He also knows many in his audience side with Falstaff's own cynical views that "honour is a mere scutcheon", and the exploits of this bumbling rogue are played to their entertaining hilt, to make Hal's acceptance of princely responsibility all the more profound.Whereas King Richard II is a tragedy written almost entirely in verse, its successors in Shakespeare’s historical sequence, King Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and King Henry V, intermingle high politics and comedy, verse and prose. Shakespeare though is hardly a jingoistic sword-rattler. Nation to date in his patriotically inspiring performance at the battle The prince, now king himself, becomes the greatest embodiment of the English To this duty, rather than to personal ambition, and in Henry V The prince's transformation is seen as a response In Henry IV, the king is certainly cast in the mould of dutyīefore self-"uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" (from PartĢ) and all that. The kings he disparagesĪre those portrayed as placing their own interests above the nation: John and the latter Richards, II and III. Not as evil as the Yorkists who seek his overthrow). Him fit, while Henry VI is represented as pathetic more than bad and The behaviour of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, quite a bit to make Of the nation most at heart: the Henrys (though he has to spin-doctor Shakespeare's favoured monarchs are those thought to have had the interests This was a period when the interests of the people seemed to coincide Or their overthrow, is what leads the nation forward. Their resolution of these contradictions, Often mirrored by contradictions within the hearts and minds of the As a dramatic device, the internal divisions are
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Warning that a united England can never be defeated from without, onlyīy internal division. In Shakespeare's plays, characters are always Was to promote not an individual despot, but to promulgate the unity of the nation Royalty against the rebellious parties that would break up the kingdom Was reaching new heights of commerce, exploration and art. A king or queen was seen as sacrificing his or her own personalīenefit for the sake of England. Up the Divine Right of Kings (although it was to make a bit of a comeback with the later Stuart kings) and ruled as the accepted embodiment of Shakespeare was writing when the British monarchy had long given I, the last of the Tudor line) or on the unreliable sources Reading all the historical plays in order also made clearer for me theīiases Shakespeare wove into the dramas, based either on his self-interestĪs a playwright dependent on the pleasure of his current monarch (Elizabeth Is most interesting for Hal's completed discarding of the hopeful Falstaff in In Part 2, which more or less continues the transformation and This is also the play in which Hal first makes the transition fromįun-loving member of Falstaff's band of rogues to respectable prince-in-waitingĪnd comes to his father's defence. Of maturation and responsibility exemplified by the young prince Hal
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Whose subplots steal the play from the more serious and boring themes Part 2 is almost as good and Henry V is all right too.īut it's Henry IV, Part 1 that introduces the ever-popular rascal, Falstaff,
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Like many before me, I discovered that (1) the historical plays are of quite uneven quality, (2) the historical plays are not historically accurate, (3) you don't have to know history to appreciate the best of them, and (4) my school teachers were right: if you read only one, Henry IV, Part 1 should be it. Not in the order he wrote them, but in the order of the historical events they supposedly relate. I once read all Shakespeare's historical plays in chronological order.