Henry IV, Part 2 (1990, Michael Bogdanov) part 12 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.

Henry Prince of Wales - Michael Pennington
King Henry IV - Michael Cronin
Robert Shallow - Clyde Pollitt
Falstaff - Barry Stanton

Director Michael Bogdanov

Commentary By Henry Norman Hudson on the King:

...observe the account which the King gives of himself when remonstrating with the Prince against his idle courses; which is not less admirable for truth of history than for skill of pencil. Equally fine, also, is the account of his predecessor immediately following that of himself; where we see that he has the same sharp insight of men as of means, and has made Richard's follies and vices his tutors; from his miscarriages learning how to supplant him, and perhaps encouraging his errors, that he might make a ladder of them, to mount up and overtop him.

The whole scene indeed is pregnantly characteristic both of the King and the Prince. And how the King's penetrating and remorseless sagacity is flashed forth in Hotspur's outbursts of rage at his demanding all the prisoners taken at Homildon ! wherein that roll of living fire is indeed snappish enough, but then he snaps out much truth.

But, though policy was the leading trait in this able man, nevertheless it was not so prominent but that other and better traits were strongly visible. And even in his policy there was much of the breadth and largeness which distinguish the statesman from the politician. Besides, he was a man of prodigious spirit and courage, had a real eye to the interests of his country as well as of his family, and in his wars he was humane much beyond the custom of his time. And in the last scene of the Poet's delineation of him, where he says to the Prince,

Come hither, Harry; sit thou by my bed,
And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
That ever I shall breathe;

though we have indeed his subtle policy working out like a ruling passion strong in death, still its workings are suffused with gushes of right feeling, enough to show that he was not all politician ; that beneath his close-knit prudence there was a soul of moral sense, a kernel of religion. Nor must I omit how the Poet, following the leadings both of nature and history, makes him to be plagued by foes springing up in his own bosom in proportion as he ceases to be worried by external enemies; the crown beginning to scald his brows as soon as he has crushed those who would pluck it from him.

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