Part 1 is here.
King John
Shakespeare
So now we get into the history plays. This one is unrelated to the main series, but covers similar themes (chiefly, where does power come from & how does it operate & maintain itself). I'm surprised this play doesn't get staged more often; it has a lot going for it, including many characters any actor would find a gold mine.
Richard II
Shakespeare
As they say in the movies, it begins. That is, the arc of royal history as seen by the Tudors, from Richard II losing out to Henry IV, the kingdom descending into the chaos of the War of the Roses & the final triumph of the youthful Henry VII (I am deliberately omitting Henry V, as I'll have more to say about him & his play in a bit). But this first spectacularly inappropriate king is foreshadowed for us by the vacillating King John, who is weak in a different way from Richard. It can be difficult at first to realize just how weak Richard is, as he is an endless fountain of whirling words. But it's his creation of himself through histrionic speeches, his over-reactions, his theatrical self-representation, that occupies his attention, not governing a kingdom that is slipping away from him. (He provide an interesting contrast with Henry V, another theatrical, self-created king, as I discuss below. Interesting that Richard captures my sympathies in a way Henry does not.) I love the abdication scene, where Richard displays the dazzling bounce of wordplay so beloved of Elizabethans (& me, though not everyone responds to it) to such an extent that one exasperated noble interrupts to ask if he's actually going to, you know, do something, meaning abdicate. The wonderful thing about Shakespeare is that the dizzying puns carry psychological weight:
Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be.
Therefore no “no,” for I resign to thee.
Now, mark me how I will undo myself. . . .
"No [I]": exactly. He's fascinating, but would you really want to have to rely on him as ruler?
Henry IV, Part One
Henry IV, Part Two
Henry V
Shakespeare
The Henry IV plays are of course endlessly rich, but I've always found Henry V a bit of a slog. The first Henry IV play was apparently so popular it required a sequel, & the characters (particularly, of course, Falstaff, but we shouldn't underestimate the depth of the others) are so rich that the story could easily continue, even though the basic psychological dilemma – Prince Hal's insistence on acting the wild man, to his father's dismay – is, if not actually solved in Part One, mitigated enough so that Henry IV & Hal can enact the same process of transgression then forgiveness at the end of Part Two. But then that's the beauty of Hal's behavior: he sets it up so that he will only be what his father wants him to be once the father is safely dead, & therefore can never know that his son did not disgrace him. Henry IV may be a master of realpolitik, but Hal's cynicism puts him to shame: at the end of his very first scene, he announces to us via soliloquy that his wildness is all an act, a deliberate choice so that, in a PR coup, he can suddenly, upon accession to the throne, become dignified & stately. It's almost just a side benefit that his behavior until then will cause pain to his usurping father.
Causing pain to father figures is just part of who Hal ineluctably is: witness his treatment of Falstaff, who shows genuine, if self-interested, affection for the heir to the throne, whereas there's often an edge to Hal's rejoinders, most particularly in the scene in which he & Falstaff act out Hal's reception by his royal father (again, note the theatricality of what they do; it's all playacting with Hal). the one ending with Falstaff exclaiming "Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!" to which Hal, his mask slipping a bit, gives the chilling response, "I do, I will." Other characters rush in with news, breaking the moment. One wonders where they would have gone from there without the interruption.
Banish all the world is pretty much what Henry V has done; he is a hollow man, one who has played a part for so long that all he can do is play parts. The play Henry V is often described as Shakespeare's portrait of a model King. I raise an eyebrow sky-high at this. For one thing, that's just not how Shakespeare operates. His characteristic mode is excess, & that includes multiple angles on his characters. He's not really in the business of setting up paragons & ideals. There's just too much in the play that works against the view that it's some sort of handbook for royal governance.
The play opens with a Chorus, meaning a single narrator, who cries out "O for a muse of fire!" I remember my Shakespeare professor at Cal, Janet Adelman, pointing out what an odd line this is: "Shakespeare had a muse of fire" were her words, & surely by this pint in his career he knew it. Later, the Chorus will decry the inadequacies of the theater to portray the mighty events & royal splendors it's representing. I think what we have here is Brecht's alienation effect avant la lettre: we are constantly made aware of the staged, theatrical quality of what we're seeing. It's all constructed, like Hal/Henry V's persona, only with enough nails & sutures & taping shown to raise doubts for those paying attention.
Look at the whole invasion of France, which forms the major action of the play: at the end of Henry IV Part Two, the dying king gives his son classic advice on what to do when your hold on power is shaky & you need a distraction from looming troubles: "Be it thy course to busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels . . . . " (You know, like invading Venezuela, or claiming Greenland.) Henry V opens, once the Chorus bounds off, with the bishop of Ely & the archbishop of Canterbury essentially saying that in order to forestall a bill that would take some of the riches of the Church, they will give Henry a huge sum (that is, a bribe) to conduct wars in France. It's never, ever a good thing in Shakespeare when the Catholic hierarchy gets together to try to control things (or protect their own interests, which amounts to the same thing).
And this claim to France is apparently vague enough so that Henry has to have it explained to him, which is done in a very lengthy speech of dazzling obscurity, based on whether women can inherit & where Pharamond (you know: Pharamond!) thought the "Salic land" was & blah blah blah. I assume even people more adept at genealogies than I am find this forest too thick for easy traveling. How could this not be intentionally ironic on some level? And at the end, it turns out Henry had already decided: the ambassador from France is waiting outside. He'd already decided, but he needed the cover story. It's a consistent pattern with Henry that he avoids responsibility: if, during the invasion, he threatens to destroy a town, giving them gruesome details about how they're going to suffer, then it's their fault, not his, because they didn't surrender. Even when the outcome is good, in his mind, he disclaims responsibility: after his victory at Agincourt, he repeatedly announces that the credit goes to God. That's because Henry himself doesn't quite exist, except as a performative gesture that seems suited to the moment.
He's this way with his own people to, as witness his whiny "Upon the king!" soliloquy, when he, in disguise (again), essentially tricks a common soldier into giving his opinion of the King & his wars. The soldier feels that if he's killed in a foreign land, without having the chance to say goodbye to his family or to receive the last rites, the King has responsibility for his end. Henry, of course, doesn't like this, but Henry, of course, is incorrect. He brought this war on, he uprooted the common soldiers from their towns, & he does bear responsibility for what happens to them there.
That scene with the soldier also results in a mean trick played upon both the soldier & Fluellen, the Welsh captain who is possibly the only truly boring character Shakespeare ever created (but even he deserves better than this sub-frat-boy-style prank). It's a bit of tomfoolery about striking someone who is wearing a glove given as a pledge. The predictable ensues, & Henry buys them off with money (which is pretty insulting, & so much for that sentimental touch of Harry in the night). This happens after God wins for him at Agincourt. The bathos of the descent from a great military victory to stupid pranks, again, has to be intentionally pointed at some level. (Incidentally, people often mention that Magna Carta is never mentioned in King John, but the real sin of historical omission is the failure to mention the English longbows & their role in Agincourt in Henry V.)
By now, it's clear to those paying attention that Henry V has no real core to his being, but shifts guises (& evades responsibility for his actions) at all times. This brings us to the scene in which he "courts" Princess Katherine of France. She's listed as an article in the peace agreements, & it's clearly a dynasty-driven choice of spouse, but Henry pretends he's just a bluff soldier unskilled at wooing the pretty girl, even though we've seen him, as Prince Hal, slinging wit & woo like a pro with Doll Tearsheet & Mistress Quckly. After saying he's just no good at this kind of thing, gosh darn it, he them proceeds to talk her (& our) ears off, pirouetting prettily among the puns like the daintiest sonneteer at the most refined court.
And what is all this for? For a stake in France that is meltingly brief but will distort & haunt British history for years after. And the audience was aware of this: the Henry VI plays had been hugely successful, & there is a constant theme in them of the loss of France. In fact, at the end of Henry V, the Chorus shows up for a farewell appearance, & spends the final half of his/her last speech reminding us that what we've just seen won is going to be quickly lost, very quickly lost, with tragic results, as we all know from seeing the earlier plays. So Henry's brief victory was not only pointless & unnecessary, but an on-going cause of grief: a model King? Really?
Henry VI, Part One
Henry VI, Part Two
Henry VI, Part Three
Shakespeare
I really love these plays, & though the Henry IV plays are obviously superior in many ways, I might even have greater affection for these plays than for their betters. There's something about the descent into chaos, through heedlessness, selfishness, & cruelty, that, to state the obvious, seems very resonant with our times. I would love to see a staging of the trilogy, & I mean pretty much as written, not some War of the Roses mash-up done so that people can put on Richard III without having the audience spend the whole play going "Who is Queen Margaret, & why is she so upset?" Henry VI is another in Shakespeare's portrait gallery of Inappropriate Kings; he strikes me as an interesting prefiguration of Hamlet: both men are thrust by fate & chance into an active role for which they are temperamentally ill-suited.
Richard III
Shakespeare
Shaw gave the perfect summary: the greatest Punch & Judy show ever written. Richard is one of those Elizabethan villains so zestful in their scheming that they become almost lovable. But even here, with an official Tudor villain, Shakespeare humanizes him: his night terrors, his complex attitude to his body.
Henry VIII
Shakespeare (& John Fletcher)
A bit removed from the series, but it serves as a capstone. I find this play, like Henry V, a bit of a slog, but for different reasons: it seems a bit diffuse, a bit on-the-surface, a bit pageant-like, with plenty of colorful processions & suchlike separated by set-piece moments of pathos, exemplary stories of the fall of the great. I have heard it's very effective on stage; I've never had the chance to test this proposition in person, but it makes sense, as pageants are, by their nature, things better seen than read about. There's an interesting dance going on in this play; there's sympathy for Katherine, but not too much, as where would that leave Elizabeth I, the daughter of her successor; Anne Boleyn's fate is not mentioned; Henry is presented with "plausible deniability:" his roving eye is caught by Anne, but we're also supposed to think he's genuinely troubled by the validity of his marriage to his brother's widow. The characterization of him is not too probing, mostly limited to his tendency to exclaim Ha! I guess it's appropriate for Shakespeare to end his examination of British royalty with a slightly dull, noncommittal pageant: a foreshadowing of royalty in our own time.
OK, I guess that's enough for now. More 2025 reading to come!
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