Henry IV, Part 2 (1990, Michael Bogdanov) part 7 of 15

Shakespeare's "King Henry IV, Part 2" from "The War of the Roses" (English Shakespeare Company, UK, 1990) is a direct filming, from the stage, of Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington's 7-play sequence based on Shakespeare's history plays.


King Henry IV - Michael Cronin
Silence - Philip Bowen
Robert Shallow - Clyde Pollitt
Falstaff - Barry Stanton
Bardolph - Colin Farrell (actor born 1938)


Director Michael Bogdanov

Commentary By Henry Norman Hudson:

One reason of Prince Henry's early irregularities seems to have grown from the character of his father. All accounts agree in representing Bolingbroke as a man of great reach and sagacity ; a politician of inscrutable craft, full of insinuation, brave in the field, skilful alike at penetrating others' designs and at concealing his own; unscrupulous alike in smiling men into his service and in crunching them up after he had used them.

All which is fully borne out in that, though his reign was little else than a series of rebellions and commotions proceeding in part from the injustice whereby he reached the crown and the bad title whereby he held it, yet he always got the better of them, and even turned them to his advantage. Where he could not win the heart, cutting off the head, and ever plucking fresh security out of the dangers that beset him; his last years, however, were much embittered, and his death probably hastened, by the anxieties growing out of his position, and the remorses consequent upon his crimes.


And so in regard to his other associates : he [Falstaff] often abuses them outrageously, so far as this can be done by words, yet they are not really hurt by it, and never think of resenting it. Perhaps, indeed, they do not respect him enough to feel resentment towards him. But, in truth, the juiciness of his spirit not only keeps malice out of him, but keeps others from imputing it to him. Then too he lets off as great tempests of abuse upon himself, and means just as much by them: they are but exercises of his powers, and this, merely for the exercise itself; that is, they are play ; haying indeed a kind of earnestness, but it is the earnestness of sport.

Hence, whether alone or in company, he not only has all his faculties about him, but takes the same pleasure in exerting them, if it may be called exertion ; for they always seem to go of their own accord. It is remarkable that he soliloquizes more than any of the Poet's characters except Hamlet; thought being equally an everspringing impulse in them both, though, to be sure, in very different forms.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Shakespeare
• King-Henry-IV
• 2H4
• Falstaff
• Barry-Stanton
• play
• Michael-Cronin
• theatre
• English-history

[supermarioluigiman]

Thank you Mr. Cahoon