:

GLENDOWER:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

Nevertheless, the range of language and forms of expression in these plays is astonishing: in addition to high speech and low speech, there is poetry and prose, as well as various regional accents.

In the first play there is a running debate about the nature of honour. For the quick-tempered Hotspur, honour means glory on the battlefield and the defence of his reputation and good name against perceived insults:

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks;

For the troubled king, on the other hand, honour is bound up with the well-being of the nation and his legitimacy as ruler. It lies at the root of his anxiety about how usurpation of Richard II, which won him the crown, might be seen as be a dishonourable act:

And is not this an honourable spoil?
A gallant prize?

Then there is the matter of a son bringing honour to his father, when the king speaks of ‘Hotspur, Mars in swathling clothes’ :

My Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son,
A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue;
Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant;
Who is sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride:
Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,
See riot and dishonour stain the brow
Of my young Harry.

The Prince attempts to calm his father’s fears in a speech that reveals his certainty that he can regain his honour at will:

In the closing of some glorious day
Be bold to tell you that I am your son;
When I will wear a garment all of blood
And stain my favours in a bloody mask,
Which, wash’d away, shall scour my shame with it:
And that shall be the day, whene’er it lights,
That this same child of honour and renown,
This gallant Hotspur, this all-praised knight,
And your unthought-of Harry chance to meet.
For every honour sitting on his helm,
Would they were multitudes, and on my head
My shames redoubled! for the time will come,
That I shall make this northern youth exchange
His glorious deeds for my indignities.

The best speech on the subject is given to the man who has no honour, the amoral rogue Falstaff, for whom the idea is nothing but hot air:

Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what
is that honour? 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. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism.

Alex Hassell as Prince Hal, trying on the crown in Henry IV part two

In the afternoon, in Part One, we saw the king preparing for war against the insurrectionists and Prince Hal coming to terms with his responsibilities as heir to the throne.  In the evening, in Part Two, the King’s health is fading and Hal finally chooses between duty to his country and loyalty to an old friend: ‘I know you not, old man’.  While Henry IV Part II lacks the power of Part One, this production contained some wonderful moments and was as entertaining as the earlier play, especially in the comic scenes featuring Falstaff as well as the red-nosed Bardolph (Joshua Richards), Mistress Quickly (younger than I had imagined her to be, energetically played by a spikyPaola Dionisotti), the wild, anarchic, incomprehensible Pistol (Antony Byrne), and Justice Shallow.

Another scene that played well was when the dying king wakes to find Hal has taken the crown. Angry at first, he is reconciled with his son before he dies. A new, mature Hal accepts the crown as King Henry V and turns his attention to war with France, having been urged by his father ‘to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels’. It’s a line that never seems to lose its pertinence.

The moment when Prince Hal, in procession to his coronation, finally denies Falstaff is quite shocking in the severity of Alex Hassell’s delivery of the line ‘I know you not, old man’ and the cursoriness of his manner. Doran dispenses with Shakespeare’s ending – an ‘epilogue spoken by a dancer’ – which reveals that the sequel was already planned:

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too
much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will
continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make
you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for
any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat,
unless already a’ be killed with your hard
opinions.

Instead, after Prince John has uttered the promise of foreign wars –

I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,
We bear our civil swords and native fire
As far as France: I beard a bird so sing,
Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.
Come, will you hence?

– Doran has the stage darken, a single shaft of light illuminating the figure of a small boy.

After nearly six hours of drama we emerged into the unusual warmth of a Salford October night well satisfied with a production that had brought out the richness of Shakespeare’s plays and his remarkable ability to present audiences with the full range of human experience.