This week, we have moved to tablework for Henry IV, Part 2.
This play is produced less than Part 1, and when the play is performed, it is often with an aim to continue the story of royal succession with the rise of Hal as the new king. But the actual focus here for the most part is not on Hal. Rather, this play offers a fascinating view into the ordinary lives of common people, with much less interest in the characters of noble birth. Even the best speech of the seldom-seen title character, Henry IV, laments that he is not a common ship-boy, a sentiment echoed towards the end of the cycle when his grandson Henry VI wishes that he was a shepherd.
While the lines in Part 1 are divided pretty equally between King Henry, Prince Hal, Hotspur, and Falstaff, it is the fat knight who speaks the most in Part 2. The play has even in the past been retitled Falstaff, both at a Jacobean court performance and more recently at Shakespeare’s Globe in their 2019 summer production. [The Globe also changed the name of Part 1 to Hotspur, leaving poor King Henry quite out in the cold.] This recentering of the dramatic action mostly around Falstaff and his crew of roustabouts creates a kind of alternate history. It is a glimpse into the regular lives of Londoners of Shakespeare’s time (even though it’s set almost two hundred years before), and establishes a kind of record for the individuals that the chronicles did not include.
Part 2 picks up right where Part 1 leaves off, though in some ways it replays some of the same hijinks and conflicts that Falstaff and friends have already completed. We see Falstaff muster the pathetic soldiers that he alludes to in Part 1, and Prince Hal (despite his victory over Hotspur at Shrewsbury and seeming reconciliation with his father) is still absent from the court and playing tricks in the tavern. We have rebels, many of whom we have never met before, conspiring and preparing for a fight, which we never get to see. Instead, the “battle” of Gaultree Forest provides an instance of policy and political machination that pales in comparison to the bloody resolution of Shrewsbury. Fighting is moved from the battlefield to the tavern, where constables chase Falstaff and Pistol swaggers around the stage.
The altercation between Pistol, Falstaff, and Doll Tearsheet in Act 2, Scene 4, while comic in some ways, also reveals a world that is full of disease, aging, and the threat of violence. This paraphrasing in particular was incredibly filthy! While discussing the scene with the cast, a lot of questions arose. What are the relationships between these characters? How well do they know each other? How does Doll, a sex worker in the tavern, actually feel about the blustering Falstaff? And why does Pistol keep quoting lines from other plays from the Elizabethan stage by Christopher Marlowe and George Peele?
We will continue to explore these questions and the “funhouse mirror” version of the events of Part 1 in our rehearsals for Part 2, while also treating it as its own play with its own unique structure.
– Emily MacLeod, Production Dramaturg