Henry IV, Part 2 (1990, Michael Bogdanov) part 6 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.


Falstaff - Barry Stanton
Falstaff's Page - John Tramper
Mistress Quickly - June Watson
Bardolph - Colin Farrell (actor born 1938)
Poins - Charles Dale
Doll Tearsheet - Francesca Ryan
King Henry IV - Michael Cronin

Director Michael Bogdanov


notes from the Edmond Malone edition:

"All victuallers do fo" -- The brothels were formerly fkreened under pretext of being victualling houfes and taverns. " So, in the Cure far a Cuckold, 1661 : " This informer comes into Turnbull Street to a victualling houfe, and there falls in league with a wench, &c.—Now, fir, this fellow, in revenge, informs againft the bawd that kept the houfe, &c." Barrett in his Alvearie, 1580, defines a victualling houfe thus: ' A tavern where meate is eaten out of due feafon." Steevens. '


G.C.Verplanck on King Henry IV, part 2:

Both parts of this drama, as well as its prelude, Richard II., and its sequel,Henry V., present a continuous historical chain of revolutions, wars, conspiracies, and rebellions. Every incident is connected with some great political movement. Nothing can be more picturesque, more life-like, than the manner in which these are put into action, or more like the very reality of such things, than the ruminations, motives, conferences, counsels, and contests of the princes and chiefs and their followers. Nor does the poet allow our minds to rest on the mere external shows of the hurried and crowded scene. He is earnest and abundant in wise moral teaching.

The instability of all mortal greatness and the emptiness of human pomp and power—the dread responsibility of that power—the base ingratitude of the great, and the fickleness of the masses—the independence of conscious rectitude,— all these, and other topics, are enforced in verses that have made them the lessons of youthful instruction and household morality wherever the language is spoken. Yet it is very observable that, though the facts and scenes from which these ethical teachings arise are all in some sort political, or connected with public transactions, the speculation or admonition is always of a personal nature, the philosophy ethical, not political, without any thing of those larger views of society as an organized whole, or of the conflicts of political principles, which may be found in the Roman dramas and elsewhere; as, for example, in the eloquent didactic dialogue of the strangely blended Troilus and Cressida.

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Entertainment

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